What took Leica so long to understand zoom lens designs?

[albertwang]

Perusing through the great tome written by Erwin Puts, one notes that Leica outsourced most of the R zoom lenses to third parties until recently...

So what took Leica so long to figure out how to design zooms? After all, Contax did a good job having their own... so this is a disparity I can't resolve, guys!

[adan]

I think the ultimate or first cause was that Leica wasn't especially interested in photographic zooms. They put their computer and designers' time into primes, and farmed out the zoom design to Angenieux, Minolta, Sigma, etc.

There are also historical factors: in the 1960's all zooms were still pretty weak and there wasn't much market yet; in the '70's Leica was in financial trouble and thrashing around with the R system, and even the camera design was farmed out to Minolta; between 1980 and 1990 Leica did very little original lens design of any sort (a few long primes for the R, repackaging the 90 Elmarit-R as an M lens). The various reorganizations and the factory moves from Wetzlar and Midland to Solms were also likely distractions.

Leica's optical design department got back into high gear with the arrival of Lothar Kölsch at Solms around 1990 and the design (and redesign) of the 35 f/1.4 ASPH. And that was the first moment where the market and the talent finally coincided to make zooms a priority.

I wonder about the effect of the Leica spotting scopes, as well (I don't know their history) - but designing relatively simple high-quality zoom eyepieces may have given Leica designers the practice and experience they needed to take on the larger and more complex photographic zooms. When did Leica's first scopes hit the market?

Conversely, Zeiss/Kyocera's heyday was 1985-1995 - just when the market for zooms really began to grow - and they had the financing to hit that market hard.

[albertwang]

Indeed, still Zeiss and Leica have some impressive zooms...

28-90mm f2.8-4.5 for Leica
35-70mm f2.8 and 35-70mm f4 for Leica
21-35mm f3.5-4.5 for Leica

28-85mm f3.5-4.5 (?) for Contax
35-70mm f3.5 for Contax
17-35mm f2.8 for Contax N

I think that all of these are wonderful bread and butter lenses for both stables.

[telyt]

Originally Posted by albertwang

Indeed, still Zeiss and Leica have some impressive zooms...

Given how few were produced, the 35-70 f/2.8 is hardly a bread-and butter lens. Let's not forget the longer varios, the 80-200 f/4, 70-180 f/2.8 APO and 105-280 f/4.8, all excellent lenses.

[tobey bilek]

They leica rep always cited cost as the driver to keep the manufacturing out of Germany. According to him, if they were manufactured in Germany, they would be so expensive they could not be sold.

I suspect this is the problem with 35/70 2.8. Nobody but the Germans could make it and the high cost made it unsaleable.


Germany has some of the most expensive labor in EU due the social policy laws etc. That drove the moves to Canada and Portugal also.

[albertwang]

Why can't they built the 35-70 f2.8 zoom in Japan. Kyocera did a most wonderful job for the f4 zoom!