This post might seem a bit off topic, but as a landscape photographer you don’t usually get the luxury of traveling along well paved, well maintained, ice free roads.
Imagine a scene from one of the thousands of disaster movies, with lightnings falling everywhere around you, deafening thunders, thick dense heavy rain that you almost can’t see anything, and fierce gusts of wind pushing your car from side to side.
A.k.a. “The lens which came in from the cold” Russians have a way with glass. Assuming your sample has not been assembled by a still drunk worker on a Monday morning (or so the legend goes), the quality is often way better than it should, especially when you factor in the price.