Rise and fall of lens manufacturers

[IanG]

In a separate thread we took a discussion off topic talking about Meyer and Zeiss. May be we should continue here as it's something not often discussed:




Look at the amazing range of lenses tht Meyer produced in the 1930's and yet now we dismiss the company and idolise Schneider then relatively unknown, and treat Xeiss as a spent force. (LF lenses).
Ian


Maybe slightly off-topic, but it's quite simple why Meyer disappeared as a major player in lens production in the western perception. They were locked behind the iron curtain after WWII. In eastern Europe they were still well-known until they were forced into VEB Pentacon, which made an end to this distinguished name.




Well, the absorption into Pentacon was relatively late, the real issue was that the GDR believed in industrial scale production - which is a matter of numbers, and hence most feasible for small (and already less so for medium) format. Meyer actually grew considerably in GDR years and by the end, Meyer (now Pentacon) had pushed Zeiss (the Jena branch) right off the table and were even making many of the last remaining nominally Zeiss Jena camera lenses (including the last batches of GDR LF Tessars).

And there is the earlier issue of the dominating Zeiss trust that let few independent makers in Germany survive the crisis between the wars - among the few survivors, Schneider doubtlessly had the post-WWII advantage of being strictly in the West while Mayer was entirely stuck in the East, but that does not explain the decline of all the other Western-only smaller lens makers (among them venerable industry pioneers like Steinheil and Voigtländer).

Ian

[IanG]

Schneider's rise seems to really coincide with Nagel leaving Zeiss Ikon to found a new Camera manufaturing enterprise His first new cameras sold under the Nagel badge didn't use Zeiss lenses, I'd guess there was some ill feeling, instead many were sold with Schneider lenses, that increased further when Nagels company were taken over by Kodak and came under the remit of Kodak Ltd, UK.

Under Kodak control cameras made in the Nagel factory began using Zeiss lenses as well.

It's these manufacturing alliances that seem to have had a large impact on the rise and fall of lens manufacturers.

Ian

[rdenney]

After WWII, Rolleiflexes--by far the dominant medium-format camera of that period, completely displacing cell-focus folders even for amateur use--could not be equipped with Zeiss lenses. Zeiss Oberkochen was still barely formed, and didn't have rights to the model names (thus, "Opton"), and the Jena works were still being looted by the Soviets. So, Franke and Heidecke turned to Schneider, who had a good version of the tessar design that could be produced immediately. That gave them a big commercial boost at a critical time in the late 40's when Americans in particular were starting to spend money.

They also were among the first to create a good retrofocus wide angle lens, with the Curtagon. I have a Curtagon from about 1952 that they made for the Wirgen Edixa that is very sharp in the middle and quite competitive with the period Flektogons from Jena and the Distagons from Oberkochen. That of itself isn't that important, but it led them to the opposing-retrofocus design, which was a variation on the original Biogon, which they named the Super Angulon.

Zeiss Jena was under the same production pressure as Meyer Gorlitz, and there were no large-format cameras in wide use in the Second World, so they focused on smaller formats (their copy lenses like the Germinar notwithstanding). And Oberkochen focused on popular cameras like the Rolleiflex and (later) the Hasselblad. The splitting of Zeiss forced each to make those choices.

The Super Angulon, which came out in 1951, as I recall, was revolutionary, especially for architecture. It really expanded the possibilities for the highly flexible view cameras (such as the Sinar) that were just then being created. Schneider owned that segment by themselves for at least a dozen years, before Rodenstock and Nikon started creating competing alternatives. But that gave them the opportunity to cement their quality model and establish the brand.

Voigtlander and Steinheil were in the same position as Wollensak and Ilex, because they were so busy making money on traditional designs that they did not innovate. Ilex developed a double-retrofocus wide-field lens like the Super Angulon in the 60's, and Wollensak had a wide-field double-gauss lens at that time, but they had become price-point and stencil-brand producers by that time (Ilex made the first Caltars and Wollensak made the Graflex lenses). When the large-format press camera died, it took Wollensak's LF lenses with it. And Ilex could not compete with early Rodenstock even on price.

And I don't think the minor German makers ever recovered from the war. Steinheil made some budget lenses for the Leica, as I recall, but Voigtlander seems to have disappeared by that time. Neither innovated with SLR-compatible lenses.

Rick "suspecting Schneider's big move was in LF by capturing the Biogon concept, while Zeiss Oberkochen's big move was aimed at Rollei and Hasselblad" Denney

[Ian Greenhalgh]

Voigtlander most certainly did innovate with SLR lenses. Because they were in the West and their factory was relatively unscathed by the war, they were the first to bring new designs to market in 1950-51. The Ultron was revolutionary and copied by most of the Japanese makers. The Skoparon/Skoparex 35mm was copied by Pentax and Minolta and maybe some others. The Germans never really grasped that focal plane 35mm SLRs were the future until it was too late, and the focal plane shutter models they did produce were too late to market, too expensive and too complex. Voigtlander lenses were the best available in the 1950-55 period, then Zeiss in Oberkochen started to produce their new designs and regained their lead. Leitz didn't catch up until the 1960s.

I think Schneider rising to the top of MF/LF production was largely due to the fortunes of war, they were in the west and the Americans pumped a lot of money into re-establishing industry in the West. I agree that the Angulon and Super-Angulon were very important though, other companies missed the boat on wide angles for MF and LF.

[rdenney]

Voigtlander most certainly did innovate with SLR lenses. Because they were in the West and their factory was relatively unscathed by the war, they were the first to bring new designs to market in 1950-51. The Ultron was revolutionary and copied by most of the Japanese makers. The Skoparon/Skoparex 35mm was copied by Pentax and Minolta and maybe some others. The Germans never really grasped that focal plane 35mm SLRs were the future until it was too late, and the focal plane shutter models they did produce were too late to market, too expensive and too complex. Voigtlander lenses were the best available in the 1950-55 period, then Zeiss in Oberkochen started to produce their new designs and regained their lead. Leitz didn't catch up until the 1960s.

I think Schneider rising to the top of MF/LF production was largely due to the fortunes of war, they were in the west and the Americans pumped a lot of money into re-establishing industry in the West. I agree that the Angulon and Super-Angulon were very important though, other companies missed the boat on wide angles for MF and LF.

Maybe I never look in the right places, but I rarely or never see Skoparon or Skoparex lenses from the early 50's, though I see earlier ones on Voigtlander folders. What camera were they made for? Angenieux is credited with the first retrofocus lens (for cine) in, I seem to recall, 1948 or '49. Zeiss Jena was right there within a year with the Flektogon, and Schneider a bit behind that with the Curtagon. I don't recall when Oberkochen came out with the Distagon, but it was probably right about the same time as the Curtagon. These were the first retrofocus lenses for SLRs, where the glass had to be in front of the mirror box, that I know of. Flektogons were popular on Practica cameras, and were also made from the mid-50's well into the 80's for medium format (in the Pentacon Six mount). The Wirgen I mentioned used Schneider lenses, and also used the Practica M42 screw mount (which was later adopted by Pentax). Zeiss Oberkochen started making Zeiss Ikon SLRs in the 50's, but, as you say, behind others (still ahead of the Japanese, though)--and before that time, Zeiss's main camera products were Ikonta folders and Contax rangefinders.

Really, Exakta was the real first SLR, and a camera I know little about, especially what lenses were made for it. Maybe that's the camera those Skoparons and Skoparexes were made for--perhaps you can say. But the pre-war Exaktas were made in Dresden and I would have thought Meyer would have been major supplier, as they were to Practica-Dresden after the war (later, of course, both were rolled into VEB Pentacon, eventually along with Zeiss Jena). I've always thought of Practica being the post-war successor to Exakta.

Yes, Schneider was already in the west and that helped them. But I'll bet the Americans pumped more money into Zeiss Oberkochen than into Schneider--they helped create that branch in the western zone and move the best Jena experts there to prevent the Soviets from getting all the technology. Of course, the Soviets crated up much of the tooling at the Jena works and sent it to Kiev, but that's another story.

Rick "who needs to look back through Kingslake again" Denney

[Mark Sawyer]

A few other things that had impacts on the lens makers:

In the post-WWII years, one of the biggest impacts on European and American makers was the very fast development of the Japanese optics and photographic industries.

The acceptance of 35mm as a "professional" format had as big an impact on large format as digital later had on film.

The arrival of new designs, and newly-available AR-coating for old designs with inherent internal flare problems, (Plasmat, Tessar...), had many photographers buying new lenses.

[Sevo]

I've always thought of Practica being the post-war successor to Exakta.


Not at all - the Exakta had its peak in the fifties and carried on into the late sixties. The company, Ihagee, was Dutch-founded and -owned so that they, as a foreign company, escaped the immediate seizure by the Soviets after the war and retained their independence longer than most other photographic companies in the GDR. It was not until the sixties that the owners started another Ihagee in West Berlin, after which the company was forcibly merged into Pentacon.

