Re: Emotive lenses

[Bert Keuken <bert.keuken@pi.net>]

> > There is more, much more to lens design then just bending light.  There
> > are so many different designs allieds,triplets,symmetrical and so on.
> > The main difference is the attitude of the company itself.  The
> > Japanese (at least in 35mm) tend to build there lenses to the market
> > and spend very little in Yen on there raw material (glass).  Zeiss and
> > Leitz tend to build there lenses to a certain high criteria. They  pay
> > a large amount of  Marks for there raw material (high refractive index
> > glass). After spending all this money they then decide what the price
> > will be.


David Morton wrote:

> This just isn't true, you can count the number of manufacturers of high
> refractive index and other specialist glasses on the fingers of one
> mitten, and the German lens manufacturers use the same sources as
> everyone else. Nikon in particular have been innovative in their use of
> such materials in their 'serious' lens designs (though I accept that
> these days they make a lot of price-driven crap).

Sorry David, but I've got to disagree with you. Japanese companies design
and manufacture lenses for specific parts (amateur/pro) of the market. They 
decide what kind of lens to make and then set a price for that lens. Leica 
reverses this, they make a lens and after that they calculate the price. 
Japanese companies work this way because they have compete with each other. 
Erwin Puts, a Dutch Leica specialist put it this way:

Nikon competes with Canon, Minolta competes with Pentax, but Leica competes 
with Leica.

Bert