I have an example of the Industar-61 L/Z and also consider it to be sharp. It was purchased from an eBay seller in Pskov, Russia. It took two payment attempts and months to get here. Why the mention of so may east-bloc lenses? In the years after WWII, many countries in and near Europe were struggling with rebuilding their economies and had import duties. The idea was to keep currency in these countries. The duties had the effect of making Japanese camera equipment more expensive than in the U.S. As a result, many east-bloc cameras and lenses were sold in these countries and not nearly as many in the U.S. Exakta had a distributor in the U.S. and had modest success for some years. Praktica and Pentacon cameras were much more popular in England than in the U.S. There may also have been U.S. import restrictions on certain east-bloc goods. While the Pentax 55mm M42 lenses are easily found and deserving of their good reputation, there is not much of a mystique surrounding them. There seems to be more of a mystique surrounding German (German, East German, West German) and FSU lenses. I am not qualified to say whether there should be such a mystique. It just seems like it's there. It is my impression, from reading his posts, that Dan is more of a user than a collector and is a minimalist compared to user/collectors like me. This isn't a criticism by any means. Every person has different interests. If I think about the many different M42 standard lenses I have which are faster than f/2 but slower than f/1.4, they all seem to work reasonably well. They have names like Sears, Ricoh, Chinon, Yashinon, Vivitar, Alpa (the 50/1.7 made by Chinon), Mamiya etc. Once you get past basic standards for sharpness, contrast and distortion you get into the more artistic (even if still scientifically measurable) areas of light fall-off, bokeh, coating, roundness, flatness of field etc. For some people, finding the right lens for a certain look, even with a standard lens, is like finding the right wine to go with a certain dish.