[Leica] Tokyo Tales (Long!) - Part 2

[TTAbrahams@aol.com]

We were met at the station by Mr Kobayashi and several of the technical and 
optical people and taken to the main plant. It is a substantial operation, 
more than a 1000 employees and one of the last camera-manufacturers to make 
their own glass (more on that later). We all trooped in to a meeting room and 
the fun began! Prototypes of coming products were brought in, lenses, bodies 
and accessories. I had already seen and tried the 28/1,9 Asph and the 90/3,5 
Apo-Lanthar at Photokina so that was old news and nobody even bothered to 
bring these in! Instead, there were new lenses and different mounts on 
lenses. Most of this stuff is still cloaked in secrecy so I cannot tell 
anything. But there are a couple of pieces that can be revealed, a small, 
compact 39mm screw-mount lens that fills the gap between the 15 and 25, the 
125/2,8 Apo-Lanthar Macro for Nikon-F and in other mounts, as well as the 
75/2,5 in Nikon mount. The difference between talking to some other 
manufacturer and Cosina is evident in the following exchange. I was playing 
with the 125/2,5 Apo-Lanthar and I asked Mr Kobayashi "Would it be possible 
to make this lens in a Visoflex-mount?" His response was instant "Should it 
be a pre-set aperture or a regular one" rather than the "why would one 
bother" that some other manufacturers would respond! If anyone thought that 
Voigtlander/Cosina is through with ideas for Leica's, just wait and see. The 
other difference is that when Shintaro and I wanted to look inside a camera, 
a toolkit was brought so we could take the thing apart and see how it was 
done. Anyone who knows Shintaro also knows that this is how he functions. 
Only lack of time prohibited him from redesigning the commuter-train seats! 
The fact that we could pass on suggestions for improvements where meet with 
"Yes, that is a better idea" or "Right on!" By this time lunchtime had 
arrived and we set out for a sushi-lunch (I am not too clumsy with 
chopsticks. Shintaro's family dog, EDO is devoted to me though, he knows that 
the "gaijin" is highly likely to drop nice tidbits and usually spends dinners 
firmly pressed against my leg). 
 After lunch, we were shown the assembly area (Bessa-R and L) as well as the 
optical plant with rather impressive vacuum chambers for coating lenses. I 
looked at the assembly of the finder for the 12mm lens. It is no wonder that 
this finder is so good, it has multiple elements in it, including aspherical 
surface ones! My favourite machine was the Computer controlled milling and 
turning center for making screw-to M bayonet adapters. Now this is a machine 
we all could relate to. Who needs a printing press for money when you could 
be turning out nice adapters like that!
 
The glass making area was the only area we were told not to take pictures in; 
otherwise it was fine everywhere else. I have been to glass-plants before and 
they are fascinating. It has to be a mixture of alchemy and science! Measured 
quantities of raw material, with cryptic notes on the bags, are poured into 
the furnaces and once the glass-mass is molten it is "squeezed" out on a 
conveyor belt, glowing red and "plastic" in its consistency. The conveyor 
slowly (you can't really see it move) transports the endless strip of glass 
through the cooling chambers and at the other end it looks like clear, 
oversized chocolate bar. The glass is cut in to manageable chunks (about 
18-24" long, about 1" thick and 4" wide). These bars are stacked and then 
later cut into pieces that are reformed in gas-fired furnaces as "blanks". 
Once this is achieved, the pieces are ground and coated. Of course, each type 
of glass requires its own formula and process, but it must be a major 
advantage to have a production facility "in house" for experiments and also 
for scheduling productions. Now, this would be rather nice to have at home. 
Imagine coming up with a design, being able to make a prototype, including 
aspherical surfaces and rare glasses, try it out and say "This works, let's 
make it"! It is rather fun to see what a camera-buff and active photographer 
can get done when he has the facilities and expertise to implement his ideas. 
Of course Cosina makes a multitude of products, Nikon FM-10/Olympus 2000 etc, 
as well as a large variety of optics for Canon etc as well as beam-splitters 
for video-cameras etc. However, the Voigtlander part of the operation 
accounts for over 10% of the production.
 This has all happened in less than 24 months and the flow of ideas seem to 
be on the increase, rather than tapering off. Products from Voigtlander, 
Ricoh, Konica, Kobalux, Minolta, and Pentax are now available in 39mm 
screw-mount (and M-mount in the case of Konica). Some are design exercises, 
such as the 43mm Pentax lens with a nice, but big finder and a price-tag of 
US$1300 or the 60 and 50 mm 1,2 lenses from Konica, but the rest are highly 
useful and extremely high quality optics. There have never been more choices 
for an M or LTM user in Leicas history. All right, I know that one really 
only needs a 35/2 and a 50/2 with a M2 and a M3 to take great pictures, but 
deep inside most photographers lurks a "gear-head" that enjoys optics and 
mechanical contraptions.
Tom A

End of Tokyo Tales, now on to Hong Kong. -  See  "Hong Kong Hospitality"