Minolta makes... everything?

mehguy · Sep 23, 2016

over the years, Minolta has had a lot of partnerships with other companies in the industry. They made the Minolta CLE with Leica, the Beseler Minolta 45A enlarger with Beseler and of course, had a strong relationship with Konica which eventually lead to the Konica Minolta merger. Minolta also had a strong relationship with Leica and produced most of the Leica R series together.

Why is this? Why did minolta have all these strong ties while the people over at Nikon, produced everything themselves?

Sirius Glass · Sep 23, 2016

Among other things Minolta had the knowledge and expertise in slr cameras that Leitz did not have. Leitz had built and sell slrs, but was not able to compete at a level of competence that was on par with their range finder cameras so Leitz aligned with Minolta. Hasselblad turned to Minolta to develop the Accumate view screens.

Paul Howell · Sep 24, 2016

Until the merger i don't believe that Konica and Minolta had much of a relationship. Konica had stopped making SLRs, made a few point and shoots, the upscale Hextar, and then the Hextar rangefinder, and color film and paper. After the merger Konica was added to the name of the last digital cameras which were all Minolta designs, what drove the merger was the office equipment divisions.

darkroommike · Sep 24, 2016

In the very early years of Nikon, Nikon made lenses for other cameras, I have a screw mount Leica thread 35mm Nikkor and of course the medium format lenses for the early Bronica SLR's. Yashica and Zeiss partnered to make the Contax RTS, earlier Zeiss and Pentax had partnered in designing the K-mount. Other companies have done similar things but Minolta, in addition to the things you already mentioned, was a huge supplier of optical glass to other makers for a long time. Minolta went out looking for the business in ways that the other companies did not. It's not that uncommon.

Alan Gales · Sep 24, 2016

mehguy said:
Why is this? Why did minolta have all these strong ties while the people over at Nikon, produced everything themselves?

Because these strong ties were only from the mind of Minolta.

(Pay attention to the very end)

flavio81 · Sep 24, 2016

mehguy said:
over the years, Minolta has had a lot of partnerships with other companies in the industry. They made the Minolta CLE with Leica, the Beseler Minolta 45A enlarger with Beseler and of course, had a strong relationship with Konica which eventually lead to the Konica Minolta merger. Minolta also had a strong relationship with Leica and produced most of the Leica R series together.

Why is this? Why did minolta have all these strong ties while the people over at Nikon, produced everything themselves?

Nikon did not produce his own optical glass, unlike Asahi Optical... They had a longstanding collaboration with Bronica for creating the ultimate medium format system: Nikon provided excellent lenses, Bronica provided the unreliability.

Pentax (Asahi) collaborated with Zeiss in the late 70s, the K mount was designed together with Zeiss and one or two lenses (maybe more) were a joint design.

Yashica (Kyocera and Tomioka) made lenses for Zeiss and made the Contax cameras for Zeiss

Zeiss Ikon got together with Voigtlander and they also acquired Rollei. With this powerful combination of three of the best german camera manufacturers they managed to build some of the worst german cameras ever like the Rollei SL35M...

I don't think Canon collaborated with any other company. Maybe because they had so much success with the copier and calculator busineses that they had lots of money to spare in R&D and to spend all the 70s and most of the 80s in how to alienate their customer base by changing the Canon lens mount.

Peter Schrager · Sep 24, 2016

I have a 6x7 Minolta enlarger. .built like a jewel
Back in the day....
Best peter

AgX · Sep 24, 2016

mehguy said:
Minolta .. made the Minolta CLE with Leica, the Beseler Minolta 45A enlarger with Beseler and of course, had a strong relationship with Konica which eventually lead to the Konica Minolta merger. Minolta also had a strong relationship with Leica and produced most of the Leica R series together.

Minolta also cooperated with Agfa.
Agfa offered several Super-8 cameras under the Agfa brand that actually were made by Minolta and marketed in Japan and parts of the world under the Minolta brand.
It is not clear who of both designed the cameras.

benjiboy · Sep 24, 2016

I don't know for sure, but this may be part of the reason why Minolta don't make anything any more.

