What motivates lens manufacturers?

[John]

I am curious about what could be motivating companies with regards to manufacturing lenses for rangefinder cameras. My limited knowledge includes Cameraquest, Dante Stella, Erwin Puts, plus our forum.
For example:
How many of us would rush to pick up a brand new CV 50 Heliar 3.5 collapsible in LTM and/or M mount?
How many would scramble to acquire a Nikon 50 1.4 in Leica and/or Contax mount?
Your choice of hard to find desirable lenses - 35's etc.?
How about your favourite reissue from Canon with improved formulae and coatings?
Maybe you could get vintage design, coating, performance, optionally?
Cosina made the above a few years ago and stopped. Nikon did too for their limited edition reissue. Canon has the cash to do anything they want. The volumes we would buy would not make or break the above companies, but if they tried I presume they would be able to profit to some extent? 😎
Oui? / No? / Maybe? 🙂

 

[David Goldfarb]

Cooke has done some of this in the large format world with their reissue of the XVa convertible lens and the PS945 soft focus lens based on the Pinkham-Smith Visual Quality IV lens.

Cooke makes very high end cine lenses that cost significantly more than, say, that big Leica collection that keeps popping up on eBay (did it ever sell?), so these LF lenses are perhaps prestige lenses, a repayment of a debt to history, and a labor of love that probably earns them a small profit and might be interesting to them from a research point of view. For instance, they made a soft focus attachment for their cine lenses based on the PS945 (and for about the same price).

The same might be said for Schneider's Fine-Art XXL lenses for ultra-large format.

 

[Finder]

Those lenses would most likely lose money for the company. Most companies find it hard to justify a product when they know it will be in the red. While some products are show pieces and beef up the product lineup (like large telephoto lenses), these don't fall into that catagory.

As far as the Cooke and Schneider lenses, they are priced to sit in stock. Those companies factor in that they are not going to sell out for a while and the price reflects that. The first product run may also be the last if they sit too long. Part of the price also reflects a limited product run as well.

 

[John]

Maybe I am just a dreamer or wishful thinker. Lots of rangefinder stuff moves through ebay and the prices reflect demand.
I never really stopped to think that certain cine lenses might cost upwards of $50,000? I guess a lot of films can afford a budget of this amount.

 

[David Goldfarb]

Cine lenses are often owned only by big rental houses or Panavision, and are rented, so sometimes they can even run over $100K. They just operate on a different order of magnitude. 4" glass filters can run a few hundred dollars. A tripod head can cost $14K.

I think the first run of the Cooke XVa sold out and they're taking orders for a second.

The PS945 seems like a much harder sell at a around $2500, since you could get an 8x10" camera and a couple of classic soft focus lenses for that, and arguably have a more interesting result than you would with a modern version of the Pinkham-Smith lens on a 4x5" camera, but the modern shutter is a convenience worth having to some.