Does anyone here beleive that Nikon/Canon could make lenses as good as Leica/Zeiss?

btaylor · Oct 5, 2016

This is funny, I couldn't stop reading the reactions, so the troll worked!
Of course it makes no difference. The right lens is the one that sees the scene the way you want it to. You don't use a Wolly Verito when you want sharp and a lotsa DOF, or a Contax G Zeiss lens when you want a soft portrait.

Poisson Du Jour · Oct 5, 2016

Dali said:
So far, we have sparkle, mysterious color, true nature of reality, another universe and Gods.
Any higher offer?

ROFLMAO!

DREW WILEY · Oct 5, 2016

Hmmm. What about all those Zeiss lenses made in Japan? or Leica cameras made in Asia? The playing field was leveled a long time ago.

fstop · Oct 5, 2016

Minolta made their own glass and glass for others, wonder how much glass Zeiss bought from Minolta.

chip j · Oct 5, 2016

Dali said:
So far, we have sparkle, mysterious color, true nature of reality, another universe and Gods.

Any higher offer?

Like that, Dali! My Contax G outfit was actually brought to me via an apparition.

flavio81 · Oct 5, 2016

fstop said:
Minolta made their own glass and glass for others, wonder how much glass Zeiss bought from Minolta.

Zeiss, as many of the other manufacturers, bought the glass from Schott which (i think) is part of the Zeiss group.

Canon, as well as other japanese brands, bought from Ohara.

I don't think who made the glass has any influence in the quality of the lens. A photographic objective requires far far far much more work than just buying good glass.

Dali · Oct 5, 2016

chip j said:
Like that, Dali! My Contax G outfit was actually brought to me via an apparition.

I would be reluctant to take anything from an apparition. To me it is a scam like "buy now, pay forever".

Drew B. · Oct 5, 2016

Absolutely!

chip j · Oct 5, 2016

No need for me to explain it all on this forum.

wiltw · Oct 5, 2016

On one side of the balance scale is 'Optical Perfection' and on the other side is 'Complexity and Cost'.

Zeiss and Leica simply choose to be on the balance a bit differently from the Japanese, it is not necessarily a matter of engineering expertise or computer optical analysis program sophistication.

Poisson Du Jour · Oct 5, 2016

Dali said:
I would be reluctant to take anything from an apparition. To me it is a scam like "buy now, pay forever".

#2 ROFLMAO

Old-N-Feeble · Oct 5, 2016

Ha ha... dollar for dollar Olympus, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Minolta and all the rest of the newer lens makers kick Leica's butt. Maybe Leica would have had a larger market share for their optics if they weren't so overpriced.

Personally, I haven't shot 135 format in a very long time. I prefer the quality from larger film (which I haven't shot lately either).

benveniste · Oct 5, 2016

fstop said:
Minolta made their own glass and glass for others, wonder how much glass Zeiss bought from Minolta.

I doubt very much -- Zeiss (West) Germany got most of its glass from Schott, which is a sister company. They may have purchased a few exotics from others, but by the time Zeiss contracted with Cosina, Minolta was in dire straits.

Nikon, Olympus, and Fujifilm and Ricoh are all listed as major customers of Ohara glass, which is part of Canon's keiretsu.
http://www.ohara-inc.co.jp/en/company/overview.html
http://global.canon/en/corporate/information/group/gr01.html

Nikon had its own glassworks even before it bought out Hikari. It may still -- Nikon patents reference an ED glass which isn't listed in the Hikari or Ohara catalogs.
For a while, Pentax was owned by Hoya corporation. Hoya still makes optical glass, but no longer makes Hoya branded filters.
Leica hasn't made any optical glass since 1989. At various times, Leica has bought optical glass from Schott, Corning France, Corning USA, Hoya, and Ohara.
I don't know who Sony buys optical glass from these days. Like others, it's probably a mix.

Poisson Du Jour · Oct 5, 2016

benveniste said:
Leica hasn't made any optical glass since 1989. At various times, Leica has bought optical glass from Schott, Corning France, Corning USA, Hoya, and Ohara.

Eugh. You are really going to raise the blood pressure of the tie-dyed Leicaphiles out there who believe Leica/Zeiss glass "absolutely is made in and comes from Germany" (I've seen people with opposing views almost come to breaking each others' nose about this stuff!)

Hoya... the filters are made by Tokina? That's what I saw on my most recent replacement filter case.