[Sevo]

A few other things that had impacts on the lens makers:

In the post-WWII years, one of the biggest impacts on European and American makers was the very fast development of the Japanese optics and photographic industries.


Was it so in the US? It certainly was not in Europe. Japanese brands did not even appear on the European market until the early sixties - the rapid swing from a German dominated to a Japanese dominated European market was around or even after 1970. The earlier collapse of the British, French and Italian camera industries presumably was due to the fact that they all shifted into the more profitable military and aerospace sectors (which still were off limits for the German and Japanese) - a luxury problem that also had many heavyweights of the US optical industry withdraw from the photography market.

[rdenney]

Not at all - the Exakta had its peak in the fifties and carried on into the late sixties. The company, Ihagee, was Dutch-founded and -owned so that they, as a foreign company, escaped the immediate seizure by the Soviets after the war and retained their independence longer than most other photographic companies in the GDR. It was not until the sixties that the owners started another Ihagee in West Berlin, after which the company was forcibly merged into Pentacon.

Okay--good. As I said, Exakta has not been my interest. I was at least partly confused by the reskinning of the Pentacon Six in the 90's as an Exakta 66. That camera was surely made in the Pentacon works, but by that post-unification time they were owned by...wait for it...Josef Schneider.

Were Voigtlander lenses popular on Exakta cameras in the 50's?

Rick "putting 2 and 2 together and getting 3" Denney

[Peter Yeti]

Yes, Schneider was already in the west and that helped them. But I'll bet the Americans pumped more money into Zeiss Oberkochen than into Schneider--they helped create that branch in the western zone and move the best Jena experts there to prevent the Soviets from getting all the technology. Of course, the Soviets crated up much of the tooling at the Jena works and sent it to Kiev, but that's another story.


I think you may be right about this. Both Schott and Zeiss needed a complete start-over in the west and certainly got a lot of political support. But, as far as I know, Schneider already took off to become a major player way before this, namely in the 1930s. They were founded relatively late and at first copied successful designs by others like the Tessar. They could do this because the patents had expired by then. This was a mass market and lenses were made in astonishing numbers by a plethora of makers. Besides major companies like Zeiss, Meyer, Goerz, and Busch with a great reputation there were plenty of small to medium size producers, which I think mainly competed by lower prices. It seems that Schneider started out as one of the latter but then grew very quickly.

Another thing was already pointed out by Sevo. The Zeiss foundation basically formed a trust and forced many highly reputed lens manufacturers to join it. Busch was not allowed to use it's own name on the lenses anymore after the merger. I think Goerz was still using it's name, though. Many minor producers must have had a really hard time after the formation of Zeiss Ikon in 1926. Voigthänder was able to compete by the outstanding quality of their lenses, Schneider probably by lower prices, Rodenstock because they earned money with spectacles. But many others died or merged with a biggy or changed to different products.

These are just a few aspects about the "rise and fall" between the wars. I think I'll stop here for now.

[IanG]

Was it so in the US? It certainly was not in Europe. Japanese brands did not even appear on the European market until the early sixties - the rapid swing from a German dominated to a Japanese dominated European market was around or even after 1970. The earlier collapse of the British, French and Italian camera industries presumably was due to the fact that they all shifted into the more profitable military and aerospace sectors (which still were off limits for the German and Japanese) - a luxury problem that also had many heavyweights of the US optical industry withdraw from the photography market.

I think your out by a decade, the Japanese invasion of the UK market began in earnest in the late 1950's and looking at the BJP Almanacs I have there really was almost no credible opposition in the smaqller formats. I know when I first became interested in photography at school around 1962/3 my English teacher was still using a Contarex but friends parents were using Japanes camers, Yashica Lynx & similar rangefinder cameras seemed very popular, Germany still seemed to dominate the lower end of the mid range cameras for a bit longer. Within a couple of years everyone wanted a Japanese camera.

Yes there were still some precision German cameras, Rollei and Linhof, but Zeiss had lost the race when it came to 35mm cameras, if they'd dveloped the early East German Contax in west Germany things might have been very different. Or if Noble'sm company had been in the West the innovations he'd introduced at KW which resulted in the worlds first true 35mm system cameras the Praktina (it had a motor drive systen unlike the Exactas).

Ian

[Peter Yeti]

Ian,

You both may be right. Photographers in Germany stayed very old-fashioned for a long time. I remember my dad still using a Balda in the 70s. Then he visited Japan in 1978 and bought an Olympus OM-2 there. This thing seemed like a miracle from a different universe. I think that the West-German camera industry died in the 70s because they stuck to the central shutter while everybody wanted exchangeable lenses and system cameras. Lenses without shutter were much cheaper and faster but required a focal plane shutter. The manufacturers overlooked that their optical designs were not superior anymore to others and that there would be absolutely no need to put up with outdated technology. That broke the neck of most of them. Only in LF and partially in MF photography this wasn't too much of an issue.

[Arne Croell]

A few facts here:

Voigtländer was sold by its former owner (the Schering company) to the Zeiss foundation in Heidenheim in 1956, and they were completely absorbed into the Zeiss-Ikon sales organisation by 1966. After 1956 they had to do what Zeiss said, and some later "Zeiss-Ikon" designs were actually 100% Voigtländer. The second camera that I owned, after an Instamatic, was a Zeiss Ikon Contessa S310 with a Tessar 40mm lens. That camera and lens were actually Voigtländer designs from Braunschweig, the Tessar was originally a Color-Skopar. I learned that many years later.

According to the literature, the Meyer company had it worse than Carl Zeiss Jena after WWII - yes, the US troops moved key Zeiss personnel and machines to Heidenheim and Oberkochen in 1945, and the Soviets removed most of the rest for reparations, leaving just 6% of the machinery. However, they removed 100% of the Meyer equipment down to the radiators in the rooms and also all the lens formulas. The remaining foremen and workers had to recreate the designs from memory and a few personal notes. Meyer had a a production of only around 500 lenses in 1946, and their first coating machine was installed in 1952, much later than anybody else. They were also always much lower on the totem pole in the communist GDR system than Zeiss, meaning less materials, less machinery etc.

[Mark Sampson]

We should also follow the money. I wonder if Kodak's decision to exit the LF lens market had to do with price competition from Schneider and Zeiss, or was it just a declining market in the '60s? Remember that the first Hasselblads used Kodak Ektar lenses, and VH went to Zeiss only when the 500c was being developed in the mid-50s. Can cost have played a part there?

[xya]

last sunday I have been offered a voigtländer bessamatic cs. it came with a standard color-skopar, a 2.0/50 septon and an extremely nice zoomar 2.8/36-82 + a big case of adapters, lenses and other stuff. it's from 1968. they still did good gear in those days.

[Peter Yeti]

We should also follow the money. I wonder if Kodak's decision to exit the LF lens market had to do with price competition from Schneider and Zeiss, or was it just a declining market in the '60s? Remember that the first Hasselblads used Kodak Ektar lenses, and VH went to Zeiss only when the 500c was being developed in the mid-50s. Can cost have played a part there?

As far as I remember, Viktor Hasselblad wasn't satisfied with the Ektar lenses but they were the only ones available for his purpose. He chose Zeiss Oberkochen for quality reasons not for price point. But the company wasn't re-built in 1948 when he designed his first camera. By the introduction of the 500c in 1957, Zeiss was established, not at all cheap, and assisted to kill one of it's main custumers, Rollei, by helping Hasselblad to soar. Maybe a smart move because the Hasselblad system was the future.

I'd think that the LF world was a different business.

[Sevo]

Okay--good. As I said, Exakta has not been my interest. I was at least partly confused by the reskinning of the Pentacon Six in the 90's as an Exakta 66. That camera was surely made in the Pentacon works, but by that post-unification time they were owned by...wait for it...Josef Schneider.

Were Voigtlander lenses popular on Exakta cameras in the 50's?



Voigtländer never made a Exakta mount lens. They doubtlessly shot themselves in the foot, and deservedly were the first to fail (and be gobbled up by Zeiss). For some reason they seem to have considered their lenses a sales argument for their (compared to the lenses, mostly quirky and outdated) cameras rather than a product of its own. They were fiercely competitive and did not sell their lenses to or for any cameras they considered level or down-market from their own (so that a few Leica and Contax lenses are the only ones with a alien mount). They even refused to sell large format lenses to photographers not registered as professionals, and tried to sell them bundled only with their own (over-engineered, over-priced and over-weight, hence utterly failed) camera for a while in the fifties.

The GDR lenses the Exakta came bundled with came from Ludwig, Meyer, Zeiss Jena and in the final years Pentacon. West German makers that made a lot in Exakta mount were Steinheil, Schacht, Enna and Rodenstock (plus long lens makers like Astro and Novoflex, but the mount on these lenses essentially was an adapter, so they covered pretty much every camera system globally). As the Exakta mount was also used by Topcon, there even are Japanese Exakta mount lenses from prime brand makers like Topcon and Zunow.

