[rollei_list] Re: new Zeiss Ikon- a hollow construct?
- From: Hauke Fath <hauke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 21:51:46 +0100
[Jan, please do not sent HTML mail to the list. Thanks.]
At 9:19 Uhr -0500 6.11.2009, Jan Decher wrote:
> Hauke, Throwing in the Zeiss Ikon with some of these Chinese-made
>rebranded "Rollei" things is not really fair.
>
> The ZM cameras and lenses
>are a well-reasoned compromise by Zeiss Oberkochen in a tough ecomomy and
>they are collaborating with a producer in Japan whose lenthusiasm for
>rangefinders has helped RF cameras to survive and be affordable today.
I guess I could have been clearer, and avoided a misunderstanding. My
>> This is the New World - move production to China, and make a
>> profit off the "intellectual properties". Look at the New Zeiss Ikon,
>> btw - it's the same hollow construct.
was aimed at the business construct "Zeiss Ikon", not the actual camera
(which Cosina is entitled to be proud of), nor the lenses (which Zeiss
Oberkochen is entitled to be proud of).
"Zeiss Ikon" is a P/O Box company which does the accounting. Cosina
designed the camera (the well-known Bessa 135 camera series) - like they
did for Rollei with the RF, btw.
Cosina is bulding it, too, to the best of my knowledge - where exactly in
Asia, I don't know. Probably not in Japan.
Design of the camera shell was outsourced to some small industrial design shop.
So, pray tell me, where is this entity "Zeiss Ikon", especially in the
light of what Zeiss Ikon once was?
>I use two Cosina-made Zeiss lenses [...].
I wasn't talking about the lenses, which are in design and AFAIK partly
also in production the contribution of Zeiss, Oberkochen.
>I too was hopeful that the new Zeiss Ikon would be closer to the classic
>Contax IIa/IIIa - fully manual with selftimer and the cassic finger
>wheely... But, I am sure, If a true Contax successor was built in Germany
>we would probably not be able to afford it.
Well, there is no continuity. Zeiss Ikon went bankrupt in the
mid-seventies, and there is not a trace of its engineering potential left.
[Esoteric Leica pricing]
>I think, Zeiss wanted to avoid this trend [...]
They saw a business case between Leica and the 'proletarian' C/V Bessa
models, and a nice opportunity to cash in on an old brand.
>If F&H, in order to survive, had to move production to Japan, [...]
F&H went up into thin air, just like Zeiss Ikon. They're moving nothing
nowhere, and definitely not to Japan - too expensive labour. And, after
all, F&H's Singapore experiment failed.
hauke
--
"It's never straight up and down" (DEVO)
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