[Leica] In Defense Of the Soviet/Post-Soviet Optical Industry

[Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>]

At 06:02 PM 3/30/98 -0800, Adam wrote:
>I am not familiar with "Kingslake's analysis of the design". What is it?
>
>And you would argue, I suppose, the the Soviets were in a better moral
position, 
>war booty and all that.
>
>The Soviets, on the other hand just kept churning out the same designs....
>Maybe some minor improvements on the wide angle side.

Rudolph Kingslake is the retired head of photographic design at Kodak and
his books, especially A HISTORY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC LENS, are most strongly
recommended.

The Soviets received machinery and designs from the Zeiss plant at Jena and
from the Zeiss Ikon works at Dresden by the agreement of the Allied Control
Commission.  That is, this was an agreed-upon part of the reparations
Germany paid to the USSR.  The Canon and Nikon thefts were just that and
are, as such, completely indefensible.

Finally, the Soviets have been most innovative in optical design and
development.  Among other innovations are the first commercially successful
catadioptric lenses (the 8/500 and 10/1000 MTO's, introduced at the
Brussels World Fair in '58), the extremely fine 1.5/85 Helios (dating from
1957), the "Fotosnaiper" series of telephotography equipment, and the
5.6/20 Russar MR-2 and the 6/28 Orion-15 low-cost, high-quality wide-angles
for rangefinder cameras.  Their native optical industry is of the first
water, though 'Soviet' economics tended to render the results of most
erratic quality.

Marc


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