The Exakta 66, which started in 1984 (way before the unification), was the brain child of Heinrich Manderman, who made his money importing East German photo products into the west (and somehow ended up with Exakta brand name rights from that), conceived when he already had bought Schneider out of their insolvency, but did not yet own Rollei. He wanted his own camera system to gain more independence from other camera makers, and a West German-assembled camera utilizing the Pentacon Six frame (which by itself had too many assembly quality problems) was the only fast way to establish a system that was far enough up-market to sell Schneider lenses at a profit. The core parts of Pentacon ended up in the Manderman empire in 1991, but only the third and revised reissue of the E66 from 97-2000 was made at the former Pentacon plant in Seidnitz (sp?) - in the interim years, Exakta Nuremberg continued with parts from GDR and immediate post GDR times.

[Sevo]

I think your out by a decade, the Japanese invasion of the UK market began in earnest in the late 1950

The UK will have been different, as they had steep import taxes directed against anything outside the Commonwealth and were only reachable by ship, so that Japanese and European/German makers had pretty much the same conditions - on the continent it took longer before the German camera industry lost its competitiveness.

[IanG]

The UK will have been different, as they had steep import taxes directed against anything outside the Commonwealth and were only reachable by ship, so that Japanese and European/German makers had pretty much the same conditions - on the continent it took longer before the German camera industry lost its competitiveness.

I think you raise a very interesting point which I'd agree with.

It's a bit like histories of Photoghay, Beaumont Newhall's book is superb but US biased and we have different histories in Europe , and that sub divides as well.

In this case could it be the US protecting the German camera industry and is it across Europe or just the Germany where the US had so much influence, I remember the huge US bases I saw in the late 1960s.

Ian

[Tim Deming]

Voigtländer never made a Exakta mount lens. They doubtlessly shot themselves in the foot, and deservedly were the first to fail (and be gobbled up by Zeiss). For some reason they seem to have considered their lenses a sales argument for their (compared to the lenses, mostly quirky and outdated) cameras rather than a product of its own. They were fiercely competitive and did not sell their lenses to or for any cameras they considered level or down-market from their own (so that a few Leica and Contax lenses are the only ones with a alien mount).

Never say never. The famous Voigtlander zoomar lens (you can argue if this was a true Voigtlander development) was sold in mounts for exakta, alpa, and M42 screw, in addition to its native Bessamatic mount. You are essentially correct though, most all of their innovative, and quite good, 35mm lenses of the post WW2 period were made exclusively for their own quirky and expensive (but high quality and cool nonetheless) cameras such as the Bessamatic and ultramatic SLRs and prominent and vitessa T rangefinders. BTW, another exception, the Vitessa T lenses will also work on Braun colorette rangefinders of the same era

Cheers

Tim

[Dan Fromm]

Hmm. I thought lenses were made in other countries than the US, GB, Germany and Japan. France and Italy, in particular. Switzerland, too.

What, if anything, fell on those countries' optical goods makers?

[Bob Salomon]

"Voigtländer never made a Exakta mount lens. They doubtlessly shot themselves in the foot, and deservedly were the first to fail (and be gobbled up by Zeiss). For some reason they seem to have considered their lenses a sales argument for their (compared to the lenses, mostly quirky and outdated) cameras rather than a product of its own. They were fiercely competitive and did not sell their lenses to or for any cameras they considered level or down-market from their own (so that a few Leica and Contax lenses are the only ones with a alien mount). "

And don't forget, at the end Voigtlander was owned by Rollei so Voigtlander branded cameras made by Rollei had Voigtlander branded lenses.

[Ian Greenhalgh]

Maybe I never look in the right places, but I rarely or never see Skoparon or Skoparex lenses from the early 50's, though I see earlier ones on Voigtlander folders. What camera were they made for? Angenieux is credited with the first retrofocus lens (for cine) in, I seem to recall, 1948 or '49. Zeiss Jena was right there within a year with the Flektogon, and Schneider a bit behind that with the Curtagon. I don't recall when Oberkochen came out with the Distagon, but it was probably right about the same time as the Curtagon. These were the first retrofocus lenses for SLRs, where the glass had to be in front of the mirror box, that I know of. Flektogons were popular on Practica cameras, and were also made from the mid-50's well into the 80's for medium format (in the Pentacon Six mount). The Wirgen I mentioned used Schneider lenses, and also used the Practica M42 screw mount (which was later adopted by Pentax). Zeiss Oberkochen started making Zeiss Ikon SLRs in the 50's, but, as you say, behind others (still ahead of the Japanese, though)--and before that time, Zeiss's main camera products were Ikonta folders and Contax rangefinders.

Really, Exakta was the real first SLR, and a camera I know little about, especially what lenses were made for it. Maybe that's the camera those Skoparons and Skoparexes were made for--perhaps you can say. But the pre-war Exaktas were made in Dresden and I would have thought Meyer would have been major supplier, as they were to Practica-Dresden after the war (later, of course, both were rolled into VEB Pentacon, eventually along with Zeiss Jena). I've always thought of Practica being the post-war successor to Exakta.

Yes, Schneider was already in the west and that helped them. But I'll bet the Americans pumped more money into Zeiss Oberkochen than into Schneider--they helped create that branch in the western zone and move the best Jena experts there to prevent the Soviets from getting all the technology. Of course, the Soviets crated up much of the tooling at the Jena works and sent it to Kiev, but that's another story.

Rick "who needs to look back through Kingslake again" Denney

Hi Rick

Voigtlander only made lenses for their own 35mm cameras. In rangefinders, this was the Vitessa and Prominent. In SLRs, the Bessamatic followed by the Ultramatic.

The Skoparon/Skoparex were one of the first retrofocal designs, they basically took a four element Skopar and stuck a large fifth element in front to widen the fov.

The Ultron was a 6 element double-gauss design and inspired many similar lenses from the Japanese makers.

1950-56 Voigtlander's 35mm lenses were probably the best available, but then Zeiss got their new designs to market. The Icarex released as a Zeiss Ikon camera was actually designed and built by Voigtlander. The lenses are labelled Zeiss but are also designed and built by Voigtlander. They are really superb optics, the 'Tessar' for Icarex is actually a Color-Skopar renamed and is a better lens than the contemporary Zeiss Tessar 2.8/50 from either east or west halves of Zeiss.

The Japanese industry just copied German designs wholesale, sometimes they modified them a bit. This was facilitated by the US - German patents were declared invalid in Japan so we got cameras like the Nikon rangefinders that were basically a Contax with a Leica cloth shutter and a Retina style rangefinder. This camera wouldn't have been possible without the invalidation of German patents. The Nikon lenses for their RF cams were pretty much just copies of the Zeiss Sonnars for the Contax. It wasn't until the late 50s that the Japanese started to innovate and develop their own designs. Pentax really cribbed their early designs directly from the Germans, the SLRs were very much inspired/copied from the early GDR SLRs such as the Praktiflex and Praktica. Even the name was stolen from the Germans - Pentax was a contraction of 'Pentaprism Contax' and was what Zeiss had intended to call it's SLR, but due to the lack of protection of German intellectual property in the post-war period, Asahi just stole it. That is why the GDR SLRs were labelled Pentacon, a slightly less nice sounding contraction of 'Pentaprism Contax'. Pentax also stole lens designs from Voigtlander - the Ultron design became the normal lens and the Skoparon design became the Takumar 3.5/35. Topcon copied the Exakta bayonet mount, as did Mamiya, there are many other examples of the Japanese copying the Germans in the post-war period, which was facilitated by the US as they wanted to rebuild Japan ASAP as a bulwark in the east against Communism.

Meyer in the GDR were making really excellent lenses until the late 60s, then quality started to drop, this was because the GDR gave priority to Zeiss Jena and Meyer had to make do with whatever materials and resources were left over. If you compare the Meyer lenses of the early 60s to their CZJ equivalents, they are every bit as good - the Primotar 3.5/50 is at least as good as the Tessar 3.5/50, the Primagon 4.5/35 is at least as good as the Flektogon 2.8/35 and the Primoplan 1.9/58 is very similar to the Biotar 2/58.

[Bernice Loui]

The common individual between Zeiss and Meyer is lens designer Paul Rudolph.. He was at Zeiss initially, then went on to Meyer.

Individuals who were the actual lens designers are more significant then the companies they worked for as the companies products are a result of their intellectual efforts.

Following the history of the specific designer, where they did their work and the products they designed tells much about the history of optics and photographic technology. Companies and products are very much the result of intellectual/academic work of an individual. When design by committee happens, the results are most often a mixed batch of in-coherent ideas that may not gel.

Speaking of Paul Rudolph, he dismissed Emile von Hoegh Dagor lens design, the Dagor.


Bernice


In a separate thread we took a discussion off topic talking about Meyer and Zeiss. May be we should continue here as it's something not often discussed:








Ian

[Ian Greenhalgh]

That's a good point about lens designers. To understand the post-war developments, men like Albrecht Tronnier and Erhard Glatzel should be studied. Their work laid the foundations for modern lens design.

