Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/11/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]In the 60's and before ( really before around 1980), there was hand assembly of lenses. With hand assembly, you get a lot of variation of quality. Some lenses are really extremely good; some are pretty good, some are good, some kinda lousy and some just plain lousy. You get this from manufacturing tolerances, which, using hand assembly labor, varies a lot. Come around 1980, assembly, while still done by and in some cases, got into the lower variation mode.... more alignment equipment, more and higher acceptance standards, etc. Less variation in sample to sample units. Less variation usually means less really lousy lenses, etc.. but it also means less really superb examples. It produces really consistent output. OK>> Back to enlarging lenses.... Leica always had high standards... they had less overall variation. But their competitors, some Japanese, some German, had lower standards of acceptance. During this period, the FOcotar had its excellent reputation established. It was a much better lens than its well known competitors ( including stuff from Nikon, B+L, Kodak, and others.): Because its variations were less wide.. you almost always got a really good lens. From the others, you got a variation that might be Excellent to less good.. Come 1990, and everyone has high standards.... Japanese, German, others. The lenses are now assembled with low tolerances, and unit to unit variation is less. Why the long story? TO get across that you do not need to buy a hard to find $400 Focotar to get a good lens, you can get a $100-200 Rodenstock 50mm APO Rodagon N or a APO Componon -HM and have a lens that at least challenges a 40 year old lens... and maybe far surpasses it..... Darkroom stiff is cheap these days as people migrate to digital. You can get pro quality lenses that are newer than the old stuff, and will perform as well. Frank Filippone red735i@earthlink.net