Limited edition for Contaxinfo members

[jakob_groes]

Wilson wrote:

> the design of the lens
> on the Kyocera version and
> the Contax one are very
> similar but they may be
> made from different
> qualities of glass ...


I agree with you, that apart from the design itself, many parametres might differ between the two lenses. Type of glass and coating, as you mention, are only some of these possible differences.

Quality control is another and maybe the most likely diffrence possible. In all production there are variances in quality, even though all manufacturers try to minimize these. What tolerances should be accepted? Maybe the tolerances for the Kyocera lenses are wider than for their Zeiss cousins.

A hythetical ex&le: From a production of 1000 lenses, maybe the 100 best lenses ones go to Contax, the next 600 goes to Kyocera and maybe 300 do not pass the quality control at all and may be destructed or sold off to tertiary brands or tertiary markets.

Such a selection would be rather delicate for Kyocera to announce publicly, because they want their own brand model to gain interest because of the similarity to its high end relative under the Contax brand.

If the construction of the two lenses or of the cameras were actually different in regard of materials, coatings or electronics, it would be probable for Kyocera to spell out these differences to their costumers.

Why shouldn't they?

If you take a closer look at Kyocera press releases announcing new cameras, you will find that they do not tend to oversee any possible sales argument.

Kind regards,

Jakob

 

[bobbl46]

Jakob, where exactly are you getting this "information" from?

Kyocera Kid.

 

[jgban]

Regarding quality control of Zeiss lenses, this is what Popular Photography wrote in their review of the N1 and N lenses:

"The lenses are in short supply, according to Contax, because Zeiss production tolerances are unusually high: About seven out of ten AF lenses fail initial quality-control tests and are returned to the production line."

So the quality control issue could definitely be an explanation for differences in quality (and cost!!), and particularly for not using the Zeiss name on the lens of the Finecam.

 

[lotusm50_is_Jensen]

How does Sony do it then? They can get a Zeiss lens (presumably produced to the applicable Zeiss quality standards and tolerances) into competitively prices products. Or is Kyocera's production capabilities that poor that it costs them that much more to get their lens output up to Zeiss standards?

Or is it all questionable since Kyocera is known to produce a number of Sony digital cameras? Isn't Kyocera the only one in Japan accepted to produce Zeiss lenses -- or has Zeiss finally allowed others to do so as well?

 

[jakob_groes]

Kyocera Kid wrote:

> do you have an insight to
> whether Kyocera/Yashica
> developed the ML series of
> lenses or was it Zeiss


This may be the wrong forum for such discussion, but here we go:

The Contax RTS with brand new C/Y-mount was the first result of cooperation between Yashica and Zeiss. The camera was introduced at the Photokina i 1974 and came to market in 1976. I bought one in January 1977.

For the C/Y-mount was also a line of Yashica cameras (FX-1, FR, FR-I, FR-II) and a line of Yashica ML-lenses. In those days, all Yashica lenses for C/Y-mount was called ML (short for multilayer coating).

To answer your question, you will have to examine the background for this new German-Japanese cooperation.

Zeiss manufactured their own SLR cameras throughout the 60s, and in this time they developed some very nice lenses, in production until today (like 85/1.4, 35/1.4, 50/1.4 and some more).

Unfortunately Zeiss was under stiff competition from Nikon and Canon in the SLR-segment, and in 1972 it was decided to focus on lenses only and get a license-partner to manufacture cameras and develop the Contax brand further.

Seceral such partners were approached, most seriously Pentax. Some new lenses were jointly designed by Zeiss and Pentax engineers (28/2.0 and 15/3.5 amongst others), and these designs were later used by both companies. But Pentax ultimately withdrew from the collaboration with Zeiss and did not want to do the camera.

Yashica became the new partner. They already had their own line of lenses that was even bigger than the 15 lenses, Zeiss at the time presented for RTS. AFAIK Zeiss did not design these ML lenses. The optical designs of these lenses, although generally of high quality, were less sofisticated than to the Zeiss lenses and far from similar.

Feedback from the market soon learned Yashica to gradually differentiate their market approach between their two camera brands. Yashica became much lower priced, and most ML lenses were taken out of production and replaced with substantially cheaper USB-lenses from different third party manufacturers.

I guess the logic in this was, that any Yashica-owner wanting a really good lens would ultimately go for a Zeiss lens anyway. To fill the gap (and boost sales of the lower priced Contax 139), a number of cheaper Zeiss lenses were also introduced (50/1.7, 100/3.5, 45/2.8 and others).

So in the end the history of Yashica ML-lenses was rather short, except from a handful of very basic designs. Fortunately most of them were of a very solid build-quality, so many of these lenses from up to 30 years back are still around and can be picked up in perfect working order.

As for the MP-lenses, I have no indication whatsoever, that Zeiss have had anything to do with them. I would think not.

These lenses were also targeted for a rather price-competitive segment of the market. Many third party manufacturers would offer lenses of this non-sofisticated type much, much cheaper than Zeiss.

Kind regards,

Jakob

 

[jakob_groes]

Lotus wrote:

> How does Sony
> do it then?


If you take a look at the US sales figures for digital cameras i 2003, Sony was number one with around one fifth of all cameras sold.

Kyocera wasn't even among the ten biggest manufacturers.

That's one reason that Sony's investment in development gets a hell of a lot faster return.

Also, Sony generally is able to maintain higher prices than Kyocera for comparable units.

Kind regards,

Jakob

 

[jakob_groes]

Kyocera Kid wrote:

> where exactly are
> you getting this
> "information" from?


What information exactly (I have written so much to this list today already...)?

Kind regards,

Jakob

 

[bobbl46]

Let's start with .....

<font color="0000ff">"This means, Kyocera pays Zeiss the initial cost for designing the lens and then another license fee for each lens being manufactured/sold.

This is no different for the Contax or the Kyocera SL300R. But - Kyocera of course will have to pay more, if they use not only the Zeiss LENS but also the Zeiss BRAND.

So from what I can see, the lens in the two cameras are the same. But Kyocera pays extra money to use the Zeiss brand on the Contax version - and this is sound businesswise because with a more retro design and Zeiss-tack on the cover, they expect to be able to gain a higher on such a model."

Cheers, Kyocera Kid

 

[jakob_groes]

This is the basic nature of such an agreement, Bob.

Nothing mysterious or extraordinary about it.

Did you think it worked differently?

Kind regards,

Jakob

 

[bobbl46]

Of course, if Kyocera were capable of developing their own lenses, or having them designed independent of Zeiss, then this might all fall down.

<font color="0000ff">"They already had their own line of lenses that was even bigger than the 15 lenses, Zeiss at the time presented for RTS. AFAIK Zeiss did not design these ML lenses. The optical designs of these lenses, although generally of high quality, were less sofisticated than to the Zeiss lenses and far from similar."

I agree, and were very well thought of and reviewed, and they weren't even Zeiss designed.

and .....

<font color="0000ff">"As for the MP-lenses, I have no indication whatsoever, that Zeiss have had anything to do with them. I would think not."

I agree.

I suppose what I am really asking is "Do you actually know that the lenses are the same" or are you just assuming?

I'm asking because I really want to know from someone(anyone!) about such definitive information that will surely benefit us all.

How can we explain Wilson's first-hand experience? Are we to consider the "A/B/C quality" lens output off the production line scenario?

I'd recommend anyone to have a look at the Production Tour of Camera/Cine lenses on the Zeiss.de website, when considering the possibility of the above.

Cheers, Kyocera Kid.