The main savings were usually in manufacturing tolerances, labor, and quality control—not just element count.

Two lenses can look similar on paper yet differ a lot in cost if one is made to tighter specs. Higher-tier lenses generally used stricter tolerances for glass quality, polishing, centering, spacing, coatings, and assembly. That means more skilled labor, more inspection, more rejected parts, and sometimes more hand adjustment.

Low-end lenses could be produced in larger, more automated batches with looser acceptance standards. If the quality threshold is lower, more parts pass inspection, less time is spent tuning each lens, and fewer components are discarded. That cuts cost quickly.

Coatings and optical design also mattered, but they were only part of the picture. Even without exotic glass or aspherical elements, good contrast, color, and sharpness across the frame depend heavily on accurate manufacture and consistent assembly. Poor coatings or less refined designs could hurt performance, but looser QA is a big reason cheap lenses often showed consistently lower image quality.

So the price gap was less about “using much less glass” and more about how precisely the lens was made, assembled, tested, and how many imperfect parts the maker was willing to accept.