[rdenney]

...The core parts of Pentacon ended up in the Manderman empire in 1991, but only the third and revised reissue of the E66 from 97-2000 was made at the former Pentacon plant in Seidnitz (sp?) - in the interim years, Exakta Nuremberg continued with parts from GDR and immediate post GDR times.

And yet that Model III of the Exakta 66 was the only one to correct the fundamental deficiencies of the Pentacon Six film advance system. Even so, it didn't correct them all. I know--I own one (and a Pentacon Six from the last couple of years of production). I sent mine for overhaul (which did not solve all the problems) to Pentacon Dresden--that was the only factory there was by that time. That was in maybe 2003 or so.

Rick "noting that the Pentacon Six TL and Exakta 66 look mostly identical under the skin" Denney

[rdenney]

The UK will have been different, as they had steep import taxes directed against anything outside the Commonwealth and were only reachable by ship, so that Japanese and European/German makers had pretty much the same conditions - on the continent it took longer before the German camera industry lost its competitiveness.

I dunno. The Nikon F didn't replace the Speed Graphic as the default press camera until the early 60's. And the first SLR owned by many American amateurs was the Pentax Spotmatic, but that was also in the 60's. Before that, serious amateurs bought Rolleiflexes, it seems to me, or the Kodak Retina Reflex, or the Argus C3. I don't recall any history of Japanese SLR's being on the American market in the 50's, but Practicas and Contarexes were available. Adnsel Adams used a Contarex, for example, when he used a 35mm SLR.

Rick "who owned a Yashica Lynx, and still has a 1953 Xenar-equipped Rolleiflex 3.5" Denney

[rdenney]

Meyer in the GDR were making really excellent lenses until the late 60s, then quality started to drop, this was because the GDR gave priority to Zeiss Jena and Meyer had to make do with whatever materials and resources were left over. If you compare the Meyer lenses of the early 60s to their CZJ equivalents, they are every bit as good - the Primotar 3.5/50 is at least as good as the Tessar 3.5/50, the Primagon 4.5/35 is at least as good as the Flektogon 2.8/35 and the Primoplan 1.9/58 is very similar to the Biotar 2/58.

Not the medium-format Meyers. The Orestegor is a simple, four-element 300mm telephoto for the Pentacon Six mount, but it's not on the same planet quality-wise as the 300mm Jena Sonnar. Even the barrels were not as nice--the Meyer was a preset while the CZJ Sonnar had an automatic aperture. The only one to bridge the quality gap in the longer lens was the 500mm Prakticar, which was a Meyer lens that was not too bad for the day, though it had no competition in the Second World.

The Primotar 80mm normal lens for the P6 was not that highly thought of compared to the CZJ Tessar, but both were case aside in favore of the Biometar, which was a 5-element post-war Planar design (almost identical to the Xenotar). And Meyer had nothing to offer to compete with the Flektogon.

But, as has been said, Meyer was really picked clean by the Soviets, much worse than the Jena works.

Rick "who thought it was Miranda, not Mamiya, who copied the Exakta mount, but that memory is really vague at this point" Denney

[Sevo]

Meyer in the GDR were making really excellent lenses until the late 60s, then quality started to drop, this was because the GDR gave priority to Zeiss Jena

Zeiss Jena kept separate from Pentacon until 1985 (when Pentacon was merged to Zeiss Jena, not vice versa), and did not suffer the same degradation to the bottom end of the Western photography market as Pentacon. On the other hand, Meyer/Pentacon lenses soon outnumbered Jena by magnitudes - Jena had always been in a high-price niche not much requested within the Comecon and hard to market in the West. By the seventies the plan assigned Jena to military lens, microscope, telescope, tool and electronics production, and they continued to make only a few speciality camera lenses (notably, for us, the barrel mount LF Tessars and process lenses). But when they absorbed Pentacon, even that production line was moved over to a former Meyer plant.

[Ian Greenhalgh]

Hi Rick

I caught myself in a generalisation about Meyer, I was only talking about the 35mm lenses, I forgot about the MF stuff, of which i don't have any experience.

Miranda copied the external diaphragm linkage for their earliest models but the mount was substantially different, it was a breechlock type. Mamiya used the Exakta mount on an SLR that I forget the name of now, I used to have one, Canon made the standard lens for it, which is the only lens Canon ever made in that mount.

Hi Sevo

CZJ certainly kept up large scale production of some models such as the Tessar 2.8/50, Pancolar 1.8/50, Sonnar 3.5/135, Flektogon 2.8/35, there are just so many of them in circulation. The 1980's era Zeiss in the bayonet mount for the Praktica B series are much less common, I see very few of them for sale, so maybe it wasn't until the 80s that they scaled back production of camera lenses? Certainly, late 70s Sonnar 135s and Tessar 50s are very common indeed in the UK.

[Sevo]

CZJ certainly kept up large scale production of some models such as the Tessar 2.8/50, Pancolar 1.8/50, Sonnar 3.5/135, Flektogon 2.8/35, there are just so many of them in circulation. The 1980's era Zeiss in the bayonet mount for the Praktica B series are much less common, I see very few of them for sale, so maybe it wasn't until the 80s that they scaled back production of camera lenses? Certainly, late 70s Sonnar 135s and Tessar 50s are very common indeed in the UK.

YMMV as to local distribution - that pretty much depends on the ups and downs of the local importer and the popularity he can generate through advertisements and promotion. On the large scale, their lens production declined steeply. There are not that many late 70's Jena lenses (M42 labelled MC electric) around even on the German used market (where we have all the ex GDR stuff around). Indeed even 70's Jena lenses as a whole are not that frequent compared to their earlier production. While they claimed a production of a million for the seventies (less than a fifth of the sixties numbers), that number is presumably fake (by the seventies, claiming vastly exaggerated production figures was necessary to acquire the needed amount of raw materials in the Comecon plan system). Given that they made less than 80,000 lenses (mostly process and technical) from 1980 to 1990 and that their state-assigned priorities had already been shifted away from lens production with the 1976 plan, it is rather unlikely that they actually made more than 100,000 lenses in the latter half of the seventies (less than half a year's production from their peak years in the sixties).

[jcoldslabs]

As someone with absolutely nothing to contribute to this thread, I wanted to say that I am very much enjoying the discussion regardless.

Jonathan

[IanG]

"Voigtländer never made a Exakta mount lens. They doubtlessly shot themselves in the foot, and deservedly were the first to fail (and be gobbled up by Zeiss). For some reason they seem to have considered their lenses a sales argument for their (compared to the lenses, mostly quirky and outdated) cameras rather than a product of its own. They were fiercely competitive and did not sell their lenses to or for any cameras they considered level or down-market from their own (so that a few Leica and Contax lenses are the only ones with a alien mount). "

And don't forget, at the end Voigtlander was owned by Rollei so Voigtlander branded cameras made by Rollei had Voigtlander branded lenses.

Actually Voigtländer did make a lens for Exactas although it's not very common, it wasn't suited to rangefinder cameras like Leica, Contax, Canon, Nikon etc and was marketed specifically for 35mm SLRs - the 36-82mm f2.8 Zoomar lens. But they should have made more of their lenses available as you say.

Ian

[Sevo]

Actually Voigtländer did make a lens for Exactas (...) - the 36-82mm f2.8 Zoomar lens.

Nope, that was designed by Zoomar (of Rochester) and made by Kilfitt (of Munich). Voigtländer licensed the right to market it first, re-branded as Voigtländer Zoomar, but they were made by Kilfitt, and other mount Zoomars were marketed by Kilfitt himself.

[Paul Ewins]

.... The Japanese industry just copied German designs wholesale, sometimes they modified them a bit.... Pentax really cribbed their early designs directly from the Germans, the SLRs were very much inspired/copied from the early GDR SLRs such as the Praktiflex and Praktica. Even the name was stolen from the Germans - Pentax was a contraction of 'Pentaprism Contax' and was what Zeiss had intended to call it's SLR, but due to the lack of protection of German intellectual property in the post-war period, Asahi just stole it...

I think that is probably doing Asahi a great injustice. While the Asahiflex is modelled on the 1939 Praktiflex it introduced the instant return mirror, a big advance in SLR design, and the follow up Pentax (Pentax was the model name for this camera, not the brand) set the pattern for SLRs with the film advance lever on the right hand side, the rewind release button on the bottom right and film speed reminder around the rewind crank. There was as much innovation as copying happening. The Pentax trademark (of 1952) is said to have been sold to Asahi by VEB Zeiss Ikon in 1957 when they decided not to use it. Indeed there was one market, South Africa, where they did not get the rights immediately and for a few years they sold the Asahi Pentar, not Pentax, until they secured those rights too. Asahi's derivation of Pentax is said to be either a melding of PENTAprism and AsahifleX or PENTAprism and RefleX which is why the Zeiss trademark was wanted, not because of the Contax reference that Zeiss intended.

[Dan Fromm]

That's a good point about lens designers. To understand the post-war developments, men like Albrecht Tronnier and Erhard Glatzel should be studied. Their work laid the foundations for modern lens design.

Warmisham? G. H. Cook? Bertele? Pierre Angenieux? You've been reading too much Zeiss propaganda.

[Dan Fromm]

Rick "who thought it was Miranda, not Mamiya, who copied the Exakta mount, but that memory is really vague at this point" Denney

Tokyo Optical dunnit.

[Sevo]

Tokyo Optical dunnit.

That would be Topcon. Mamiya also had one Exakta mount camera, the Mamiya Prismat, their first SLR. Which only had a Exakta mount in its Mamiya branded version - other variants were (more successfully) sold as Nikkorex F and Ricoh Singlex with Nikon mount, and IIRC also as a M42 version under various retailer house brand names. So it does not seem to have had a particularly high degree of mount integration/dedication.

[David Lindquist]

Hi Rick

I caught myself in a generalisation about Meyer, I was only talking about the 35mm lenses, I forgot about the MF stuff, of which i don't have any experience.

Miranda copied the external diaphragm linkage for their earliest models but the mount was substantially different, it was a breechlock type. Mamiya used the Exakta mount on an SLR that I forget the name of now, I used to have one, Canon made the standard lens for it, which is the only lens Canon ever made in that mount.

Hi Sevo

CZJ certainly kept up large scale production of some models such as the Tessar 2.8/50, Pancolar 1.8/50, Sonnar 3.5/135, Flektogon 2.8/35, there are just so many of them in circulation. The 1980's era Zeiss in the bayonet mount for the Praktica B series are much less common, I see very few of them for sale, so maybe it wasn't until the 80s that they scaled back production of camera lenses? Certainly, late 70s Sonnar 135s and Tessar 50s are very common indeed in the UK.

Miranda sold an adapter that allowed mounting of Exacta mount lenses on their cameras and the auto diaphragm would function also.
David

[Tim Deming]

Nope, that was designed by Zoomar (of Rochester) and made by Kilfitt (of Munich). Voigtländer licensed the right to market it first, re-branded as Voigtländer Zoomar, but they were made by Kilfitt, and other mount Zoomars were marketed by Kilfitt himself.

I guess no one saw my earlier post in this thread... ho hummm

anyway, the other mount Zoomars were all Voigtlander branded lenses nonetheless (and advertised in Voigtlander catalogs of the period).

cheers

Tim

[Oren Grad]

I don't recall any history of Japanese SLR's being on the American market in the 50's, but Practicas and Contarexes were available.

Some of the early Asahiflex and Pentax models in the 1950s were sold by Sears under the Tower brand, though AFAIK sales volumes were not high. At the very end of the 1950s (1959?) Asahi signed a new marketing agreement for the US with Heiland/Honeywell, which continued through the big Japanese SLR breakout of the 1960s and up until Asahi took over around 1975, with the launch of the K mount.

[Ian Greenhalgh]

Warmisham? G. H. Cook? Bertele? Pierre Angenieux? You've been reading too much Zeiss propaganda.

I mentioned two, who were relevant to the discussion I was having about Voigtlander and the German industry, I never said anything about the two I mentioned being the only ones.

Haven't you got anything better to do than troll me? It's sad.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

What, if anything, fell on those countries' optical goods makers?

Hello from France !

Coming late this most enjoyable discussion, first I should mention that Dan raises a question for which he already has some very interesting pieces of information regarding the French lens manufacturer Boyer.

Optiques Boyer: A short history of the company with an incomplete catalog of its lenses. (http://www.galerie-photo.com/boyer-lens-optic.html)

If we look at Boyer, we see a very small family-owned structure where most designs were made by a single person. The remarkable fact is that during the period of 40 years (1925-1965), Boyer's single lens-designer was Mme Lévy (1894-1974), an outstanding exception in a male-dominated engineering world. Not that women are absent from the optical industry, on the contrary: traditionally in the French watchmaking and precision optical industry, the finest and most delicate mounting tasks were devoted to women. But computing and optical design was, in the years 1920-1960 "a job for men only".

If we try to remember the brand names in the French photographic industry visible from the consumer's eyes, just after WW-II, we have Foca for 35 mm cameras, Berthiot and Angénieux for still-camera and cine lenses, SEM for 6x6 TLR cameras and some other forgotten consumer brands who concentrated on cheap consumer cameras (before WWW-II, there were many affordable folding cameras made in France); and there was Boyer only known for on professional lens products (and enlarging lenses, but Boyer products were not well-known even in France).
Like for the German camera industry, the 1970's were the end of the story, at least as seen from the point of view of consumer products. Angénieux is both well-known and off-topic here, so I'll not comment, but lesser-known is the fact that besides a Zeiss Planar and Biogon on the Moon, those who will support a lunar mission to bring back those NASA items down to Earth will be able to pick a few Angénieux zoom lenses in addition to te Zeiss/Hasselblad equipment.

Sevo mentions : The earlier collapse of the British, French and Italian camera industries presumably was due to the fact that they all shifted into the more profitable military and aerospace sectors (which still were off limits for the German and Japanese) - a luxury problem that also had many heavyweights of the US optical industry withdraw from the photography market.

I can confirm that the scenario in France is exactly what Sevo explains. The French know-how in optics is of course not lost today, but has become invisible from the consumer's eyes, the outstanding exception being Essilor for ophthtalmic glasses.

Angénieux switched to military and professional lenses earlier than Zeiss Ikon and Voigtländer. At the time this seemed a better strategy, when you see the abrupt demise of Zeiss-Ikon and Voigtländer in 1972. Sevo and Arne Croell could comment better than me on the "wrong strategy" followed by the Zeiss Foundation or the Zeiss Group after 1956, that eventually ended abruptly by closing the Zeiss Ikon factory in Stuttgart; the Voigtländer factory in Braunschweig; and the Compur factory in Munich.

Voigtländer, according to the late Claus Prochnow, had on catalog for a short period of time just after WW-II a monorail view camera; and large format Voigtländer lenses were still available in 1972 when the Zeiss Group put and end to a story that had started in the middle of the XIXst century.

Back to France, I do not know exactly what happened to Foca and SEM ; bits of Foca have been merged into a military group; their lenses however were supplied by Berthiot and Angénieux but the tiny format of their cameras makes them definitely off-limits here. Berthiot was merged into a military consortium and became invisible to the public around 1960, period.
If we remember that the Cold War officially ended around 1990, it means that French military optics had its Golden Years between 1960 and 1990 which is not so bad after all. And the story is not finished.

Angénieux was still perfectly visible from the public in the sixties and seventies, but to the best of my knowledge never manufactured any large format lens. My father bought a French-made 35 mm slide projector branded "ROB", equipped with an Angénieux projection lens. This was in 1963 when my father bought a used Zeiss Ikon Contaflex (the new price for this camera in 1963, 1500 FRF, converted into today's Euro currency, would be around 2100 euro = USD 2700 !! ; my father paid about 50% of the new price i.e. about $1300 which was quite expensive) and definitely switched to "Kodachrome only" after years of 6x6 and 6x9 B&W photography. At the time in France if was unconceivable that an amateur could use a large format camera. In my local photo club here in Besançon (a club founded in the 1890s) (http://www.galerie-photo.com/tirer-diapositive-noir-et-blanc.html) people remember that old timers in the club still used 9x12 glass plate cameras just after WW-II, but as of 1950 one can say that no French amateur knows what large format camera is.

In 1976 when I bought my first 35mm + MF enlarger [again I'm off-limits here, sorry], I wanted only good lenses and I remember for my 35 mm negatives that I had the choice between a 48 mm Angénieux and a 50 mm Schneider Componon lens. Eventually I chose the 50 Componon but there was no good reason for this actually, except that I need also a 80 mm for 6x6 hence I bought two componons and no Angénieux.

Angénieux came back to the consumer market with a remarkable 35-70 zoom, this is probably well-known and totally off-topic; plus some other 35 mm zoom lenses (before that, Angénieux had supplied zoom lenses to Leica) but this was a relatively short period of time, I would say in the 1980's or so.

Nowadays, Angénieux has been merged into the Thalès military group, and the probability that we could see Angénieux consumer products again in the future is extremely low; but nobody knows. The company is still located in the original factory in Saint Héand near Saint Étienne and is doing fine. Angénieux is not totally invisible from the public since being one of the leaders in cine lenses, is one of the official sponsors of the Cannes Film Festival.

An overview of the present state of French optics can be easily found from the GIFO, (http://www.gifo.org) the French association of optical industries. Two separate branches hardly overlap there, the industry of ophthalmic glasses, on one side; and what is called 'optics-photonics' = precision optics, scientific optics & instruments, on the other side. Including of course Angénieux lenses.

This branch, AFOP, has it own web site where you'll get a good idea of what is going on in French optics today (outside ophthalmic glasses). But to the best of my knowledge, except Edmund Optics (not really a French company ;) ) now well-know to French hobbyists, you won't find there any manufacturer known to photographers. Except Angénieux.
http://www.afoptique.org/developper/annuaire-des-entreprises

And do not expect to find Arca Swiss listed at the GIFO or the AFOP: they do not manufacture any optical device ;)
However you'll find in Besançon a company named Lovelite, http://www.lovalite.com/EN/ specialized in micro- and nano-optics, again definitely off-limits here (by several orders of magnitude ;) ))

[John Schneider]

That was fascinating -- thanks so much for posting it here!

[Dan Fromm]

I mentioned two, who were relevant to the discussion I was having about Voigtlander and the German industry, I never said anything about the two I mentioned being the only ones.

Haven't you got anything better to do than troll me? It's sad.Dear me, dear me. And I thought this discussion was about the industry in general, not about fringe manufacturers of, mainly, lenses for mass market small format cameras, off-limits here.

I have no idea what you had in mind when you opened this thread, but people who start threads on this forum don't own them and aren't allowed, or even able, to control what some see as thread drift. Thinking of which, your suggestion that two German designers are responsible for the efflorescence of lens designs for small format cameras (off limits here) is laughable. If you mean that they were responsible for the much less dense flowering of lens designs for large format cameras after 1950 or so, more laughable. Please keep you promise to ignore my posts. Read if you must, don't reply.

Perhaps this thread should be moved to the lounge.

[goamules]

...The Japanese industry just copied German designs wholesale, sometimes they modified them a bit. This was facilitated by the US - German patents were declared invalid in Japan so we got cameras like the Nikon rangefinders that were basically a Contax with a Leica cloth shutter and a Retina style rangefinder. This camera wouldn't have been possible without the invalidation of German patents. The Nikon lenses for their RF cams were pretty much just copies of the Zeiss Sonnars for the Contax. It wasn't until the late 50s that the Japanese started to innovate and develop their own designs. Pentax really cribbed their early designs directly from the Germans, the SLRs were very much inspired/copied from the early GDR SLRs such as the Praktiflex and Praktica. Even the name was stolen from the Germans - Pentax was a contraction of 'Pentaprism Contax' and was what Zeiss had intended to call it's SLR, but due to the lack of protection of German intellectual property in the post-war period, Asahi just stole it. That is why the GDR SLRs were labelled Pentacon, a slightly less nice sounding contraction of 'Pentaprism Contax'. Pentax also stole lens designs from Voigtlander - the Ultron design became the normal lens and the Skoparon design became the Takumar 3.5/35. Topcon copied the Exakta bayonet mount, as did Mamiya, there are many other examples of the Japanese copying the Germans in the post-war period, which was facilitated by the US as they wanted to rebuild Japan ASAP as a bulwark in the east against Communism...

I've not read this thread until now, sitting in an airport, had my coffee. It sounds like this thread should be titled "why did the German lens companies stagnate?" And we've explored many reasons. But there are also some generalities that are not quite true. Did the Japanese copy German designs? Yes. But they also learned fast, improved upon, and innovated. Otherwise, the world would not have switched over from Leica/Zeiss/Voigtlander to Nikon/Canon/Pentax/Olympus/Minolta/Yashica...on and on.

The Nikkor 50/1.4 was a Sonnar type lens. But it was also faster, using an optimized design. After Life's photographer D. Duncan proved it had better resolution than a Leica lens, people started unscrewing their German glass and replacing it with Japanese, at least in America. Canon's designer also copied a Sonnar, but then came out with the Canon 50/1.2 which was a unique design, and one of the world's fastest lenses. Canon also came out with the first Japanese SLR, the Canonflex, quite early, I believe mid 50s. Nicca "copied" the Leica Barnack design, but then made improvements that Leica didn't do for decades (and basically then "copied" the Japanese): A lever wind and a rear film door, early 50s, when Leica IIIf and g models still had twist wind, and clunky bottom loading plates.

The German companies stagnated because they were at first hard to get (post WWII production difficulties), and then because the Japanese were innovative, and cheaper.

[goamules]

Topic for a different thread, but why did American lens designers never make a decent 35mm lens, nor camera? All the 50s American equipment I've seen looks like junk. It works, but has no thought to design, fit and finish, and quality. It's....industrial.

[Bob Salomon]

" But they also learned fast, improved upon, and innovated. Otherwise, the world would not have switched over from Leica/Zeiss/Voigtlander to Nikon/Canon/Pentax/Olympus/Minolta/Yashica...on and on. "

You also left out one of the most important factors - Cost!

In the 50's and 60's Japanese stuff was far less expensive. I was selling cameras in a reatil store then. Yes, the Japanese had some great optcs then. But they made some very crappy cameras also. The Yashicamat had a cardboard transport gear that almost always stripped (first camera, they did get better. Konica Auto Reflex we put on the shelf behind the counter and, with no one near it, watched the self timer lever fall off the first day it was on display.

[Sevo]

Topic for a different thread, but why did American lens designers never make a decent 35mm lens, nor camera? All the 50s American equipment I've seen looks like junk. It works, but has no thought to design, fit and finish, and quality. It's....industrial.

Initially, pushed to the cheap fringe (or made so oversize that they did not compare favourably to 60mm) by being not big enough to be beautiful. When the US shoppers discovered, via GI Leica imports from Europe, that 35mm (in spite of the Argus and Kodak 35) was not ridiculous after all, the parts of the US camera industry capable of making something that could compete with German or Japanese cameras had already found a more profitable market in aerospace and nuclear applications.

[Ian Greenhalgh]

Dear me, dear me. And I thought this discussion was about the industry in general, not about fringe manufacturers of, mainly, lenses for mass market small format cameras, off-limits here.

I have no idea what you had in mind when you opened this thread, but people who start threads on this forum don't own them and aren't allowed, or even able, to control what some see as thread drift. Thinking of which, your suggestion that two German designers are responsible for the efflorescence of lens designs for small format cameras (off limits here) is laughable. If you mean that they were responsible for the much less dense flowering of lens designs for large format cameras after 1950 or so, more laughable. Please keep you promise to ignore my posts. Read if you must, don't reply.

Perhaps this thread should be moved to the lounge.

Oh dear, your reading skills are slipping, I didn't start this thread, someone else did. I didn't suggest that two german designers were responsible for anything other than the design of lenses for voigtlander and zeiss, which was the topic we were discussing.

I'll tell you what, I'll ignore you as long as you keep off my back and don't continue to troll me for no good reason.

[Dan Fromm]

Ian, the word's not troll, it is flame, and as far as I know its been a while since I've breathed fire on anyone.

I once saw some boys fishing for Cichla in Lago Alajuela. They used handlines, started with bare shiny hooks, trolled them to catch Gobiomorus. They then cut strips of Gobiomorus, baited a hook with a strip, and trolled for Cichla, also called Peacock Bass. Caught 'em, too. I don't troll on forums, cutting forum members into strips for bait isn't practical.

[rdenney]

Topic for a different thread, but why did American lens designers never make a decent 35mm lens, nor camera? All the 50s American equipment I've seen looks like junk. It works, but has no thought to design, fit and finish, and quality. It's....industrial.

It's no less an engineering feat to make a $5 alarm clock that keeps good time and works reliably than it is to make a $500 precision bracket clock with a fusee drive that achieves slightly more accuracy. (50's prices.) The Ilex shutters are made like cheap alarm clocks, but they are accurate enough and most can be made to work reliably today. They are also easy to service.

The Wollensak shutters are, in my opinion, as well made and finished as the Compurs of the period.

Yes, that's large-format stuff, which is on topic. (Hint, hint.)

I suspect American makers didn't make high-end 35mm stuff because they were fishing for mass sales volumes in a market that already existed, rather than trying to create a market for high-end amateur 35mm equipment, which was only starting to exist at that time. Kodak had developed many important innovations, but they applied them to making things cheap and function, so that they could sell in the millions, rather than of the highest quality. The Instamatic is an excellent camera considering its price point and its target user. It is not in any way industrial, and it was enormously successful for a long time. Making something cheap and functional like that is no easy thing.

Rick "wondering if it would be easy to predict the SLR boom in 1950" Denney

[Mark Sawyer]

There was a high-end American 35mm, the Kodak Ektra, but it was a financial flop. The medium format Medalist did a little better...

[cowanw]

No one has said any thing about the east European lens makers; I found this.
Interesting in several ways
http://www.rickdenney.com/kiev_cameras.htm

[rdenney]

No one has said any thing about the east European lens makers; I found this.
Interesting in several ways
http://www.rickdenney.com/kiev_cameras.htm

Fascinating stuff. The guy that wrote all that must be a freaking genius.

Sheesh.

You can see the progression of my understanding, from ignoramus to dilettante. But I had a lot if fun collecting and using the East German and Soviet stuff. I still use some of it, but bought most of it at a time when better alternatives were 1. Not that much better, and 2. Vastly more expensive. Good Pentax 67 stuff is cheaper now than the Pentacon stuff was back then. And not much more that the Kiev 60 junque.

