Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/11/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net> wrote: >What I do know is that Zeiss sells more submarine periscopes than the rest of the Free World manufacturers do combined. With the sharp decline in submarine construction in the past decade, this has been a sad development for Zeiss -- and the Russians and Ukrainians are now picking up some of the reduced market, as well. Well Zeiss could always get out of the periscope business and go back to making Leica thread-mount lenses! The impression I get talking to guys from both companies (Pilkington and Zeiss) was that they had fairly equivalent shares of the available market, and that rather than sink funds into trying to match each other's future developments in a limited market, it made more sense to co-operate. The isea was that when a new requirement emerges, both companies should look at it jointly, and decide whether that requirement was best met by a UK or German periscope. That decision taken, only one company would bid, and would then be able to draw upon any technology from the other which could make his offering better. For example, both companies have developed infra-red night-vision channels, but had selected different wavebands. So a German scope could be offered with a British IR channel if that would suit the user's requirements better (or vice versa). Curiously, both companies declined to comment on the differences between their basic designs which would make them attractive to individual perators, saying that to discuss this even in general terms would involve classified informational or national submarine operating doctrine and tactics. Neither company considered the Russians or Ukranians to be significant customers, although LOMO has been marketing its designs. Zeiss told me they had been able to inspect the periscope of a Soviet-era submarine (probably a Foxtrot-class) and the hardware was immediately recognised by an 'old hand' at Zeiss - it turned out to be a near-identical copy of a Zeiss WW2 design. BTW, I recently bought a Leica thread mount 5cm f2 retractable Sonnar - mechanically shabby but with clean T-coated glass. The focus mount was so stiff as to be unusable, so I tried a little lighter fluid and that started to slacken it off a bit. The mount then disgorged a small fragment of what looked like black cloth, and is now very free (almost sloppy) to turn. I guess this was some form of friction-inducing material added to the mount during construction to take up the mechanical play. Regards, Doug Richardson