Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/11/27

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Subject: [Leica] Re: 35 Summicron Question
From: marcsmall at comcast.net (Marc James Small)
Date: Mon Nov 27 15:17:20 2006
References: <200611271916.kARJD73i002933@server1.waverley.reid.org> <000601c7125d$c1ead680$8c2dea04@oemcomputer> <p06230900c1911280deb5@[10.1.16.129]>

At 05:13 PM 11/27/2006, Henning Wulff wrote:
 >
 >Watch out for the Russian ones.
 >
 >Otherwise there's no difference. Each lens (version) was designed one
 >time, with the main team either in Wetzlar/Solms or Midland. Then it
 >was generally manufactured in one country or the other. Sometimes
 >production was moved part way through the run, but the quality was
 >the same.
 >
 >At certain times the main design team was either in Germany or
 >Canada, and the designs from that era came from that country. The
 >design team and production were generally located in the same country.

The 2.8/35 BK/Jupiter-12 was an exact clone of 
the Prewar 2.8/3.5cm Carl Zeiss Jena Biogon 
designed by Ludwig Bertele, arguably the most 
accomplished optical engineer of the 20th century 
-- Max Berek certainly so regarded him.  This is 
a lens which is hard to beat, albeit Soviet 
quality control left a bit to be desired.  (But, 
then, dum Iove nodat:  one of my LTM versions of 
the CZJ lens has a lens mount crude enough to 
satisfy a colony of Cherrystone clams but 
probably no one more advanced than that -- the 
lens functions perfectly well but some village 
clearly was lacking its idiot, as only an idiot 
could have thought up that lens mount.)

For most of its existence, E Leitz Midland used a 
core group of German optical designers assigned 
there from Wetzlar.  There were some Canadian 
designers as well but I believe that, during the 
tenure of Walther Mandler, the core designers 
were always German, as was the case at Wetzlar.

Marc


msmall@aya.yale.edu
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!



In reply to: Message from montoid at earthlink.net (Montie) ([Leica] Re: 35 Summicron Question)
Message from henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff) ([Leica] Re: 35 Summicron Question)