Re: [Leica] Nikon S3 war

[Ken Iisaka <kiisaka@pacbell.net>]

Mike Johnson wrote:
> Nope, you're wrong about that, Marc. David Douglas Duncan was very
clear
> that he switched to Nikon lenses because their sharpness blew him
away,
> and he got other Korean War photographers to do the same thing for the
> same reason. The superior sharpness of Nikon lenses was what
established
> the company in America. This is a part of the historical record.
You're
> grafting current perceptions onto historical situations.

Marc is full of racist shit.  He refuses to admit that Nikon, or Nippon
Kogaku had optical expertise well before the beginning of the WW II, and
Nikon lenses, while similar in configuration to Zeiss lenses, were new
computations.  Nikon's 50/1.4 was a derivative of Sonnar 50/1.5, but the
former is not a copy of the latter.  Nikon built its 35mm skills by
learning from the masters, but by 1950, it was designing all of its
lenses on its own.  There are however close copies of Zeiss lenses: the
original 50/1.5 and the earliest 85/2.  The lenses that made Nikon
famous: 35/2.5, 105/2.5, and 50/1.4, all of which were introduced around
1950 were Nikon's original design.  Just because they were in
double-Gauss, Ernoster, and Sonnar configuration, were they theft?

So, Marc will accuse Nikon of copying Contax mount, and ridicule Nikon
of failing to make an exact copy of the Contax mount.  What he does not
realise, or refuses to admit is that Nikon engineers were fully aware
that the focal length of Sonnars and Elmars were slightly different.
Contax mount was calibrated to Sonnars, but since Nikon was already
building Leica-compatible lenses, it made sense to change the
specification of the mount rather than redesign the lens.  Given this
was in 1946, mere months after Nikon's factories were burned completely
flat, this decision was made to accelerate the process of bringing a
camera to the market.

I don't care what Marc will say.  He has long been admitted to my kill
file for his racist crap.  Why doesn't he accuse Leitz and Berek of
their theft of Tessar?  It's pure racist crap.  Nothing more.

David Douglas Duncan is still alive.  Why don't you ask him directly,
huh?

There, I said it like it is.