Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/05/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 07:50 AM 5/4/99 -0700, Peter Kotsinadelis wrote: >As I remember, and please >correct me if I am wrong, Zeiss screwed up in the 35mm market because they >refused to recognize that people did not want a shutter in every lens. >Doing this made their lenses expensive heavy and slow. Zeiss made some >great glass, as Leica does, but sometimes that's not enough. First, and this is important: ZEISS IKON was NOT the Carl Zeiss lensworks. Separate companies, only loosely connected by a common ownership by an educational foundation. Second, Zeiss Ikon made the ultimate all-mechanical SLR in the Contarex, and that assuredly has a FP shutter. And the final production version of the Contarex is the first entirely electronic camera, too. Unfortunately, the cameras were so amazingly well built that they just priced themselves out of the market. And the Icarex, though late, was another Zeiss Ikon FP camera which was rather popular. And the Contax RF, yet another FP design. But the bread-and-butter camera which kept Zeiss Ikon afloat for twenty years was the amazingly popular Contaflex, which DOES have a Compur shutter. But they sold all of these they could make, and made a profit on the line. It just wasn't enough to under-write the Contarex. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!