Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/22

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Subject: [Leica] Re:Bye Bye Mamiya
From: dlridings at gmail.com (Daniel Ridings)
Date: Sat Apr 22 03:29:22 2006
References: <4F488248ADCD6C419976DFE43A115091EBAC17@SV-EX01.jp2hs.campus>

Harvey,

They are are pretty good deal. Arax cameras are not really
manufactured under that name. The idea was to buy up Kiev's from the
factory. Kievs from the factory are no big hit. All the pieces are
(usually) there, but not at the right tolerances etc.

So Arax completely dismantles them and reassembles the shutters and
things like that with much greater precision.

They can also polish and re-coat elements of lenses, in case you have
a Summicron or Summitar with flaky coating (happens). They are a
pretty competent group.

Some of the lenses are gems. I think the standard is one of them. I'd
go with a 120. Most people turn to them to get into wide-angle medium
format at a reasonable price.

In the USA I think a similar business idea has been picked up by the guy 
behind:

http://www.kievusa.com/

He also works them over before he sells them. He doesn't have the same
optical capacity though. A lot of people send their lenses to Arax for
polishing and recoating.

All and all, they have a good rep.

Daniel


On 4/22/06, Arche, Harvey <Harvey.Arche@jp2hs.org> wrote:
>
> Daniel wrote:
> >Now, now. Not all is bleak:
> >
> >http://www.araxfoto.com/
> >
> >Daniel
>
> These are new to me, but I don't pay close attention to the MF world. Has 
> anybody anything to say about them? At those prices MF would be hard to 
> not to move into. Its just too bad that the russian design esthetic for 
> cameras hasn't moved away from coffins and hearses.
> Arche
>
>
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