But there were real gems in that world. For creamy bokeh, the CZJ Sonnar 180mm f/2.8 is one of the best lenses ever made. Newer designs are sharper, but at the expense of that lush look. It's my best portrait lens by far, and I wish I had one in a P67 mount. And the Arsat 30mm fisheye was just about the equal of the Zeiss Oberkochen Distagon fisheye for the 'blad, and 1/20th the cost. I still use those lenses on a Pentax 645 with a cheap adapter. And I've been using a reversed 80mm Biometar for macro, and it nearly matches my Canon 50/2.5 with its life-size converter. I put it on a Pentacon bellows and adapt it to my Canon. That allows me to do better than 1:1. And the Arsat 55mm PCS lens is superb, and makes a tilt-shift combination on my Canon with a tilting adapter.

I still moderate the Kiev Report, which has dwindled but still has activity.

Of course, we had talked about Zeiss Jena in this thread already, and Pentacon, too, because of the Meyer Gorlitz connection.

None of it can touch the results I get with the Sinar, of course.

Rick "who sometimes misses getting those mysterious packages with Cyrillic return addresses" Denney

[Ian Greenhalgh]

Wasn't just the Americans who missed the 35mm bandwagon, the British did too. We had some promising stabs at it - Ilford Advocate with a very good Dallmeyer 35mm lens, Ilford Witness that was like the love child of a Contax and a Leica, the Corfield Periflex and the Reid Leica copy. None were very successful commercially however. Some of the lenses made for these cameras showed what could have been, the Wray Unilites, Dallmeyer Super Sixes and a few others are said to be very competitive with what the Germans produced in the same time frame.

Rick, my favourite Pentacon 6 lens is the Flektogon 4/50, I think it's the best of the P6 lenses from CZJ and as good as the Distagon 50 for 'blad.

The Russian P6 lenses are a really difficult purchase, some copies are wonderful, but many are not, the QC was spotty. However, they are often very cheap and if you have a good repairman who can service them, they can usually be made to perform very well if they have issues as the issue is usually how they were assembled and just taking them apart and reassembling them properly is all they need.

[cowanw]

But there were real gems in that world. For creamy bokeh, the CZJ Sonnar 180mm f/2.8 is one of the best lenses ever made. Newer designs are sharper, but at the expense of that lush look. It's my best portrait lens by far, and I wish I had one in a P67 mount. And the Arsat 30mm fisheye was just about the equal of the Zeiss Oberkochen Distagon fisheye for the 'blad, and 1/20th the cost. I still use those lenses on a Pentax 645 with a cheap adapter. And I've been using a reversed 80mm Biometar for macro, and it nearly matches my Canon 50/2.5 with its life-size converter. I put it on a Pentacon bellows and adapt it to my Canon. That allows me to do better than 1:1. And the Arsat 55mm PCS lens is superb, and makes a tilt-shift combination on my Canon with a tilting adapter.

Well, I have the Arsat 30mm and the Hartblei 45 super rotator for a Contax 645 and think them fine lenses. they were what took me to your posts and I enjoyed reading them.

[Ian Greenhalgh]

I have a Zodiac 30mm in P6, very good lens indeed, but notto my taste due to the distortion, I prefer the Flektogon 4/50.

[Struan Gray]

Any maker of advanced amateur and professional photographic equipment it persistently tempted by two alternative markets. If they see themselves as high-precision, high-tech manufacturers, then the world of military and laboratory optics offers more reliable money and less competition. Surveying instruments, medical optics and cine lenses are other attractive niche markets. On the other side is the abyss of the mass market, where profits can be stupendous, but a very different mindset is required, and the engineers have to defer to marketing and product placement.

European manufacturers went both ways after WWII. For every LF lens or quality TLR which turns up on my local auction sites there are hundreds, if not thousands, of folding cameras, fixed-lens rollfilm and 35 mm models, and cartridge film models sold for family snapshots. The military optics houses read like a roll call of early C20th lens makers, especially if you delve into the company histories of the current amalgamated big players.

To sit at the tipping point between the two worlds requires excellent optical engineering but also, and here the Japanese really seem to have hit the sweet spot, excellent production engineering. In my humble little view, it was the latter which prevented most European makers from competing in the high-end 35 mm market with any kind of success.

[Ian Greenhalgh]

For the British makers, it was more a lack of resources and money to develop new designs that caused them to not get into the 35mm market. We stuck with rollfilms cameras after the Germans and others had gone to mostly 35mm, not sure if this indicates a lack of vision as well.

[IanG]

For the British makers, it was more a lack of resources and money to develop new designs that caused them to not get into the 35mm market. We stuck with rollfilms cameras after the Germans and others had gone to mostly 35mm, not sure if this indicates a lack of vision as well.

Try reading Newcombe's books on miniature cameras, you'll find that Wray, Dallmeyer, Cooke and Ross all made quality lenses for 35mm cameras and some of the lenses now fetch high prices.

But then remember the UK was busy paying off war loans to the US while the US was sinking large sums into the German and Japanese economies.

Ian

[Ian Greenhalgh]

Sure, I mentioned some of the 35mm lenses we made in an earlier post, we can't have made very many because they don't turn up for sale very often. I have some British 35mm lenses, a Ross Definex 90mm for Contax, a good lens but not as good as my CZJ Sonnar 2/85 of the same age, but probably as good as the Triotar 4/85. I also have a Ross Xpress 3.5 4inch in a heavy aluminium M42 barrel, dates from 1948-49 and I think is a factory made item although I can find no mention of such a lens anywhere. I also have a 100mm lens for the Periflex, not sure who made it, but it's a poor lens.

[Dan Fromm]

To sit at the tipping point between the two worlds requires excellent optical engineering but also, and here the Japanese really seem to have hit the sweet spot, excellent production engineering. In my humble little view, it was the latter which prevented most European makers from competing in the high-end 35 mm market with any kind of success.

Struan, I can't agree completely. The Japanese and no one else, not even W. E. Deming's compatriots in the US, absorbed and applied "Deming thought." Deming thought properly understood encompasses more than just statistical process control, it is primarily about designing processes that can't work poorly. It is much more than just production engineering although when applied it leads to excellent production engineering.

Japanese camera makers first crushed the rest of the world starting in the late '50s with relatively pedestrian fixed lens non-folding 35 mm leaf shutter cameras for the mass market. They went on to crush the rest of the world with astonishingly high quality mass market 35 mm SLRs starting, really, in the late '60s-early -'70s. The high end 35 mm market wasn't, I think, large enough to sustain an industry, but the cheapies could.

It is true that by the late '50s Canon, in particular, made better thread mount 35 mm cameras than Leica did and that Nikon made better Contaxes than ZI did, but these were, like Leicas and Contaxes, niche products that sold in small volumes. Prestige items, perhaps, but they didn't crush the German makers as the later mass-market fixed lens cameras did.

The Nikon F exemplifies the application of Deming thought to camera design. The Nikon system was beautifully thought through from the start. My father came back from a stint with Mitsubishi electric (he worked for Westinghouse Electric, was sent to teach Mitsubishi Electric, a licensee, Westinghouse turbine generator trade secrets) deeply impressed by their application of Deming thought and I'm sure that Nikon, a member of the Mitsubishi group, used it too.

I've never understood why Canon took such a long time to catch on. They floundered badly before they figured out what SLRs had to do. In his little book on the Nikon system, Geoffrey Crawley speculated that there might be something about the basic Leica design that caused makers to have difficulties developing SLR systems. Canon blew that, so did E. Leitz.

Cheers,

Dan

[Struan Gray]

Dan, I'll confess to using 'production engineering' as a shorthand for the whole process of thinking about how things are made. Deming rightly gets much credit, but my feeling is that his efforts built on a deeply-rooted respect for craftsmanship and dislike of waste which goes way back in Japanese culture.

[Struan Gray]

PS: The SLR is an inelegant cludge. I have a hunch that at least part of the slowness in adopting it was a distain for the merely workable.

Most cameras sold are bad cameras. The sorts of cameras people here care about, even when slumming it in smaller formats, are prestige goods which lead and influence the main market, but are not of it. Leicas and Contaxes were like Dodge Vipers or rally cars - a leading technology which everyone ogles, but few actually buy and use. F-series Nikons were Mercedes: a luxury for most, but a sensible business decision for a taxi firm. A few niche marques can survive on the high end alone, but the survival - or evolution - of most companies is determined by the volume market.

It's end of school year concert season here. My kids are up to their ears in performances (music and dance) and sports tournaments. I am almost alone in using a DSLR to record them. Most are using their phones, a few have all-in-one compacts. Talking to the grandparents, it was the same for a Rolleiflex user among the Instamatics, or a Tenax amid the Brownies.

[Dan Fromm]

Struan, thanks for the reply. I'm still not completely with you. This because I knew and was on good terms with R. J. Brousseau, a friend of Deming's and the Bell System's process control and guru until he was forced to retire in 1984. Deming's ideas are used, often poorly, in what's called business process engineering (and re-engineering) in the US. They're applicable, although rarely applied well or consistently, to much more than manufacturing.

