Kaufmann again: Interview Popular Photography May 2008

[rxmd]

What made European products so collectable is they were built like tanks. Japan built it's cameras out of cheap things like "pot metal" with some hardening treatments.

Have you ever held a Nikon F or a Canon T-90 in your hands?

I don't know what "built like tanks" is supposed to mean. My M5 is certainly showing a lot of wear. I think with cameras it's about precision. With tanks it's about something else; the somewhat primitive Russian T-34 certianly left a much more lasting impression than the German Tiger, even if the latter was a lot more complex and certainly better built

Philipp

 

[historicist]

What made European products so collectable is they were built like tanks. Japan built it's cameras out of cheap things like "pot metal" with some hardening treatments. It was like that with motorcycles until a few years ago when Japan industry make a major turnaround and most of the proof that quality was what made loyal customer was the camera companies like Nikon. Go back and take a look at when Lexus, Acura and Infinity brands seemed to appear for no reason. That being said......

I agree, my personal experience has been that very expensive German cameras (Leica, Rolleiflex) are not as reliable or sturdily built as moderately expensive Japanese cameras (Nikon F, F2, S2).

I can't speak for motorbikes but with brands like Lexus, in many cases the cars they were introduced with already existed in Japan, only as Toyotas. The reason for the brand wasn't because they realised that they needed to make better cars, but because they realised that no-one in America or Europe wanted to buy an expensive Toyota, regardless of quality.

I wouldn't like to try and create sweeping generalisations about the Japanese being better or worse than the Europeans, but rather suggest that it is perhaps more likely that large scale mass production will produce a good , consistent product at a good price than smaller scale, more 'hand-made' methods that Leica etc. necessarily use.

And whether one can still get parts for a 1986 TV? Maybe, maybe not, but when we can buy a new TV, much better, for little money, there's not much point. To some extent, what benefits the electronics industry also benefits us as consumers in the form of lower prices.