Who actually made lenses for the Japan based camera brands?

[MFstooges]

Japanese lens manufacturing is a plate of spaghetti. Minolta got the lens for its first camera from Germany. Then it bought lenses from Asahi, before it started making it own. Many of its final manual-focusing lenses were made by Cosina and Tokina. Yashica got all of its lenses from Tomioka -- before it merged with Tomioka. Mamiya got much of its glass from Setagaya (Sekor) before merging. I could go on all day.

Samyang is Korean company. In the 80s they make low quality after market lenses. Today they make top notch product.

Since the manufacturing in China is getting far better, 50 years from now we may talk about who bought glass from who in Chinese optical manufacturers.

 

[xkaes]

Since the manufacturing in China is getting far better, 50 years from now we may talk about who bought glass from who in Chinese optical manufacturers.

If you thought tracking down who made which Japanese lenses is difficult, just imaging tracking down the origin of Chinese lenses.

 

[250swb]

Other than the occasional parent company connections to other subsidiaries no camera manufacturer does anything other than specify a glass formula from an outside supplier. Leica do not have a glass foundry for example, and they don't have a battery manufacturing plant, or a tannery to make leather camera straps.

 

[MFstooges]

If you thought tracking down who made which Japanese lenses is difficult, just imaging tracking down the origin of Chinese lenses.

Exactly what I'm saying.

 

[Paul Howell]

I have just the the C/Dfor a 70s vintage zoom it is a good performer.

 

[xkaes]

I have just the the C/Dfor a 70s vintage zoom it is a good performer.

My C/D lenses are the 650mm f8.5 with the Osawa label (got a great price because it is not labelled Soligor C/D) and a Soligor C/D 200mm f2.8 (Serial # starts with "3" which might mean "Sun Optical").

Anyway, both great lenses. The 650mm fits perfectly between a 500mm and an 800mm.

 

[kl122002]

The wording of the Minolta claim makes it possible that they were stating there were (at the time) only two companies that

1. made optical glass, AND
2. made lenses from their optical glass,

...and it was implied also that they were sold on the retail market under their own brand name


The chart in post 13 makes it apparent that Tokina, Kiron, and Tamron make lenses. I happen to know that Hoya was started by two brothers as a manufacturer of optical glass in the city of Hoya; and they do make 'lenses' for vision purposes but I do know know of Hoya brand photographic lenses, yet they are a recognized name in photographic filters.
In comparison, Kino is the company who make photographic lenses sold under the Kiron brand name, and they also sourced some lenses to Vivitar, but they do not make optical glass.
And Tokina make photographic lenses sold under the Tokina name, but the do not make optical glass.

There was a time with some lens branded as Hoya existed. I saw them in shop during 1980s :

Review of Hoya HMC Zoom 80-200mm 1: 4 | Happy

Overview of the Hoya HMC Zoom 80-200 mm f 4 lens with sample photos. Hoya F 4 80-200 lens test

radojuva.com

Hoya Lenses...Not filters... - PentaxForums.com

Has anyone else used, or even seen, a Hoya brand lens? I recently acquired one through a purchase on ebay. It was grouped in a kit that included an

www.pentaxforums.com

The rumour was like Hoya wished to enter lens making and not just filters. However the sales from market didn't go as expected. The lens is more likely OEM made and just put the name of Hoya, while the glasses are from Hoya.

 

[xkaes]

Hoya made some other camera lenses are well, but I've never seen a list. They also made some lenses that were sold under other brand labels -- such as enlarging lenses.

 

[Melvin J Bramley]

The accepted best and most successful glass/ lens producers are those with the biggest advertising budgets!
I will bet my best lens cap that the better lens reviews come from those that accept "gifts" from the producers!
There have always been an interchange between camera/optical companies.
The same can be said for many other products.
Yet we become addicted to " the brand"

 

[dynachrome]

At some point there was THK - Tokina Hoya Kenko. The Bogen 40mm and 60mm Wide Angle enlarging lenses were made by Tokina. I have seen at least one of them with the Tokina name. The Vivitar and Soligor T4 lenses were made by Tokina as were the Vivitar TX lenses. I have seen a few of the TX lenses marked Tokina. Many of the later Konica Hexanon lenses were made by Tokina. At some point Konica had a financial interest in Tokina. The last version of the Konica Hexanon 50/1.4 was made with glass elements from Konica but with a Tokina barrel. It stopped down to f/22 while the earlier Konica-assembled 50/1.4 only stopped down to f/16. The Tokina AT-X 28-85 was made on Konica mount but never appeared with a Konica name. The 80-200/4 and 80-200/4.5 Konica lenses were obvious Tokina designs as was the 70-150. Konica was supposed to have designed the 21/2.8, the compact 24/2.8, the compact 28/3.5 and 35/2.8 lenses, the 40/1.8 and 135/3.5 compact. I have two of the compact 35/2.8 lenses and they look very similar to other Tokina made 35/2.8s.

