Hi! Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote: > In simple terms the answer to Boris' question is yes: Panasonic is > manufacturing the lenses used in both Panasonic and Leica digital > cameras. Is this a great surprise? Leica has had their lenses > manufactured by Minolta, Tamron and others in the past. The > manufacture of complex mechanical-electro-optical devices is a global > business.
That's kind of unusual, at least to me. I thought that the lens manufacture process was more of a sacred cow (trade and technical secrets) for big names in camera business. After all, Panasonic is more known as manufacturer of electronics, not the lens maker. But yes of course, Leica could teach Panasonic how to produce lenses. > Modern 4/3 System interchangeable lenses and compact digital camera > manufacture is very complex and requires a fully integrated approach > to the manufacturing/assembly process to be profitable and produce > consistently good units. There are a lot of electronics in even the > 4/3 system lenses ... each of my Olympus and Panasonic/Leica lenses > has servomotors to drive both aperture and focusing mechanisms, a cpu > and flash memory storage to handle the camera-lens control operation, > etc. The classical image of a lens making craftsman with a lathe, > grinder and optical bench are long past ... ! Yes of course. But yet again, the optical formulas and some other tricks that may need to be applied are as important as ever. Correct me if I am wrong but both formulas for T* and SMC coatings are still well guarded secrets... > This is quite similar to the relationship that Zeiss and Kyocera had > with regard to the Contax line of 35mm and 645 cameras/lenses, and > similar to what Zeiss does with Sony today. Zeiss also has > relationships with Cosina for lens and camera production on the Zeiss > Ikon camera and lens line, and the new Zeiss SLR lenses for Nikon, > Pentax, etc. "Business as usual" in today's global marketplace. That is clearly understood ;-). Boris -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