Dan Fromm · Oct 5, 2016

Oh, its worse than that. Ages ago Leica subcontracted manufacture of lens elements to Boyer, a French lens-maker best known in France for making mediocre but inexpensive triplets and meniscus lenses for mediocre inexpensive cameras.

removed account4 · Oct 5, 2016

the lens really has nothing to do with how good or bad
a photograph is or might be. you can put a terrible lens/camera in the hands of an expert
and fantastic images can be made with it, you can put the finest lens on the finest camera ever made
and give it to someone who is not an expert, and might be mediocre or even terrible, and the cream of the crop
won't make him or her any better than he or she was. there are no silver bullets, no short cuts
just practice and one gets better, even with terrible lenses. it is unfortunate that people are so hung up on
getting blemish free perfect zeiss or leica glass as if it matters, or spend their time using some sort
of camera/lens / whatever that ( xyz fill in the blank ) expert / artist/ famous person uses/heard they used/advertised on tv/radio/paper/website/movies/review pages &c because it will make them that much better
or the lenses will have some mysterious fantastic/fantasmigorical ether from beyond that will change everything.

benveniste · Oct 5, 2016

Poisson Du Jour said:
Eugh. You are really going to raise the blood pressure of the tie-dyed Leicaphiles out there who believe Leica/Zeiss glass "absolutely is made in and comes from Germany" (I've seen people with opposing views almost come to breaking each others' nose about this stuff!)

My source is the Leica M Compendium. They can argue with Jonathan Eastland if they wish.

Poisson Du Jour said:
Hoya... the filters are made by Tokina? That's what I saw on my most recent replacement filter case.

Pretty much. KenkoTokina Co. Ltd is the top level company. In several markets, they sell either the same or very similar filters under the Kenko brand.

http://www.kenkoglobal.com/about-us/group-company-chart.html

kobaltus · Oct 6, 2016

[Q

E="ozmoose, post: 1839875, member: 14662"]Hey, everyone, this is a troll. And you have all bitten at the bait?

No discussion points from the OP at all, just a quick and short post on the "I just think that" basis.

Time wasting...

Is this what APUG is now down to? Soon we will be as bad as p... no, I won't name it.

Small things amuse... but I remember this site as it was, and I expect better.

Disgusted.[/QUOTE]

I agree with you 100%. But we have not deal with one trol, they have convention.

Ko.Fe. · Oct 6, 2016

Are we talking about made now lenses, not vintage for film cameras?
Zeiss made by Cosina, no AF. Good on SLR and to me so-so on RF, I don't like how they build for RF. Big lens with pimple instead of focus tab. Wierd aperture stops. Meh...
Leica is also no AF and terrebly expensive. I could only afford first series of Summarit 2.5 line.
I have zero interest in Nikon, Canon lenses are crap in build, plastic and glue gun.
Overall I prefer to have and use just two-three Leica lenses. Good handling and rendering which I like.

blockend · Oct 6, 2016

This thread reminds me of a passage in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. On a road trip, the narrator's friend finds the handlebars of his BMW motorcycle are slipping. He offers to fix it with a shim from a Coca Cola tin, pretty much the ideal material for the job, but the friend refuses. He doesn't want a piece of junk fixing his dream machine, no matter how successfully. The narrator notes that if he'd cut the piece anyway, cleaned off the logo and announced he just happened to have some Bavarian shims at $60 a piece the friend would have been delighted. Like the guy on YouTube who extolls the virtues of Leica glass, then holds the most impenetrably fogged lens to the camera, seemingly unaware that the cheapest Russian M39, never mind any Japanese lens, would easily out-resolve his scrofulous Leitz. Fairy dust and red dots and $ signs.

pdeeh · Oct 6, 2016

I had a 35mm Summicron.
I always used it with the controls turned up to 16 and infinity, because the higher the numbers the better the quality.
but really, most of the the time the images were really fuzzy, especially when i was shooting really close (because that's what Capa said made the best pictures)
so i don't reckon this leica stuff is so great after all.

AgX · Oct 6, 2016

benveniste said:
Zeiss (West) Germany got most of its glass from Schott, which is a sister company.

Zeiss (East) got their glass from Schott too. Schott (East) that is. Both formed part of that super-combine Zeiss Jena, that contained Pentacon too.

Leigh B · Oct 6, 2016

Back when lenses were made almost entirely by hand there was a tremendous range of quality in the final product.
Some were extremely good, others extremely bad, and most just average.
The really bad ones should have been rejected, but the remainder were "OK".

There's a corollary of even greater significance...

I expect that the finest examples, those shown to be essentially "perfect" in final test, never shipped to dealers.
They went "upstairs" to senior sales management, reserved for shipment to well-known shooters or reviewers.

This is a sales gimmick as old as the hills.
Give the really good examples to folks who can convince other folks to buy the product.

Then Joe Blow, hard-earned money in hand, goes out and buys a "marvelous" lens he read about.
He finds it to be not much better than his others, but he won't admit to spending all that $ on mediocrity.

So we get a cascade of glowing reports and an entire cadre of loyal users who shout its glory to the heavens.

Just good marketing.

- Leigh

AgX · Oct 6, 2016

That is why respectable test-agencies for consumers do not take samples given by manufacturers, but have them samples bought at stores by mystery customers.
That all of course must be financed, above the actual testing.

Leigh B · Oct 6, 2016

AgX said:
That is why respectable test-agencies for consumers do not take samples given by manufacturers, but have them samples bought at stores by mystery customers.

You're talking about modern practice, as in the last two or three decades.

Marketing, advertising, and reviews were very different in the 1950s when these reputations were created.

- Leigh

Does anyone here beleive that Nikon/Canon could make lenses as good as Leica/Zeiss?

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