When it came to where the glass came from for various lenses, what's important is how well the lenses performed. When the Vivitar Series 1 90/2.5 Macro came out, it was the sharpest lens Modern Photography had ever tested. What mattered most was what you could do with it, not where the blanks for the lens elements came from. The only example I have is in Canon FD mount. Newer lenses like the Kiron 105/2.8 and it's variants were better coated and easier to use in difficult light but were not much sharper.

 

[reddesert]

- There are many more lens manufacturers (I mean real lens grinding operations, not rebadgers) than manufacturers of the raw optical glass, always have been.

- Contract work is extremely common in the optics business, not everything is designed or made in house.

 

[dynachrome]

I meant to say that the one touch 80-200/4 Konica Hexanon version was made by Tokina and is a Tokina design. The two touch 80-200/4 UC was a Konica design and was made by Konica.

 

[Paul Howell]

Although I have not seen any documents to confirm it, when Alpa stopped making cameras and sold naming rights to Chinion (or contacted with Chinion to put the Alpa name) for M42 and later K mount bodies, the first generation Chinon 50 1.9 maco used elements made by Kern. Not sure who made the glass, Kern or other glass maker.

 

[Mark J]

Did Kern ever make glass ?

 

[kl122002]

Although I have not seen any documents to confirm it, when Alpa stopped making cameras and sold naming rights to Chinion (or contacted with Chinion to put the Alpa name) for M42 and later K mount bodies, the first generation Chinon 50 1.9 maco used elements made by Kern. Not sure who made the glass, Kern or other glass maker.

Alpa started lower price bodies made by Chinon. Those you mentioned are Si2000 (m42) and si3000(K) . Google said Alpha was making 11 series at the same time but they are not intended for general customers.

Previously some lenses are made by angenieux. I wonder who provided the glass for them as well, maybe Scott?

 

[kl122002]

- There are many more lens manufacturers (I mean real lens grinding operations, not rebadgers) than manufacturers of the raw optical glass, always have been.

- Contract work is extremely common in the optics business, not everything is designed or made in house.

In that case, does it meant Brand A and B 's lenses and actually from the same glass maker? If so, would the performance share some something similar in properties ?

 

[Dustin McAmera]

Yes, I think lens makers are using glass from the same few glass-makers. It doesn't mean there's no difference between lens brands.
Any particular glass-maker doesn't spend all their time making the same glass. They will have many recipes, to achieve particular refractive indices and other properties like low dispersion (I guess). I suppose lens designers have some idea what kinds of glass they can currently get (so they don't come up with a brilliant design, only to have the glass-maker say 'we can't make the glass for that element'.

I did this search at Espacenet (the European Patent Office's search tool):

Espacenet – search results

Espacenet: free access to millions of patent documents. Find out if your invention is unique or if other inventors have filed patent applications that are considered to be prior art.

worldwide.espacenet.com

In less than five years, more than 19000 patents for (or related to) optical glass. Many of those are duplicated in different territories; there will be a Japanese patent and a US one, etc. but it's still a lot of patents. Lots of them have simply 'Optical glass' as the title, and the patent specifies a recipe; how much silicon dioxide, how much barium oxide, etc.
Two makers stand out; CDGM Optical Glass in Chengdu, China, and Sumita Optical Glass in Saitama, Japan. These two are patenting so fast it's surprising they get any glass made at all.

 

[reddesert]

In that case, does it meant Brand A and B 's lenses and actually from the same glass maker? If so, would the performance share some something similar in properties ?

I am not sure if you are still conflating the manufacture of glass, and the shaping of lenses from glass.

There are many name badges of lenses, which come from a smaller number of lens manufacturers, which are buying glass from an even smaller number of optical glass manufacturers. In the case of Nikon, a Nikon-badged lens might have been made in a Nikon factory from glass types that are made both by Nikon and bought-in from outside. In the case of (for example) a old Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm lens made by Tokina or Kiron, the lens might have been designed by an optical designer under contract to Vivitar, made to that design by Tokina or Kiron, who ground the lenses from glass that they bought from one or more optical glass suppliers.

This is an Abbe diagram of the kinds of glass that you can buy from Schott: https://www.schott.com/en-us/special-selection-tools/interactive-abbe-diagram
It is a plot of index of refraction versus dispersion. Every point on this plot is a standard glass type that Schott makes and you can buy through some process of request-for-quote. This is a similar diagram for Ohara glass types: https://oharacorp.com/optical-glass/ There are other glass suppliers, these are just two big ones with informative websites.

