[rollei_list] Re: Leica and Contax
- From: Jerry Lehrer <jerryleh@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 18:25:49 -0700
Marc,
A friend just offered me a Kardon that needs body covering.
(Yes, I know about Camera Leather Co.)
I could never find anything really wrong with the 47mm Ektar.
It was originally used on the Kodak Bantam Special.
That tele, Britar, was not originally offered by Kardon. It did
not appear in any Kardon owners manual that I have seen.
That PAM company produced a lot of cheap stuff for Rolleis
and the Kodak Medalist also.
Jerry
Marc James Small wrote:
> At 02:14 PM 4/3/05 -0700, Richard Knoppow wrote:
>
> > Early Nikons were _styled_ like the Contax but did not=20
> >copy the internal mechanism. Nikon used the Contax type=20
> >bayonet lens mount but the back focus is different so Contax=20
> >and Nikon lenses are not interchangible, they don't focus=20
> >right. The shutter was the Leica type. Canon copied the=20
> >_style_ of the Leica, but again, was not a clone of the=20
> >Leica. I am less familier with the early Canon than the=20
> >early Nikon. There were Leica clones. In the US one was made=20
> >by Reid and there was another made in England, the name=20
> >escapes me at the moment. Supposedly, at least one of these=20
> >cameras was supposed to be superior to the Leica. I think=20
> >Kodak made lenses for the US made copy. All these dried up=20
> >when Leitz got control of their patents back. AFAIK, the=20
> >Contax shutter was never attempted by anyone else.
> > I rather wonder if Zeiss made any money off the Contax. I=20
> >think it may have been a prestige item made to demonstrate=20
> >the company's prowess in precision manufacturing more than=20
> >anything else.
>
> First, Nikon RF's have the same back-focus as do Contax RF cameras, but the
> slope of the cam is different, thus allowing focussing differences at wide
> apertures. Nikon produced lenses in both Nikon and Contax fittings,
> incidentally, to ensure that the proper lens would work appropriately on a
> given camera body.
>
> Second, Canon originally adopted a lens mount of 39mm by 1 mm, a tad
> different from the actual LTM measuremtn of 39mm by 26 turns-per-inch, a
> mistake earlier made by the Dzerzinkzi works with the Prewar FED cameras.
> To further complicate matters, Canon did not immediately recognize that the
> LTM threads were in Whitworth and not in DIN format. Finally, Canon failed
> to understand the design of the chamfered base of the true LTM mount.
> These errors were corrected, roughly, by 1951. The great scholar of Canon
> RF cameras has traditionally been Peter Dechert but he is pretty much
> retired these days, and his successor is Peter Kitchingman from Australia,
> who can be contacted at <flotsam@xxxxxxxxxx>.
>
> The US clone of the Leica was the Kardon. It only had two lenses produced
> for it; one was the 2/47mm Kodak Ektar (a "dinky little bottle" in
> Dechert's words), and the other was the 4.5/105 PAM Britar, a rather nice
> triplet. (I was fortunate to pick one up which came with the auxiliary VF,
> and with wording which identified the manufacturer as the Photo Accessory
> Manufacture Corporation of 45 West 19th Street in that town so sweet that
> they named it twice, New York New York.
>
> The British Reid is supposedly better built than were their Leitz paragons
> but, as these now sell for around ten times the price of a true LTM camera,
> I have never had one at hand to use.
>
> Leitz did not regain ownership of their patents until the middle 1950's in
> the US and UK and, in fact, the ownership of the actual agency went to a
> third party who had to be bought out. Emil Keller's last book has a
> discussion of this.
>
> Zeiss would never have made a dime off of the Contax, as that camera was
> produced by Zeiss Ikon, a different company. Zeiss Ikon paid dividends
> until 1939, however, so I expect that the Prewar Contax was a money-maker,
> as the Contax and the Super Ikonta were the primary products of the concern
> at this time. The Postwar Zeiss Ikon was a bleeding sore of financial
> disaster from 1947 until its demise in 1971, but I believe that its worst
> loser was the Contarex. It certainly made money from the Contaflex and
> Contessa lines.
>
> Marc
>
> msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx=20
> Cha robh b=E0s fir gun ghr=E0s fir!
Other related posts:
