Have you tried one of these things Carlos???? It feels like a lightweight Leica copy, despite what this marketing b*llshit says. The innards are Cosina, like a Bessa or Epson RD1 digital made in the same plant. OTOH the lenses are great, Zeiss designs made more cheaply, but still well. Frank ----- Original Message ---- From: CarlosMFreaza <cmfreaza@xxxxxxxxx> To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, 7 November, 2009 0:25:28 Subject: [rollei_list] Re: new Zeiss Ikon- a hollow construct? It's a German camera by design, history, appearance and quality control, Carl Zeiss does a second quality control after to receive camera and lenses from Japan, where they already were tested with the Zeiss K8 tester machine; CZ sells them directly. It looks in general like a modernized and stylized Contax II and like the Contax II it has the largest rangefinder basis in the market, this is an excerpt from the CZ website: "When designing a new camera from scratch, there are virtually endless options in shaping it. Not every shape, however, is equally useful, equally successful, equally beautiful, equally affordable. How should we at Zeiss select the shape for the new Zeiss Ikon camera and for its lenses? "Well – the new Zeiss Ikon camera should come with a body that, first of all, enables positive grip with European size male hands. This, to us, is a very important requirement, something which seems to be much less important to many makers of consumer digital cameras and cell phones. And the new Zeiss Ikon also should, to a certain extent, resemble the cameras that made the name Zeiss Ikon famous over many decades in camera history. It also should be easily differentiated from other current 35 mm rangefinder cameras, which might be placed next to the new Zeiss Ikon camera in a dealer’s shop window or on a catalogue or magazine page." Carlos --- 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