I'd agree with you that the Japanese were primed to adopt Deming thought except for a telling Mitsubishi anecdote. One of the friends my father made while in Japan, a Mr. Obara (he englished his surname as Ohara because he thought English speakers would find it more familiar), was sent to Westinghouse's East Pittsburgh works for further study of turbine generator manufacturing. He and his wife were very close to my parents, who visited them occasionally in Japan. Obara-san retired a VP. The last time my mother went to Japan, he picked her up at the airport. He drove a Mitsubishi sedan, apologized profusely to her for driving a second-rate car, explained that his situation required he drive a Mitsubishi.

They didn't all get Deming thought, and they still don't.

[Oren Grad]

The SLR is an inelegant cludge.

Every camera type is highly cludgiferous, with the debatable exception of simple monorail view cameras considered specifically in the context of photographing inanimate objects that sit still.


I have a hunch that at least part of the slowness in adopting it was a distain for the merely workable.

It just took a while for (some of) the implementations to become more elegant.


Most cameras sold are bad cameras.

Most cameras sold are optimized for purposes and preferences that differ from ours. Yes, some of them are bad.

[Struan Gray]

Dan: agreement's overrated :-)

No culture is monolithic, and there will always be exceptions, but the Japanese certainly got something right when it comes to camera manufacturing from WWII onwards. I don't imagine that 'something' was any single thing.

Oren: there is a spectrum of inelegancy, and SLRs are further towards the end where elephants in tutus gather than well-made rangefinders, or even TLRs. Reduced applicability does, as you say, help. View cameras for still life, or Instamatics for daylight snaps - both are suited to purpose. Aerial and photogrammetric cameras are among my favourites.


Aldis are an interesting, and somewhat typical, company to illustrate the original purpose of the thread. H.L. Aldis designed improved anastigmats for Dallmeyer before setting up on his own. The company made various camera-based objectives up to WWII, was devoted to wartime production, mostly of optics for other uses than photography, and in the post war collapse of British manufacturing carved out a niche making projector lenses. Swallowed up by a conglomerate, they lived on as a brand name.

In the heyday of Aldis, getting swallowed up might be seen as a failure. These days it's the main goal of many a business plan.

[Oren Grad]

Oren: there is a spectrum of inelegancy, and SLRs are further towards the end where elephants in tutus gather than well-made rangefinders, or even TLRs.

I don't agree at all - about SLRs as a class, that is, not about the existence of the spectrum. But I'll leave it there. I'm running short on wet noodles, and there's no arguing elegance anyway. ;)

[E. von Hoegh]

PS: The SLR is an inelegant cludge. I have a hunch that at least part of the slowness in adopting it was a distain for the merely workable.

Why do you say that? I'll grant that there were some which had few redeeming virtues. However the SLR has advantages over rangfinders in many areas. For me, the most important of those areas is closeup work, followed closely by the lack of any need for an accesory viewfinder (or one of those visoflex abortions- now that was a kluge!!) when using long or wide lenses. Interchangeable finders are a plus too.

[goamules]

On kludged designs, the Japanese SLRs immediately replaced rangefinders for many reasons. Not because they were a Kludged design, but because they did several things rangefinders could not, with the only detriment being size and weight.

On the quality model and Deming, Japan started emulating and assimilating the best of Western culture after the 1854 US/Perry treaty that opened Japan. By 1905 they had become so industrial and imperial president Teddy Roosevelt predicted they would win the war against Russia, one of Europe's largest empires. He even predicted they could one day threaten us at Pearl Harbor. When we helped them rebuild after the war (we're nice that way), they immediately adapted the ideas of Quality circles, Total Quality, and such by Deming and other Americans. I've taught quality quite a bit in the US, and trust me, American manufacturers are very reluctant to follow the ideals. That's why Deming went to Japan in the 50s we always say - because the US wouldn't hear it. Finally, after their cameras and cars started trumping ours, we "re-imported" quality and I started teaching "the Japanese Model."

On smartphones (a recent TV commercial gushed, "there are more Iphones than any other camera in the world") I'll quote Stalin: "Quantity has a quality all of its own." Documenting your life instantly and often is more important than taking a quality photograph.

[Oren Grad]

On kludged designs, the Japanese SLRs immediately replaced rangefinders for many reasons. Not because they were a Kludged design, but because they did several things rangefinders could not, with the only detriment being size and weight.

I think much camera kludginess has to do with the compromises one has to make to solve the viewing/focusing problem: at the point of exposure the film needs to sit where you would otherwise want to be to viewing and focusing. Every solution introduces some mix of time and space "parallax" plus mechanical and/or optical complexity, so it's a matter of pick your poison. Each approach is best suited to particular circumstances. For any approach, an elegant and effective implementation can go a long way to make the poison less poisonous.

[IanG]

I like this word Kludge, it's of US origin . . . so not in general use here.

In our context it's interesting the Zenit C is basically a Leica clone rangefinder with mirror box so beomes an SLR, the Nikon F is similar a rangefinder Nikon adapted, I think that's why I've always thoght Nikons were a poor design compared to some rivals. It's the ergonomics.

Ironically the reverse is true of modern Cosina made range finders, these are based on an SLR without a mirror box.

Ian

[Oren Grad]

In our context it's interesting the Zenit C is basically a Leica clone rangefinder with mirror box so beomes an SLR, the Nikon F is similar a rangefinder Nikon adapted, I think that's why I've always thoght Nikons were a poor design compared to some rivals. It's the ergonomics.

Ironically the reverse is true of modern Cosina made range finders, these are based on an SLR without a mirror box.

Yes - a very nice observation!

[Struan Gray]

Why do you say that?

Gut feeling. The idea of a mirror that has to be at the right place and the right angle, *and* be able to flip out of the way. There's a lot of engineering development to make that work smoothly, and to manufacture it to a price point. Somehow a helical cam lined to a rangefinder, or a pair of matched lenses moving together, seem more straightforward.

Kludginess is in the eye of the beholder :-)

[mdm]

And the obvious and intuitive solution is a mirrorless digital camera, no kludge but delay. Surely that is something that can only improve.

[E. von Hoegh]

I like this word Kludge, it's of US origin . . . so not in general use here.

In our context it's interesting the Zenit C is basically a Leica clone rangefinder with mirror box so beomes an SLR, the Nikon F is similar a rangefinder Nikon adapted, I think that's why I've always thoght Nikons were a poor design compared to some rivals. It's the ergonomics.

Ironically the reverse is true of modern Cosina made range finders, these are based on an SLR without a mirror box.

Ian

And it's properly spelled "kluge", pronounced "klooj".

[E. von Hoegh]

Gut feeling. The idea of a mirror that has to be at the right place and the right angle, *and* be able to flip out of the way. There's a lot of engineering development to make that work smoothly, and to manufacture it to a price point. Somehow a helical cam lined to a rangefinder, or a pair of matched lenses moving together, seem more straightforward.

Kludginess is in the eye of the beholder :-)

As one who works on the finest of fine mechanisms - marine chronometers, repeating watches, etc., I can tell you thet there's nothing special about the mechanism required to move and position an SLR mirror. As long as nobody touches it, it isn't likely to get out of order. The advantages of viewing and composing the SLR has are lost with TLR and rangefinder cameras, and believe it or not, there's less to go wrong in an SLR.

[IanG]

And it's properly spelled "kluge", pronounced "klooj".

Both spellings are in use in the US according to dictionaries, although the word is supposedly Kludge, we tend to say bodge or fudge here in the UK instead.

Ian

[E. von Hoegh]

Both spellings are in use in the US according to dictionaries, although the word is supposedly Kludge, we tend to say bodge or fudge here in the UK instead.

Ian

My father was a tech writer working for NASA and NASA contractors, I can remember him using the word in the mid 60s with the "klooj" pronunciation. We never discussed the spelling though.

There's a German word, "klug" that may be the source of "kluge" http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/klug, http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/K/kluge.html

And - http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/K/kludge.html

[goamules]

One of my site managers, a Vietnam and Gulf war fighter pilot, and 1st generation American of German decent, used "kludge" a lot. And the somewhat similar "Rube Goldberg".

[E. von Hoegh]

One of my site managers, a Vietnam and Gulf war fighter pilot, and 1st generation American of German decent, used "kludge" a lot. And the somewhat similar "Rube Goldberg".

Brits use "Heath Robinson".

[Struan Gray]

http://struangray.com/twiglog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/heathrobinson_branestawn_potatoes.jpg

If it feels like a kludge and it sounds like a kludge, the chances are pretty good that it is a kludge. All engineers have their pet solutions (just get a pair of instrument makers started on flexure hinges vs. bearings), and although I only play one from time to time, there are some things that feel just right, and others which are too hot or too cold. Logic is peripherally involved, but not too much.


Some kludges are beautifully made. I have never seen the point of those Compass cameras loved by collectors. The Bug-eye Leica wide angles are pretty dud too.

[IanG]

Brits use "Heath Robinson".

We did in my youth but not any more as no one knows who he was any longer.

Ian

[Ian Greenhalgh]

I dunno, I'm 37 and my generation still uses Heath-Robinson, not sure if the younger people still do though.