Where Do Lenses Get Their Names?

S

Spleenrippa

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The names never cease to astound me. Lens talk sounds crazier than listening to a conversation about exotic Italian cars :p
I've done a couple quick lens history searches, and it doesn't seem to be a "named after designer" thing, so exactly where do all those Noktons, Skopars, Sonnars, Summitars, Biogons, etc get their crazy names?
Just curious :eek:
 
This explains some of the history behind the Zeiss lens names.

Other lens makers, German and Japanese, tended to use similar sounding names, ending their lens names in "-ar," "-or," "-on," etc. Not exactly creative, but they were "borrowing" the lens designs so creativity wasn't exactly their concern.
 
Here's a few:

'Summar', 'Summicron', 'Summilux' same root as 'summit'

'Lux' root = 'light'

'Noct/Nokt" root = 'night'

'Elmax/Elmar' = 'EL (Ernst Leitz) + Max Berek (designer)'

Cheers,

R.
 
As much as I know it started with the Tessar, lenses built the same way got the "ar" as ending. This does not fit for the Novar.
....Voigtländers choice of naming lenses "Skopar" makes Italians chuckle as "scopare" describes the activity that needs o persons to create a new one....(In contrast o Suzuki's Pajero....)
@Xayraa: ROFL!!!!
My RFF- Name? My real name translated just like Spyderman
 
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Roger,

Summar, Summitar, Summicron, Summilux etc all came from the latin "summa", meaning "all that is known", thus "state of the art".

Spider67,

It started with the Protar, before that Zeiss used the descriptive name "Anastigmat" but then registered the trade mark Protar to apply to them, thus started this lens naming business.

There's a certain "spin" in the Zeiss site, however. "Sonnar" was at first a Contessa-Nettel name and was re-used for the Bertele-designed series of lenses for the Contax.
 
xayraa33 said:
She was a Buddhist and it was a statement about something happening at the 33rd chakra said in an excited way.

xay ra a 33
Click to expand...

Your name have 33 in it? Nice.

Back on topic, I know the Summa origin of Leitz lens, but what about the Cron bit? Lux is light, what's cron?
 
Hijacking this threat:

Where do cars get their names?

Where do stars (in the sky, I mean) get their names?

Newly discovered chemical elements, compounds, plants, fauna, ... elementary particles in physics?

Trivia "information" to the foreground, everyone!
 
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