On Sep 25, 2007, at 11:30 AM, Boris Liberman wrote: >> ...In simple terms the answer to Boris' question is yes: Panasonic is >> manufacturing the lenses used in both Panasonic and Leica digital >> cameras. Is this a great surprise? Leica has had their lenses >> manufactured by Minolta, Tamron and others in the past. The >> manufacture of complex mechanical-electro-optical devices is a global >> business. > > That's kind of unusual, at least to me. I thought that the lens > manufacture process was more of a sacred cow (trade and technical > secrets) for big names in camera business. After all, Panasonic is > more > known as manufacturer of electronics, not the lens maker. > > But yes of course, Leica could teach Panasonic how to produce lenses. > >> Modern 4/3 System interchangeable lenses and compact digital camera >> manufacture is very complex and requires a fully integrated approach >> to the manufacturing/assembly process to be profitable and produce >> consistently good units. There are a lot of electronics in even the >> 4/3 system lenses ... each of my Olympus and Panasonic/Leica lenses >> has servomotors to drive both aperture and focusing mechanisms, a cpu >> and flash memory storage to handle the camera-lens control operation, >> etc. The classical image of a lens making craftsman with a lathe, >> grinder and optical bench are long past ... ! > > Yes of course. But yet again, the optical formulas and some other > tricks > that may need to be applied are as important as ever. Correct me if > I am > wrong but both formulas for T* and SMC coatings are still well guarded > secrets...
Panasonic is not a manufacturer of optical glass or coatings, nor are they noted for optical design expertise (although they do have some resources in this direction ... remember that Panasonic has been delivering a line of high quality video equipment, professional cameras and recording/editing devices, for many years). That's why they collaborate with Leica on optical and still camera design, and with Olympus as well. There are certainly some trade secrets (and more importantly expertise in design and imaging performance) in the manufacture of lenses that live in the domain of a manufacturers' branding. But these things are shared above the "secret" level ... or with binding contracts ... when companies are collaborating to allow efficient manufacture as required. For instance, Leica may produce the lens elements on their own, coatings and cemented assemblies, that Panasonic then integrates into the manufacturing process. Panasonic doesn't have to know all the formulations of the glass and coatings to understand the mount assembly required, all they need is the specifics of how the mount must be dimensioned, etc. Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
