How drastically protected are old lenses' designs?

[furcafe]

Weren't the Konica 35/2 L-Hexanon & the later Hexanon UC in LTM copies of the 35/1.8 w-Nikkor? Of course, they were limited edition & originally sold only in Japan, but they can still be bought.

Thanks for the great information!
If we keep talking about the example, The Nikkor 35 1.8, we´re talking about a lens that's sharp, small and well corrected for barrel distortion, I read... We have very few options for that... And it's not a cheap lens, that's why I thought a new version could find buyers...

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Weren't they bigger than the Nikkor?
Cheers,
Juan

 

[furcafe]

I only have the 35/2 UC Hexanon in LTM & it's not a big lens at all (roughly similar to the 40/2 M-Rokkor I used to have)--maybe you've only seen photos w/the hood, which is similar in size to the Leica 12504, attached. Sadly, I've never handled the older L-Hexanon or the original LTM version of the 35/1.8 w-Nikkor to compare. Maybe 1 of the old threads about the Hexanon has photos to compare?

Weren't they bigger than the Nikkor?
Cheers,
Juan

 

[David Hughes]

Hi,

Interesting thread but I wonder if I dare point out a few points;

Making a lens these days is far cheaper than making one the old fashioned way.

Copying a lens means the design is there already with all faults known, no expense of designing, tweaking and so on.

And copying probably means setting up the machine to make them by typing in the specifications and pushing a button.

Lots of rare exotic glass from a few years back is now available off the shelf and can be bought roughly made into a lens blank. Not made in an alchemist's den in small expensive batches.

The retail price of a lens has little to do with the cost of making it and even less to do with the cost of copying.

It might cost say a pound to make, two pounds to the middleman, four pounds to the shop and eight pounds to the customer, plus tax, of course. (By todays' standards those increases are mild.) Of the original pound it cost to make the cost of designing could be significant.

As an aside, I've often wondered what it would cost to (say) buy up a lot of Jupiter 8's, take them to pieces and then test each component and re-assemble them as good as new with minor tweaks, better QC and so on: even in different mounts. Similar things were done with laptops years ago; small firms would buy a thousand or so at the end of a lease and then retest and so on to have a batch of (say) 950 as new but sold as refurbished...

Regards, David

 

[David Hughes]

" ...the 1890s Cooke Triplet is the basis of countless modern asymmetric lenses, for example... "

Careful, Roger, that's heresy to some people and you'll be burnt at the stake for it. ;-)

Just don't mention Hall and Dollond or you'll be doomed.

Regards, David

 

[Drago]

I read somewhere, that after Germany fall in the WW2, the americans took their lens designs and patents and give it to Japan ( hence their achievement in the optics after the war ) I have a book, from the 50's with some lenses and everything we see today was already done back then. Ofc now we'r talking perfection, as i don't think somebody would come with some extraordinary lens design we'v never seen 🙂

 

[Roger Hicks]

I read somewhere, that after Germany fall in the WW2, the americans took their lens designs and patents and give it to Japan ( hence their achievement in the optics after the war ) I have a book, from the 50's with some lenses and everything we see today was already done back then. Ofc now we'r talking perfection, as i don't think somebody would come with some extraordinary lens design we'v never seen 🙂

Not exactly. German patents were nullified by the Allies -- there were other nations fighting the Germans remember, rather before the Americans joined in -- and anyone could use them. If you think about it, why on earth should anyone "give them to Japan"?

And no, it's not accurate to say "everything we see today was already done back then", except insofar as lens designs evolve from one another. Yes, most or all of the modern basic designs were extant by the late 50s, but "basic design" and "current design" are not the same thing.

Cheers,

R.

 

[DominikDUK]

The japanese received the lens designs as war help from NAZI Germany, Japan was an ally. And as Roger said after the war German patents were nullified (again). I also agree with the second part of Roger's post, that being said many older designs are still superb lenses and some are near impossible to make today the Hypergon from Goerz comes to mind a 2 element super wide with built in dodge tool to compensate for vignetting.

 

[Roger Hicks]

The japanese received the lens designs as war help from NAZI Germany, Japan was an ally. And as Roger said after the war German patents were nullified (again). I also agree with the second part of Roger's post, that being said many older designs are still superb lenses and some are near impossible to make today the Hypergon from Goerz comes to mind a 2 element super wide with built in dodge tool to compensate for vignetting.

Of course. I'd neglected that, blinded as I was by the idea of the Americans taking the patents from one defeated enemy and giving them to another. How extensive was wartime patent sharing among Axis powers?

Cheers,

R

 

[DominikDUK]

It seems to have been quiet extensive the Messerschmidt ME 262 Schwalbe, the ME 263 and the Jumo Turbojet engine were amongst the things the German shared with Japan.

 

[sevo]

The japanese received the lens designs as war help from NAZI Germany, Japan was an ally.

The designs cannot have been relevant - the strategically relevant lens designs mass produced during the war (Apotessar, Aero-Xenar, Nacht-Xenon etc.), whether in Germany or Japan, were infinity optimized large format lenses, and not suitable for conversion to civilian applications, and they continued to be classified. The Allies grabbed the production secrets involved, often complete with the key designers and production engineers (these lenses were not patented as that would have meant publishing the formula), and it was another decade or two until these designs were outdated and began to reappear as Army/Airforce surplus.

The technical help they received setting up high quality glass and mechanics factories to make those lenses must have been a far more important factor, when combined with the free ex-German patents for more marketable small and medium format lenses - the conversion from wartime to post-war production was not a matter of "hey, lets sell these aerial lenses to everybody" but "what else can we make with the unemployed skilled staff we have at hand".

 

[David Hughes]

Hi,

Trouble is you can't be sure about what is true and what is half true. I've read that lens coating was kept secret and not revealed during and prior to the war and I've read articles about it in 1930's magazines.

I've also read about the problems Reid had getting permission to make their version of the Leica in the 40's and a link about Spitfires being an American design and no American's fighting on the Soviet's side during the war and, well I could go on...

Regards, David

 

[goamules]

At least one company has copied an old design recently. The Lomo Petzval, continuing a long tradition of most companies stealing Petzvals poorly protected design, starting with Voigtlander in the 1840s. Each company reverse engineered the design, made minor improvements, or sometimes none at all, and sold it as their portrait lens. J. Petzval got nothing.

 

[sevo]

Trouble is you can't be sure about what is true and what is half true. I've read that lens coating was kept secret and not revealed during and prior to the war and I've read articles about it in 1930's magazines.

Zeiss (Alexander Smakula, to be precise) had patented the principles of vacuum evaporation coating in 1935. So the process was known. But ZEiss were the only maker that had made it into a practical process with marketable results before the war. And only Kodak managed to catch up and reverse engineer the Zeiss results in the time leading up to the US war entry - something which they probably could not have made use of on a peace time market.

 

[tunalegs]

It is probably worth noting that even before the war there were Germans going to Japan to basically make camera equipment cheaper. Not to mention it was particularly popular in Japan to copy designs at the time. Look at the countless Baldax clones churned out in Japan during the 1930s.