Report from PMA - greetings, gossip, and reading between the lines

[sdai]

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Howard, I knew mine were from Minolta Japan but I've no clue to what's going on now ... Minolta have stopped making lenses in Japan for quite a long time, even long before the Sony takeover and their last operation were mainly supported by Tamron, and Tamron signed up a Chinese subcontractor so those lenses weren't even Tamron.

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[MP3]

Andy and Guy,

 

Thanks for your updates from PMA.

 

In view of recent 75 Lux's cease of production and Noct's soaring price increase, any news on a

 

50 f1 asph or

75 f1.4 asph

 

in the pipeline or stage of conception?

 

Best

Matthew

[ho_co]

Howard, I knew mine were from Minolta Japan but I've no clue to what's going on now ... Minolta have stopped making lenses in Japan for quite a long time, even long before the Sony takeover and their last operation were mainly supported by Tamron, and Tamron signed up a Chinese subcontractor so those lenses weren't even Tamron.

Thanks, Simon. Wow, I've really been out of touch with the market! I appreciate your filling me in! Tamron--I would never have guessed!

 

But wouldn't it mess up my clear-headed vision if I knew what I was talking about?

 

--HC

[Riley]

aren't Tamron and Hoya hooked up too ?

[leicar7]

Regarding the question about 35-70 and 80-200. I presume this reference is to the current f/4 lenses. Those are, or were, built by Kyocera, and have never had anything to do with Minolta. The collaboration with Minolta ended long ago, but resulted in the 1970s with the R3 and R4 line of bodies and three lenses: 16mm fisheye, 24/2.8, and a few versions of a 70-210 that came out as an f4.5 and then as an f4.

[stuny]

thomas -

 

Minolta also build the Leica 500 MM Mirror lens.

[jaapv]

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Afaik the 4.5 80-200 was a Minolta design, the second version, the 4.0 80-200 an original Leica design ( and a whole lot better)

[sean_reid]

Terry: The Zeiss rep seemed to LIKE the magic-marker approach! At least he was amused by Sean's efforts and hadn't tried to erase them.

 

Rich asked me to leave the markings on those lenses so that he could try them on an M8. Normally, I clean them up first. You can bet that if Leica would license the coding to Zeiss then Zeiss would be very interested (my speculation, not official) but I don't expect that to happen.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[sdai]

Thomas was right, the newer 35-70 and 80-200 were made by Kyocera and I mixed them up with the elder 4.5 versions. But, Kyocera's camera/optical division has also ceased operation long time ago ... so if these lenses are still in production they can't be made by Kyocera.

[andybarton]

Afaik the 4.5 80-200 was a Minolta design, the second version, the 4.0 80-200 an original Leica design ( and a whole lot better)

 

And there was actually nothing wrong with the old 4.5 version...

[jlm]

i wonder if simply providing the recesses w/o the black and white coding would be an infringement?

[ChrisC]

...... You can bet that if Leica would license the coding to Zeiss then Zeiss would be very interested .....

 

Sean - And others; the following is pure speculation on my part as I am yet to handle an M8, so forgive me if my ignorance shines too brightly. Surely the lens flange of any non Leica lens merely needs indents in it which coincide with with the camera's code sensors, leaving the owner to fill appropriate indents with white or black as is appropriate for the given lens? Perhaps flange indentations alone would not violate any patent issues, or would they? Pardon me if my own stupidity has eluded me with this idea.

 

Personally, I think the Leica wide angle code tax could be the weakest aspect of the M8 system for first time buyers [people like myself], and I agree with you that Leica have more to gain than loose by M8 owners having easy use of other brand lenses.

 

...................Chris

 

Oops - sorry, I am the slowest typist in the world and the above post got in while I was hunting letters.

[cbretteville]

You can bet that if Leica would license the coding to Zeiss then Zeiss would be very interested (my speculation, not official) but I don't expect that to happen.

This would be sweet, but the biggest hinderance for this is the lack of numbers available. 63 isn't really that much and Leica will want a sizeable reserve for future use. Now, we could imagine a menu (there he goes again) where you select the lens make thus giving us 63 Leica lenses, 63 Zeiss and 63 CVs..... Or - off cause - give us a menu to select from - no need to limit that to 64 entries.

 

- C

[mjh]

i wonder if simply providing the recesses w/o the black and white coding would be an infringement?

Maybe it wouldn’t, but for using coding to its full potential, they would need to get official codes assigned to their lenses, which Leica might not want to do, if only because there are only so many unused codes and they might want to reserve them for their own lenses.