When I first saw Schneider-Kreuznach lenses being made at a Tokyo factory many a year ago, I felt almost like the little kid being told that babies weren't bought at Macy's. Bad Kreuznach is a sleepy little town on the Nahe River near Frankfurt, Germany, complete with great wine cellars, and home to Jos. Schneider Optische Werke, a major world source of optics since 1913. How did its lenses, still marked Kreuznach, wind up being produced in Tokyo?
Schneider had discovered the magic world of Japanese subcontracting. Run out of capacity to turn out your own lenses? Find another company to do it to your specifications. There's no end to the magic of subcontracting.
Once, when Bell & Howell was making 16mm projectors in its Japanese factory, a certain part was subcontracted out to another company. Walking through the B&H factory one day, the president saw the very same part he had subcontracted being made in his own factory. The first subcontractor had apparently subcontracted the part to another subcontractor, who had found someone at the B&H factory, who had the time and space to take on the job at a reasonable price.
Ever hear of Nittoh Kogaku K.K. in Nagano, Japan? It's a huge, modernized factory, and when I was there some years ago, it was busily turning out Canon lenses. And I suspect when it wasn't Canon lenses, it was Nikkors, but that's just a surmise. But don't think Nittoh was just a subcontractor for other company designs. When its engineers had a bright idea for a camera, they made it, in hopes of selling it to one of their clients.
Nittoh's president, Mutsuomi Kaneko, was a big, powerful man we nicknamed "the Samurai". One day he showed me an unusual, tiny 35mm camera. "I wish I could convince some camera company to take this," he said.
Two years later, Mamiya introduced its latest 35mm camera named Mamiya U. "Congratulations," I said, "but you should have called it Samurai."
In the early 1970s, the president of Cosina Co. showed me tiny, beautifully-made optical elements for a 26mm four-element f/2.7 lens, which Cosina had made in the hundreds of thousands for a client the president was not at liberty to mention. When Kodak introduced its 110 Pocket Instamatic 60, I told EK that I had seen the lenses being made at Cosina. Never heard of Cosina, I was told. Who knows how many subcontractors had been involved before the job was turned over to Cosina? While I was at Cosina, I also noted an assembly line busily turning out 35mm Yashica SLRs.
What happens when a camera maker desperately needs a new camera in a certain price level, but doesn't have the capacity to design or make it?
Unlike the great variety and price levels of Nikon point-and-shoots and SLRs today, Nikon in 1959 was still producing rangefindersand had the capacity of producing but one SLR model, the costly Nikon F. The company thought a much less-expensive series of SLRs with built-in meter was needed for less-advanced users.
Nikon was working on what would be the 1964 Nikkormat. As a stopgap move, Nikon asked Mamiya to produce what turned out to be a not very substantial series of non-interchangeable lens-shutter cameras to be called Nikkorex, similar to those that Mamiya itself was making. Canon used a very similar Mamiya camera for its one Canonex model, with just as sorry results.
Fortunately, both Nikkorex and Canonex were so different from the usual Nikon and Canon camera configurations that purchasers figured they must have been made by some other company, and avoided them. Mamiya itself was not happy making 35mm cameras, particularly lens-shutter types, but had been ordered to produce them by its then all-powerful export company, J. Osawa. When Osawa failed financially, Mamiya was able to stick to its true love, roll-film reflexes, and it's been happy and successful since.
Having cameras designed and engineered by another company can be a highly successful enterprise—if you've got the right partner. In 1990, Canon required a basic 35mm SLR with aperture-priority autoexposure, match LEDs and a Canon FD bayonet lensmount to be called the Canon T60. The camera's design and manufacture was subcontracted to the camera maker who had perhaps more experience than any other in producing basic 35mm SLRs for other brands: Cosina. If you snoop around Arguses, Exaktas. Petriflexes, Quantarays, Soligors, and Vivitars, of the 1980s to 1990s, you'll find Cosina cameras.
Five years after the successful Canon T60, Nikon in Japan found it needed a budget-priced manual focus camera, and guess who had just what Nikon needed? Nikon took over not only the camera but the 35-70mm f/3.5-4.8 lens designed and manufactured by Cosina, which, presto, became a Zoom-Nikkor, sold only together as a Nikon FM-10 kit. Olympus did likewise, with the Olympus 2000 with Zuiko zoom lens (now discontinued).
I confess I did campaign with Nikon U.S.A. management to import the FM-10, which it was loath at first to do. U.S.A. finally gave in. And now Nikon has discontinued all film Nikons, except the top of the line F6 and the lowly Nikon FM-10. Nikon claimed that its engineers worked their magic over the FM-10, although external cosmetics remained very Cosina-ish. Whatever Nikon did and Cosina did, both wound up with a good little camera and lens. Cosina, maker of countless brands of SLRs plus inexpensive lenses sold under the Phoenix and Vivitar labels (among others) was just about to make an incredible and radical 180-degree turnaround and become total master of a completely different photographic field, a tale to be continued next column—when we also explore just how and why Schneider and Zeiss lenses are winding up on Kodak, Samsung, and Sony digital camera bodies.
And a word of warning: It's rumored that Cosina ain't gonna do 35mm camera Phoenix and Vivitar lenses no more, so those who want 'em, better buy 'em before they disappear. My own favorites: 100mm f/3.5 macro around $130, and 100-400mm f/4.5-6.7 at under $200. Can you use 'em on digital cameras? So far, so good. Put 'em on a Maxxum 5D, and you have Anti-Shake capability at a very modest price. Great? No, but adequate, until I can come up with the dough for a top 100-400mm lens. Don't I get these free? Dream on.
Quickie Konica Minolta Sony News
Tech experts I trust at Konica Minolta tell me that Sony designated repair service for almost all KM digital SLRs, film cameras, flash units, exposure meters, film scanners ad lenses, Precision Camera & Video Repair, 3 Anngina Drive. Enfield CT 06082-3222, phone 860-749-7380, www.precisioncamera.com are good people. They're winding up with the latest precision repair and testing equipment from KM's New Jersey repair services. But if you live West of the Mississippi and have a compact digital camera, it's supposed to go to a repair service in Laredo, TX, 78045 I know nothing about.
Individual retail camera stores were said to be reluctant to purchase remainder of Konica Minolta camera inventory, but one big unnamed purchaser was reported to have backed a large truck to the KM warehouse and made away with a vast KM stock which may be sold off at bargain prices. I'll let you know who, when and where if I find out.
Who'll make Sony DSLR cameras, lenses, accessories, after April 1? Probably KM facilities as subcontractors but with Sony branding. What about the Maxxum 5D and 7D. Will they be Sony cameras or be discontinued? I've asked Sony for all answers. They promised to get back to me with them.
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