[Leica] Voigtländer 50 mm f/2 lens

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

On 10/22/06 7:20 PM, "John Collier" <jbcollier@shaw.ca> typed:

> The expression is a mild reprimand properly translated as "A pox upon
> you." The literal translation is far more charming, "May a duck kick
> you."
> 
For me its more issue of calling it a "Voigtlander" lens than directing us
to eBay listings whose frenzy needs no fanning or fawning from us.
On the LUG awhile you'll notice that we tend to qualify things.
Many of us have long owned or cut our teeth on Voigtl?nder gear made by
Voigtl?nder which is a German company offices and factories where they
operated in the 50s or before.

Voigtl?nder has a look and feel all its own.
Cosina stuff has a look and feel all their own.
These looks and feels don't overlap other than in typeface and Umlaut.
In some ways the build is almost the OPPOSITE.
As Voigtl?nder stuff is unusually chunky and heavy and solid. Very
"swapmeet"
And Cosina stuff is on the light side of pale.

It is Cosina stuff with the Voigtl?nder name bought off the block.
Not machine tools bought off the machine block.
A name by any other Umlaut.
And on the box: "German Anniversary" something or other with nothing else in
mind but to give the impression that this company has been around all this
time churning out their little stuff from the Black Forests themselves.
Grandsons and daughters Working side by side with their grandfathers.

It's Cosina stuff. 
Brash. Innovative. Plastic. Excellent.
They should owe no apologies to anybody leaving the average optical and
camera company well behind in the dust.
Other than lying about being Voigtl?nder.
And I say "plastic" but the build is not that bad.
Greed is good.
Plastic is good. Better than metal in many an occasion.
Light. But we've gotten used to that. We can get great photography from
that. I use a bunch of their stuff. Two lenses and a body.
Delightful stuff. But seeing the name makes me wince. Blacktape is in order.
Lighter than Nikon or Canon. But I suspect the glass itself may be in many
cases superior. Especially as we are talking rangefinder optics not SLR
optics. I use their 45 2.8 they make for Nikon SLR's.
An amazingly cool idea to bring back that lens.
Nikon wasn't going to do it.

Known on the LUG usually as "CV" stuff.
For Cosina/Voigtl?nder.
And there are people who will really and I feel justifiably get mad at you
if you try to sell them a Color-Scopar lens and it turns out ot have been
made the year before last out of (real good) plastic by Cosina. In the last
days of the Shutterbug they knew better than to not make this
differentiation. 
If its recent its "CV".
If its old; and solid as a rock its Voigtl?nder.

Although the CV 12mm comes close.


* ?
Germanic umlaut - in its original, narrowest sense, umlaut is the fronting
of vowels in a Germanic language caused by assimilation to an original front
vowel in the following syllable, especially viewed diachronically.
???


Mark Rabiner