The question, though, is this: if you’re looking for a specific vintage lens (or any lens, for that matter) without ever having shot with it, then why? Because someone else is happy with it?
Indeed I was looking for that lens because someone else was happy with it. The more I think about it the less I want it now, thanks for the reality check. The lens is actually a bad fit for my system due to the thick filter stack on Sony cameras causing corner smearing with rangefinder lenses.
My comment was written as a general philosophy about manual focusing which I did not find a burden in the days of film. I would also like to have good manual focus control in my digital cameras. My new Canon R7 is good in this respect but has one aspect of AF that drives me crazy. If I select a single focus point it can shift wildly while using the camera. The problem turned out being the touch screen will move the focus point when I put my eye to the viewfinder. I can hear you saying just turn off the touch screen, but even when I do that the touch screen remains responsive to touch for the positioning of the focus point. I have discovered that using the lock button will fix this problem but then all camera controls such as aperture are also locked. Dumb design award goes to Canon for this oversight.
I can understand your frustration. But for whatever reason that’s never happened to me with my 850D. Maybe it’s the camera, maybe it’s my face 
maybe it’s workflow, dunno.
Hi Len, my nikons are fine, even my other canons, but Canon dropped the ball on this one feature with the R7
Not that I was real photographer back then but I do remember the wonderful split image and prism focusing screen on my Praktica MTL-3 …
While I agree with everything you said, and reached the same conclusion, note that some people like vintage lenses because of their optical quirks.
Eg TTartisan recently came out with a 100mm f/2.8 that gives “bubble bokeh”, and is a sub-$200 alternative of the Trioplan, which sells for $1000 new (you can of course find vintage ones, but they are still more expensive than the TTartisan new) . It is a a 3 element design that scores way below modern lenses for sharpness, aberrations, distortion, and the bubble bohek is also practically an optical flaw.
People want to experiment and use optical quirks creatively, so they explore with vintage lenses. Not because they are good by any modern standard — not even close. But because they are interesting.
I got a 3rd party screen like that for my Pentax K10D. It works, but it’s not wonderful… 
A little late to the discussion, just wanted to add the following…
I love this focal range for a nice fixed focal length lens. In particular, I like the 40mm, which I often use for a complete day trip. I own two 40mm lenses, the vintage Konica Hexanon 40mm F1.8, which is, even with adapter, very lightweight, small and also affordable and it makes good and sharp pictures (not so at F1.8, but a little bit stopped down for sure).
But as I liked this focal length so much, I also got me a Voigtlander 40mm F1.2, which is -no suprise here- even nicer. Is it about 10 times as nice, probably not. Do I regret, buying it? Hell, no - could sell it anytime with next to no loss in money.
Do with that what you want
BTW I don’t have comparison pictures at hand, but if it is of interest for you, I could dig a bit and see what I have got.
The phillipreeve.net website is an interesting one for reviews of unusual lenses. Some nice photography too.
Edit: corrected address.
I would definitely love to see some shots from your Voigtlander, that’s one of the brands I was interested to buy as an alternative to vintage lenses. I was also looking at Thypoch and Light Lens Lab as they offer competitively priced lenses. But I digress, we’re no longer talking about vintage lenses but rather modern copies of vintage designs 
So, I tried to find some shots from the Voigtlander 40mm F1.2 with different apertures. These where all raw developed with ART and lens correction turned off, to better see the flaws of the lens. I didn’t edit much, mostly minor tonal changes plus some basic sharpening.
Also I rarely shoot at F1.2, I managed to find a stuped picture and as you see, wide open it’s not perfect by far. I’d say it is an option, when light is missing, but with daylight… not so much.
F1.2
Here is a test shot, showing of the smooth bokeh and sharpness at F1.6.
F1.6
Indoor with dim light. Details in the eye.
F2
Bright daylight, outdoor.
F8
Does this help you, @rasterized ?
Thank you, that is a very nice lens.
So there is pretty much no vignetting wide open? Huh.
I have two “vintage” lenses I’d like to play with, but I can find only one of them. They are Nikkor AIs; one is a 50 mm 1.8 and the other a 28 mm 1.4. My son has fooled around with my camera stuff and I cannot for the life of me find the 28 mm one. Of course, he has no memory of what he might have done with it. 
It’s not … well spotted. I double checked and (only) for the first picture I uploaded the wrong file.
Sorry for any confusion caused by my mistake. 
I came across this article which may be of interest to the vintage lens discussion, in which high element count zooms are compared A-B style with low element count primes.
The brick wall example is pretty interesting, I didn’t know two lenses could have such a difference in rendition. It would be interesting to see that particular example in full color.
The element count thing is pretty much nonsense. Zoom vs prime is a bigger issue as zooms were inherently lower tolerance deals.
I see, so a prime vs prime comparison would be more fair. He did do that for the original article in The flattening of modern lenses or the death of 3d pop — YANNICK KHONG but only provided two samples. Personally I only see a difference in color cast between the two lenses.
It would be impossible to do a fair comparison. There are thousands of lens models and they all render differently. To determine that it’s element count rather than something more complex would be impossible. To logically disprove the thesis I guess all you have to do is find a complex lens that renders spatially rich images. In my mind this has already been done.
Regarding https://yannickkhong.com/blog/2015/11/12/depth-vs-flat-lens-quick-comparison: Hmm. I downloaded the “Comparison 3: 55mm (6 vs 16 elements)” images. Here is a crop from each:
Yes, there is a clear difference: the left image is muddy, fuzzy, lacks micro contrast, call it whatever you like, compared to the right image.
BUT the left image is the 55mm AIS, the right image is the 24-85mm zoom.
I suppose the author of that page didn’t look objectively at the results, but just showed the crops that supported the contention. I suspect the difference between this pair of images isn’t the lenses, but what they were focused on. The zoom lens was focused on a greater distance than the 55mm. So the 55 gives a better image of the foreground car, and the zoom is better for distance trees.
Don’t take my word for it; download the images and make your own comparisons.