Essentially every lens from an achromatic doublet on up uses more than one type of glass to correct aberrations. Many lens designs are made by computing a design using glasses selected from these standard types, with shapes optimized by the designer and the optical design program with attention to image quality, ease of lens fabrication, and cost.

But no optics engineer would tell you that lenses made from Schott glass image like this, versus lenses from Ohara glass image like that. (And many designers could be using glass from multiple sources.) It would be like saying you can tell the type of steel in a bridge from riding over it. The glass is the raw material from which the designer engineers the product.

 

[Henning Serger]

I think all of Nikon's lens are still made in Japan.

Hello Paul,

for meanwhile more than 20 years Nikon also runs a lens factory in China. I have several "Made in China" Nikkors.

Best regards,
Henning

 

[Mark J]

Many lens designs are made by computing a design using glasses selected from these standard types, with shapes optimized by the designer and the optical design program with attention to image quality, ease of lens fabrication, and cost.

Excellent and accurate post from Reddesert above. I would only correct that "Almost 100% of lens designs are made by computing glasses selected from these standard types" . The most that any designer might ask of the glass suppliers , if the cost could be warranted, would be to ask for a melt of one of the older material types that are under a designation of 'Enquiry glasses' and still available to melt on special request. Sometimes this happens if a lens design runs for decades, and it contains a special anomalous-dispersion glass that cannot be matched by a current catalogue material.

I will also add to his debunking of this myth that you could tell the difference between German or Japanese glass by the look of the image - all modern glasses are extremely low scatter and very transparent, this would be impossible. Also, lead-based glass is not more transparent than lightweight types ( except in the near-UV ..) . Anyone who thinks for instance that Zeiss lenses have more 'pop' because they use lead-based German materials is mistaken about what was used in the designs for the last 30 years at least.

 

[xkaes]

Hello Paul,

for meanwhile more than 20 years Nikon also runs a lens factory in China. I have several "Made in China" Nikkors.

Best regards,
Henning

This is the first I've heard of this, but I'm not surprised. I know that Minolta, Cosina, Tokina, and other had lenses "Made in China", and I assumed others did as well, but I've never seen a list or run across an in-depth discussion. And what "Made in China" means can vary. It might just mean the assembly was handled in China, but the glass came from somewhere else -- although there is lots of glass-making in China, as well.

 

[ph]

One might add that precision of assembly and long term performance of materials is crucial. Combined with strict quality control and not useing the cheap method of letting the customer test and replacing where necessasry.

It is rather as if you mix ingredients from your favourite first class baking materials supplier using unreliable volume and weight measures, proceed to use the wrong temperature and time and expect perfect results

p.

 

[Paul Howell]

Alpa started lower price bodies made by Chinon. Those you mentioned are Si2000 (m42) and si3000(K) . Google said Alpha was making 11 series at the same time but they are not intended for general customers.

Previously some lenses are made by angenieux. I wonder who provided the glass for them as well, maybe Scott?

I think Alpa was selling old stock in the Alpa mount, this thread is about Japanese glass makers, but the same question applies to European, Delf, Schinder, Rodenstock, Zoomare, assembled in the US but a European design.

 

[Tomwlkr]

In the modern world, Tamron makes lens for Pentax, Konica Minolta did not sell its lens plant, only the camera plant and patents to Sony and still makes lens for Sony as well as industrial lens. I think all of Nikon's lens are still made in Japan.

Most of my newer Nikon lenses say made in Thailand

 

[kl122002]

I found this accidentally from internet . It looks like there were few times people discussing about Tomioka lenses, and then summed up here:

The Tomioka Story - delta

Tomioka has acquired a peculiar mystique among collectors, artificially inflating the value of some otherwise unremarkable lenses. The making of often-spurious connections with Carl Zeiss has at times felt like a conspiracy to overheat the market. The Tomioka brand has become a talisman...

deltalenses.com

How I feel is ... this complicated lens manufacturing in Japanese optic history has successfully created a "mystery" feeling from today's pov. Some have insisted their lens is from Tomioka, some have questioned, some...perhaps they wanted to believe. The well known Auto Chinon 55/1.4 is a good example , that some have "Tomioka" name on it while some has none. :

Auto Chinon MC 1.4/55

Auto Chinon MC 1.4/55 :: Lenses :: Home :: Manual Focus Lenses

forum.mflenses.com

As for me, the history of Yashica acquiring Tomioka , and the history of Zeiss-Yashica co-op are real. And so the performance of Yashica lenses = Tomioka lenses make sense. However what I don't understand, or maybe a bit strange feeling is ,
If Yashica lens ( post-acquiring Tomioka) was good, why the C/Y mount Yashica lenses are so underrated, while the older M42 Yashica lens (also made by Tomioka) is so high rated ?