Who actually made lenses for the Japan based camera brands?

Another found, which is also from the inner link of the Tomioka story, about Mamiya 55/1.4 study :

This ... tangled mess history and the also endless suspect & debate on Tomioka-made lenses are always fun to read when one is having enough free time during the lazy summer.

It really isn't a particularly tangled mess.
The camera industry is like the car manufacturing industry - the name on the front of the camera and lenses represents who designed and marketed them, plus often the entity who assembled them. The rest is made by a myriad of entities who manufacture constituent parts - sometimes at the instance of the designer.

MattKing said:

It really isn't a particularly tangled mess.
The camera industry is like the car manufacturing industry - the name on the front of the camera and lenses represents who designed and marketed them, plus often the entity who assembled them. The rest is made by a myriad of entities who manufacture constituent parts - sometimes at the instance of the designer.

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Picking a nit (please forgive me)... I'm not totally convinced that it is an "and" in "who designed and marketed" but probably is "and/or". It's not uncommon, in general, for the designer to be someone other than the person/company that markets or manufactures a product. This insight comes from lots of patent research where inventor (assignor) and assigee are different. Sometimes it's obvious that the inventor worked for the company to which the patent was assigned. In other situations its less obvious yet other information strongly suggests that the idea was sold by the inventor to the person/entity to whom the patent is assigned.

To me, it remains a tangled mess, mostly because of the lack of validated information and the seemingly large amount of assuumption/misinformation. Often the assumptions are really all we have, though.

BrianShaw said:

To me, it remains a tangled mess.

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But not unusually so
Good point about the designers sometimes being separate from the brand.
The more generalized point is that there are very few examples in this world of a single, vertically oriented, "soup-to-nuts" source for these things. Almost everything is a multiple source assemblage.

MattKing said:

But not unusually so
Good point about the designers sometimes being separate from the brand.
The more generalized point is that there are very few examples in this world of a single, vertically oriented, "soup-to-nuts" source for these things. Almost everything is a multiple source assemblage.

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Exactly!

As a lens designer myself, I do believe that the Japanese companies have their designers in-house. These are still big integrated companies, and they hold their expertise ( IP , trade secrets ) very close to their chest. On the lens manufacture, yes, things are more complex in the last 20 years or so, but I am also sure that they do assembly and test in-house, again, this is where the knowledge and expertise is most critical.
Likewise we in North Wales ( making military and aircraft optics ) do a large amount of the whole process in-house, though we sub-contract a fraction of the glass manufacture and metalwork.

Here are a couple of examples where it appears the lens design inventors appear to be employees of Largon Precision and assigned the patent to the employer. Not unusual. Largon Precision produces modules and supplies other product manufacturers like Apple, which would be the name a consumer would see; I'm not aware of any commercial product branded "Largon Precision". I worked with a guy who took a job with Apple focused on new iPhone cameras. His job involved requirements, specifications, vendor product integration, and QA. Things might be different with "real" camera companies.

Interesting - the second one is quite typical of the current status of the wider lenses for Phone cameras.
I think Apple is indeed a different sort of company to the photo majors. Interestingly, one of our lens designers who left about 15 years ago, is now working for Apple - and living in France.

As I study further, let me draw something here to clear my mind:

Facts are :
- There is a cloning habit in the early Jp camera history.
Like, Canon clone Leica LTM, Nikon develop from Contax RF, the multiple brands of TLRs from the Rolleis.... so the SLR lenses could be actually from some models of existing models (Contarex? or from RF lenses?). The Jps could have been studied it, improved, and making the improved version by themselves.

-Rebranding , like selling as Sears, Soligor have happened for a long time.

- Oversea companies co-op exists. Germany let Jp do the jobs, like Zeiss/Yashica, Leica/Minolta co-op in history.

- Internally Jp-Jp companies co-op also exists , like Cosina making T60 for Canon, FM10 for Nikon, OM2000 for Olympus. Tomioka has make lens for various parties for sure.

-Some glass/optical makers ONLY make glass or just ONLY do the assembling.
They never know each other

-Acquiring happens.

-Some patents has expired , not applied or not protected in different countries (Soviets, East Germany, and even Japan?).

-Some companies never have complete details in serial numbers. Making everything untraceable.

- Many Internet studies are based on studying the appearance, dissembling the lens, counting glass numbers to suggest who made that lens.

Beside, the facts from myths are:
-There are actually plenty suggestions that could be from one's own believing without much evidence support on web.
Many of them are gone since the sites shutting down. But quoted in fragments leads to inaccurately carried over.

-Good pictures helps to spread and even reviews have continued spreading the myths.


And it comes to questionable areas I have noticed:
-Why serial numbers are not well documented ? Too big to record, or is that just intended not to be recorded? Or someone needs to do decoding before we know whats behind?

-Could that glass making and lens assembling also happen in the same company?
They just add the name plate who ordered it and ship it . The workers have never leaked any information?
Some articles even real life rumors claim people have seen how it was done and surprised them a lot. <- Is it real ?

- Could it be just today's internet found out the lenses are having similar diagrams and appearance so that it concluded the lens from that maker?

And from that it leads to further questions in co-op agreements:

1. One has the good design, they have to look for interested investors, gaining enough orders before putting into production. Then just put on the name plates for the orders?

2. One has the agreement to use the design and making into different mounts.
The designer has created a nice design, but they are really tight in budget to make, so they prefer to co-op . Within this agreement , this lens design has be allowed to manufactured in various mounts to let the manufacturer to gain their profit or cover any possible lost?

Tomwlkr said:

Most of my newer Nikon lenses say made in Thailand

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I guess what I read when Nikon moved camera manufacturing to Thailand was fake news.

kl122002 said:

And from that it leads to further questions in co-op agreements:

1. One has the good design, they have to look for interested investors, gaining enough orders before putting into production. Then just put on the name plates for the orders?

2. One has the agreement to use the design and making into different mounts.
The designer has created a nice design, but they are really tight in budget to make, so they prefer to co-op . Within this agreement , this lens design has be allowed to manufactured in various mounts to let the manufacturer to gain their profit or cover any possible lost?

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I think I know what you mean by "co-op agreement" but I'd use the term 'subcontract or vendor/supplier' instead. But I think we are thinking of the same generic typre of business relationship.

There is possibly a third option: build to specification, in part or in total. It is not uncommon for a design, genreally speaking and not intending to express any knowledge relative to camera lens manufacture, to be realized using program management scheme with a combination of good specifications, carefully selected subcontractors, and effective quality assurance.

For example, it would not be infeasible for Nikon to have a competent non-Nikon lens manufacturing facility realize this design of theirs. Further detailed levels of specification, what was once called in the US "C-specs, or build-to specs" would likely be needed. No matter where and who manufactures such a lens, it's probably a fairly big investment to get such a production line running.

The first few generations of Vivitar S1 lens were designed by 3d party designers and built to specification by a number of manufactures. As I recall a designer in the US designed the 70 to 200 to Vivitar specs then it was made by Kino. The 600 F8 cat lens was designed made by Perkin-Elmer the later model in the 2000 by Samyang, not sure if is the same design.

Opcon Associates, Ellis Betensky and Marvin Kreitzer. I think ex-Perkin Elmer.. not 100% sure.. ?