The N's lenes is sharper and the C's lenes is softer. You can choose your camera system according to your purposes and your like. But talking about the economic lenes, you shoud choose from other brands. N and C can sell their economic lenes by their brand name at high price and not so good quality, so why they don't do so. By the way, both C and N have their economic lenes produced in other countries, such as China. Actually I prefer lenses from German(I love the tone of picture taken by carl zeiss), but according to wjiang's budget, I still think M is his best choice.