AgX · Sep 24, 2016

mehguy said:
They made the Minolta CLE with Leica ... and produced most of the Leica R series together.

Leitz also took over point&shoot cameras from Minolta, that only got a slight change of their outer.
(Yes, Leitz offered point&shoot cameras.)

Patrick Robert James · Sep 25, 2016

I find the whole Japanese camera industry fascinating since some companies that you never heard of made something for all the companies you have heard of including lenses.

Sony took over the Minolta idea and have put the investment into it that Minolta didn't seem to want to do. I still wish Sony would make a digital Hexar rangefinder, but I doubt that will ever happen.

Don't forget too that Minolta made a Polaroid Spectra camera that was better than the cameras Polaroid made.

They also made some of the best enlarging lenses ever. Yes, I just said that.

miha · Sep 25, 2016

And they haven't quit yet...http://photorumors.com/2013/02/10/the-latest-patents-from-konica-minolta-sony-canon-and-olympus/

benjiboy · Sep 25, 2016

I think one reason prestigious German camera manufactures co- operated with Japanese camera manufacturers was because they lacked their expertise in the electronics field and couldn't compete with the Japanese's preeminence in the field .

darinwc · Sep 26, 2016

miha said:
And they haven't quit yet...http://photorumors.com/2013/02/10/the-latest-patents-from-konica-minolta-sony-canon-and-olympus/

That was from 3 years ago. May as well have been a lifetime in photography development.

Paul Howell · Sep 26, 2016

Patrick Robert James said:
I find the whole Japanese camera industry fascinating since some companies that you never heard of made something for all the companies you have heard of including lenses.

Sony took over the Minolta idea and have put the investment into it that Minolta didn't seem to want to do. I still wish Sony would make a digital Hexar rangefinder, but I doubt that will ever happen.

Minolta lost a 100 or 150 million dollar patent infringement suite by Honeywell over AF technology and never really recovered. Sony took over all of the Minolta digital patents and a few Minolta plants and from I have read R&D staff were hired by Sony as well. I don't recall if Sony bought any of the Konica patents. Konica did make a few digital point and shoots before the merger with Minolta, after the merger the Konica line was dropped.

AgX · Sep 26, 2016

benjiboy said:
I think one reason prestigious German camera manufactures co- operated with Japanese camera manufacturers was because they lacked their expertise in the electronics field and couldn't compete with the Japanese's preeminence in the field .

The Minolta/Agfa connection went on in the mid 90s, with digital cameras.
Here Minolta cared for the hardware and Agfa for the software.

(Agfa turned into a major software deloper, what most do not know.)

miha · Sep 26, 2016

darinwc said:
That was from 3 years ago. May as well have been a lifetime in photography development.

Only 2 clicks further on: Dead Link Removed (May 2016) notice nikon 20mm 1.8...

Paul Howell · Sep 26, 2016

I don't read Japaneses, but appears that Konica Minolta is still in the RD end of lens design, selling or leasing patents? I thought I had read when Konica Minolta sold it's camera division to Sony, Sony got the R&D staff as well.

Harry Stevens · Sep 27, 2016

Where are Cosina in all this............?

georg16nik · Sep 27, 2016

Harry Stevens said:
Where are Cosina in all this............?

Touché!

GarageBoy · Oct 5, 2016

flavio81 said:
Nikon did not produce his own optical glass, unlike Asahi Optical... They had a longstanding collaboration with Bronica for creating the ultimate medium format system: Nikon provided excellent lenses, Bronica provided the unreliability.

Zeiss Ikon got together with Voigtlander and they also acquired Rollei. With this powerful combination of three of the best german camera manufacturers they managed to build some of the worst german cameras ever like the Rollei SL35M...

I still think the sl35e was worse...

Was the s2 and s2a that unreliable?

Minolta makes... everything?

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