What happened to all the german cameras?

[Sonnar Brian]

The Nikkor 5cm F1.4, 8.5cm F2, and 10.5cm F2.5 were unique optical prescriptions, followed the block diagram of the Sonnar lenses. The 8.5cm f2 was a 5 element in 3 group design, same as the 10.5cm F2.5. Both lenses were superior to the Zeiss 8.5cm f2 7 elements in 3 groups.

Same with the Canon lenses- unique glass, optically different prescriptions from the Zeiss counterparts.

They were not direct copies, they were different designs that required new optical computations.

Even the Nikkor 5cm f2 is a substantially different prescription from the wartime Zeiss 5cm f2 Sonnar "T". The Jupiter-3 is so close in prescription to the pre-war and wartime Sonnar that you can interchange the front elements and two triplets. Same with the Jupiter-8 and the 5cm f2 Sonnar. The Nikkor lenses use different optics- different relative strength among the groups. The front element of the Nikkor 5cm f2 is a stonger optic that the front of the Sonnar. Both are close enough in diameter to exchange, but "it just does not work".

This is a Pre-War Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm f1.5 with a rear triplet from a Jupiter-3:



Wide-open. The rear glass fit perfectly into the German optical fixture, and I did not have to change the shims on the lens to maintain focus.

The same trick just does not work with substituting elements on the Nikkors. I tried.

 

[paulfish4570]

i read on some forum or other (was it this one?) that the newly wealthy chinese were buying up all of the german kit ... 🙂

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I can just imagine a Chinese camera repairman attempting to align the rangefinder on a Voigtlander Vitessa. It is the worst design for vertical and horizontal alignment ever used in any rangefinder camera. And if they get it just right- the plunger film advance will jam if the film is advanced while it is at closest focus.

I must have about 40 German rangefinder cameras.

One time i dropped a Schneider Retina-curtagon 28/4 into 3ft of water, dropped it on a boardwalk over a wetlands while changing lenses on the Reflex-S. Went in after it. No water seeped in: the crazy linkages to set and control the aperture (F-Stop setting on the Body of the camera) seemed to be air-tight. I figured that some U-Board Periscope designer must have designed the lens. And thank goodness for German over-engineering.

 

[paulfish4570]

well, there you have it: brian sweeney, owner of 1,000, uh, i mean 100; no, was it 10 german cameras?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Maybe about 40 German rangefinders...

at least 60 Nikons.

How about a German Rangefinder with American Optics on it.... Just 1.

So to answer the original question, most of them are owned by RFF members.

 

[Livesteamer]

I can add a little bit of data. I've been reading about postwar Germany which was divided into sectors for the victors to control, with little regard to the finer details. I've read shutters were made in the American sector but optics were trapped in the Soviet sector. This is a minor point because I believe German products do tend to be over engineered and the Japanese with their Nikon F, Pentax and others were strong competition. Joe

 

[Sonnar Brian]

My 1946 Retina II has a Kodak Ektar lens on it- and a slightly later Retina II has a Schneider Xenon on it. I suspect ~1947 the West Germans were getting their lenses back into production. Both the Zeiss Opton 50/1.5 and 50/2 and the Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm F1.5 and 5cm f2 Sonnars are different optical prescriptions with all-new optical fixtures compared with the wartime CZJ Sonnars. This approximately coincides with production in Japan, with the first Nikkors coming off the line. Both countries were restarting production of fine optics at about the same time.

 

[chris00nj]

Short answer: Japanese cameras were significantly cheaper for only a minor drop in quality.

Long answer: The elephants in the room are unions, taxes, and uneconomic employment laws. Yes, yes, no one wants to hear about it. The emperor's new clothes look wonderful. However, all the unmentionable things made German cameras more expensive.

• Sure the unions won the showdowns with management for more money, but when the company had to increase their prices to compensate, people stopped buying their cameras.
• Yes, 12 weeks of vacation is wonderful, but when Japanese workers are taking two weeks of vacation, they can make more cameras for the same salary - hence less expensive cameras.
• Got several unproductive workers? Tough, you can't fire them. You have to keep paying them.... and you must make your cameras more expensive, which results in people not buying them.

 

[flip]

Short answer: Japanese cameras were significantly cheaper for only a minor drop in quality.

Long answer: The elephants in the room are unions, taxes, and uneconomic employment laws. Yes, yes, no one wants to hear about it. The emperor's new clothes look wonderful. However, all the unmentionable things made German cameras more expensive.

• Sure the unions won the showdowns with management for more money, but when the company had to increase their prices to compensate, people stopped buying their cameras.
• Yes, 12 weeks of vacation is wonderful, but when Japanese workers are taking two weeks of vacation, they can make more cameras for the same salary - hence less expensive cameras.
• Got several unproductive workers? Tough, you can't fire them. You have to keep paying them.... and you must make your cameras more expensive, which results in people not buying them.

Precisely why Chinese sweat shops are the way of the future.

 

[paulfish4570]

yeah, and those sweatshop owners like their leicas ... 🙂

 

[haempe]

Many true points were already given.
But the death blow for the West German camera industry, was the failure to recognize the necessity of installing user-friendly electronic in their cameras.
This was, combined with the lower price of the Japanese competitors, main reason for the death of the most (West) German traditional companys in the seventies.
Honestly it must be said, therefore, self-made errors of strategic product marketing.
In eastern germany added "planned economy" and lack of material to the other problems ...

 

[kossi008]

I agree with a lot of the arguments presented (except for the 12 weeks of vacation - not even Germany is such a paradise). It is really difficult to imagine how things would have gone if the smaller German camera factories hadn't been destroyed during the war. Maybe one of them would have seen the role of electronics in time to adapt...

A lot of problems did stem from the division of Germany. I read that Carl Zeiss Oberkochen was funded with the help of American military trucks moving stuff there from Jena, so it wouldn't all fall into the Soviet's hands... while on the other hand of the iron curtain, e.g. Pentacon had an in-house production depth of 97%, not because they liked it that way, but because the parts could not be obtained from external sources...

In the end, I agree with the view that it was the failure to adapt to the new ways that killed a lot of German camera makers in the 60s and 70s...

 

[rxmd]

Long answer: The elephants in the room are unions, taxes, and uneconomic employment laws. Yes, yes, no one wants to hear about it. The emperor's new clothes look wonderful. However, all the unmentionable things made German cameras more expensive.

• Sure the unions won the showdowns with management for more money, but when the company had to increase their prices to compensate, people stopped buying their cameras.
• Yes, 12 weeks of vacation is wonderful, but when Japanese workers are taking two weeks of vacation, they can make more cameras for the same salary - hence less expensive cameras.
• Got several unproductive workers? Tough, you can't fire them. You have to keep paying them.... and you must make your cameras more expensive, which results in people not buying them.

Actually your list is utter and complete rubbish, at least as far as the German camera industry is concerned; the camera industry died because they were too complacent to realize that Japanese were not only copycats, but also producing some highly advanced and sophisticated devices; because they developed too little, too late; because they failed to pursue a few trains like the SLR consequently enough; and most prominently because they had a bad corporate structure where at Zeiss, for example, there were several competing divisions that made very similar things, which then had to be artificially crippled and segmented into different market segments, which led lots development efforts astray because they came from the wrong divisions or were done on cameras where these features would never be implemented. Look at all the promising cameras that Zeiss Ikon killed because they would have endangered the Contarex! If you are afraid of your engineers because they endanger your dinosaur, all you're left with in the end are dinosaurs.

For a good historical readup on the history and reasons of the death of the West German camera industry, read http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras/WestdeutscheSLR.html.

I know that, for example, Zeiss Ikon claimed that production was too expensive, but they did this because they could not have publicly admitted the massive, crippling structural problems with their internal corporate structure and processes. Ever wonder why the German car industry went to be one of the most advanced and successful in the world, while the German camera industry died, even though both are bound exactly by the same legal conditions, labour laws and unions? These are obviously not the reason for successor failure. Your point about unions, labour laws etc. have literally next to nothing to do with it; if you want to go on beating that straw man, at least beat it where it's appropriate.

 

[sevo]

This was, combined with the lower price of the Japanese competitors, main reason for the death of the most (West) German traditional companys in the seventies.

