[rollei_list] Re: Capa's Cameras
- From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:25:07 -0400
At 02:15 PM 9/25/2009, Carlos Manuel Freaza wrote:
>After the WWII in 1950 some Life photographers (David Douglas Duncan
>among them) discovered visiting the Nippon Kogaku plant that the Nikon
>RF had a sharper lens (Nikkor, the Japanese Sonnar) than the Leica and
>Contax German lenses, they used the Nikkor lenses with Leica IIIc
>bodies for the Korean war and then the Nikon saga started for
>photojournalism...
This is absolute, total bunk, Carlos. The US
photographers in Korea used Nikon and Canon
lenses on either Leica or Contax bodies not
because they were "sharper", whatever that means,
but because they were available and
inexpensive. Leitz lenses were hard to get in
the Orient as production was absorbed in the
European and US markets and both CZJ and ZO
lenses were just not obtainable anywhere at that
time. And the Japanese lenses were
inexpensive. I believe it was Duncan who later
noted tht, if he had to dig into the dirt, he
would rather destroy a $10 Nikon lens than a $200 Zeiss lens.
The early Japanese lenses were exact copies of
their German progenitors: the Nikon lenses were
even made from Schott optical glass to designs
provided the Japanese during WWII by the
Germans. These lenses could not be "sharper" as
they were exact duplicates. Zeiss wanted to sue
Nikon and Leitz wanted to sue Canon but he Allied
Control Commission would not allow them to do so
as the ACC was trying to convince the Japanese
that there was more money in making photographic
cameras and lenses than in producing artillery
gunsights and submarine periscopes. That
restriction was lifted in 1954, and Franke &
Heidecke then sued Yashica and handily won the case.
There is a tremendous amount of hype about the
use by US photographers of Japanese lenses in the
Korean War, but optical quality and performance played no part in this.
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
---
Rollei List
- Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe'
in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
- Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
- Online, searchable archives are available at
//www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
Other related posts:
