What happened to all the german cameras?

[Peter^]

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And the Nikon F simply outdated every german camera.

I agree fully. The war can't really explain the problem completely. The downfall of the German camera industry came later - in the 60s and 70s, as I understand it. It was plagued by over-engineering, arrogance and insensitivity to market needs.

Let me float a completely heretic idea, and I hope that the RFF Gods will not strike me dead: Maybe part of the downfall was because the German companies held far too long on to the concept of the rangefinder, while the market was moving towards SLRs on the high-end and point-and-shoots on the low end.

Could that be a factor?

 

[rxmd]

Let me float a completely heretic idea, and I hope that the RFF Gods will not strike me dead: Maybe part of the downfall was because the German companies held far too long on to the concept of the rangefinder, while the market was moving towards SLRs on the high-end and point-and-shoots on the low end.

Could that be a factor?

Well played, Sir 😀 However, I doubt it.

It certainly does apply to Leica; their choice of utterly embracing the M and investing massive R&D amounts into building quaint crutches like the Visoflex, rather than developing a proper SLR in time (which they certainly could have) prompted their slide from being one of the powerhouses of camera building in the 1950s, to being an arcane fringe manufacturer on the brink of collapse in the 1970s. They could have been the new Nikon if they had taken SLRs seriously.

But other than that, it's probably not valid. On the low end, German companies built point and shoots all over; and at the high end, Zeiss, for example, made lots of SLRs (in fact they made too many). Their problem was rather a nonexistent product strategy, coupled with a corporate structure that effectively consisted of many independent units making the same things, and a corporate culture that was dominated by cronyism.

 

[jarski]

It certainly does apply to Leica; their choice of utterly embracing the M and investing massive R&D amounts into building quaint crutches like the Visoflex, rather than developing a proper SLR in time (which they certainly could have) prompted their slide from being one of the powerhouses of camera building in the 1950s, to being an arcane fringe manufacturer on the brink of collapse in the 1970s. They could have been the new Nikon if they had taken SLRs seriously.

yes it applies to darling of RFF. Leica's first SLR attempts such as Leicaflex from early -60's until 1980 (when R4 came) have same brickish appeal of M5 😛

about comments of corporate culture going rotten in entire German camera industry, it sounds a bit weird as there were many companies involved. shouldn't owners of those companies get alarmed of profits sink decade after another ?

 

[sevo]

about comments of corporate culture going rotten in entire German camera industry, it sounds a bit weird as there were many companies involved. shouldn't owners of those companies get alarmed of profits sink decade after another ?

"Mismanagement" as a reason is plain wrong. Neglect fits the bill far better. Many of the (former) German camera makers did not fail (as a corporation), but shut down their camera section and moved on to something else - and succeeded there more than they had with cameras. The same goes for the US, UK and French camera industry, by the way - many of them moved on to being armament giants, NASA suppliers or joined the nascent computer industry.

Japan staid on in a de-militarized status long after Germany had returned to supplying tools for the cold war - perhaps their camera makers succeeded because they had to, being locked out from the profitable military-industrial complex?

 

[rxmd]

about comments of corporate culture going rotten in entire German camera industry, it sounds a bit weird as there were many companies involved. shouldn't owners of those companies get alarmed of profits sink decade after another ?

In the 1950s (West) German camera building was a bit of a cottage industry. The big manufacturers were Zeiss, Leica and Rollei, of these Zeiss was the elephant in the room who had swallowed a fair number of other manufacturers (such as Voigtländer).

By the 1970s the cottage industry was largely dead. This has to do with how the market developed. You can slap together a 1950s compact camera fairly easily; optical design isn't complex, you buy a low-end shutter, and the rest is fairly basic mechanical engineering, a bit like building watches except less complex. You can't do the same for a 1970s compact that easily, or for that matter with a SLR with a line of lenses. That takes a lot of R&D and manufacturing investment. So the little companies either closed or were swallowed

I think similar things happened in Japan, except that the companies that swallowed the little shops (essentially themselves often little shops that developed into big ones) were more successful at survival.

The comment about rotten corporate culture mainly applies to Zeiss. Leica and Rollei had their share of problems, such as products designed by engineers who had too little understanding of market trends and customer interests, or getting complacent about well-established products for too long without considering the future, but they did not have the problems of cronyism, competing with themselves and artificial market segmentation that eventually killed Zeiss' camera business. (Actually Rollei did have a fair bit of the latter, I think.)

 

[flip]

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.

Off topic.

You can have the best system for producing the best rice in the world, but when you've run outta rice, you've got no rice. Either accept thinking from below or starve. That was the problem, in my view.

Sadly, much of the youth today can neither subsume their own thinking to the whole nor advance entrepreneurial ideas.

 

[Teuthida]

Well played, Sir 😀 However, I doubt it.

It certainly does apply to Leica; their choice of utterly embracing the M and investing massive R&D amounts into building quaint crutches like the Visoflex, rather than developing a proper SLR in time (which they certainly could have) prompted their slide from being one of the powerhouses of camera building in the 1950s, to being an arcane fringe manufacturer on the brink of collapse in the 1970s. They could have been the new Nikon if they had taken SLRs seriously.

Agreed, to a point. They were late to the SLR game and by the time of the SL most pros had thrown their lot in with Nikon and it wa just too expensive to switch over to a Leicaflex body (IIRC, about twice as expensive as an F) and Leitz optics.

However, the SL was ( and remains) head and shoulders above the F in terms of quality. Built like a tank, ergonomically perfect, and the viewfinder puts the F to shame. IMHO, the best all mechanical SLR ever made.

 

[fireblade]

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

they work in saunas in china? that would be uncomfortable.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Buyers want cheap cameras.As someone said above, a LOT cheaper for only a LITTLE inferior is something most people will go for. And while a Nikon F may be roughly made next to a Contarex, it is a piece of unbelievably clever design: much like a Kalashnikov. Part of the Japanese genius was designing for a mass market, rather than a small, luxury market. The German failure was the mirror image of this genius.

But camera buyers also want jobs so they can afford any cameras. Many fail to make the connection between cheap labour (which Japan supplied, 50-60 years ago, and China supplies now) leading to cheap goods, and the fact that their own salaries have at best stagnated in real terms.

Cheers,

R.