"Death" probably is not appropriate, as many did not become insolvent but shifted focus and shut down their camera branch while they continued to be thriving elsewhere. There were individual failures, but the industry as a whole followed the German trend of getting out of consumer goods production and shifting into production of tools and components for consumer goods producers.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I don't know where some of these myths come from.

The Japanese lenses were not copies of their German counterparts. They were different optical prescriptions, based on the same block diagrams.

By the same logic that claims the Japanese lenses were copies of German lenses, then the modern Leica Summicron is "just a copy" of a 1920 British lens, the Taylor, Taylor and Hobson Series "O" also called the Lee Opic. The original Zeiss Planar was a symmetrical 1-2-2-1 block diagram, and was limited to small apertures. Lee of TTH introduced asymmetry into his design to produce an F2 lens. This TTH design is the basis of most double-Gauss type lenses, which includes the modern Summicron.

And- you might as well state that Leica "Just Copied" the Copal Square Shutter. The Nikon I combined the best of the Contax (unified VF/RF, bayonet) with the much more practical horizontal travel cloth shutter of the Leica. Patents are good for 17 years. Whether or not they had been invalidated, "there time was up".

The Nicca and some others were copies of the pre-war Leica III. But once you open them up, you find differences. The work is in the detailed implementation of a product.

As far as electronics- The German Instamatic Reflex implemented some advanced electronics for the day. Had it been a 35mm camera, and not driven to film cassette- would have been much better. Same with the Instamatic 500. Kodak Retina should have stuck with 35 to match the quality of the lenses. Lack of pressure plate in the 126 made these fine lenses yield mediocre results.

My personal opinion on why the German camera market failed in the 1970s: to many cost cutting moves such as the Roemar triplet placed in otherwise good cameras, not enough simplification of the expensive-to-make bodies, lack of vision to where the market was moving. They had nothing to compete with compact SLR's of the 70s.

 

[sevo]

Short answer: Japanese cameras were significantly cheaper for only a minor drop in quality.

Long answer: The elephants in the room are unions, taxes, and uneconomic employment laws.

So why did Japan succeed, hampered by high taxes and a tradition of fiefdom translated into corporate culture that made lay-offs effectively impossible, at least until the nineties crisis? Employment laws or unions did not give German workers a similar status - even less so in the sixties we are talking about...

 

[Sonnar Brian]

This thread is getting more political.

We'll try it off-topic for a bit.

It's interesting to see the age of the person posting their theories. Some of us remember when the German camera companies set the stage, and witnessed the Japanese cameras evolve in the 60s and the decline of the German counterpart. By 1975, German cameras disappeared from most camera departments of places like Korvettes, Sears, and Penney's. But you could come in and buy a full Nikon, Canon, or Pentax outfit. From me working behind the counter.

 

[citizen99]

(snip)
The Japanese business community is also well-known (almost to the point of stereotyping) for innovation. Just remember: as late as the 1870s, Japan was still basically a late iron age society on par with the Roman Empire with horses as the major mode of transportation and swords being used to settle disputes. Within 30 years, they defeated a major western power in an all-out slugfest between top-of-the-line battleships (Russo-Japanese War) and helped the West put down anti-western rebellion (Boxer Rebellion). This is a prime example of the nation's ability to innovate over a very short time.
(snip)

And, the major battleships used by the Japanese in that war were built for them in the UK.
Oh, so what happened to the British shipbuilding industry? - why, rather like what happened to the camera & motorcycle industries already mentioned, now we just have 'niche market' players, for analogous reasons. 😱

 

[hellomikmik]

Interesting reading.

Japan was just too good in making cameras. War or no war.

They had a special "sensitivity" for tools - from samurai sword culture. Before they made swords later they made cameras.

My japanese teacher who saw Hiroshima cloud said to me that when they saw what kind of cameras americans were carrying just after the war they were asking themselves how came Japan lost.

 

[errorlogin]

Another interesting article about the fall of the german camera industry after the war:

http://www.lausch41.com/hochmut.htm

For me, there is one more reason, besides the ones that are already said here:

Mismanagement.

And the Nikon F simply outdated every german camera.