Talk:39mm screw lenses

Cosina / Voigtländer info

The Cosina / Voigtländer info that has been added is nice and useful, but imho it would be better placed in the Voigtländer page, that only contains a very basic chronology, or the Cosina page, that contains some very basic information, and is quite insufficient. We could also create a specific Cosina Voigtländer page if desired. --Rebollo fr 04:39, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

I mostly agree, but I'd have a strong preference for Cosina. While Cosina is of course using the "Voigtländer" name legitimately, that's all it is: the use of a name. (Or, since we're dealing in lenses here, the arbitrary/commercial use of names, plural.) Whatever could be said about the new Cosina-made Zeiss lenses, these "Voigtländer" lenses are made and designed by Cosina, and it seems bizarre to add info about them to the page on a company that exists only in name. -- Hoary 09:27, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

Company names too technical

I think we should not be overly technical about the company names. It is true that Topcon only took the name of "Kabushiki Kaisha Topcon" in 1989, long after it had stopped selling cameras and lenses, and that technically it should be named "Tokyo Kogaku". It is also true that Nikon should be called "Nippon Kogaku" before 1988. I think that the technical details about the naming of the companies are interesting, but belong to the company's page. The reader of this page is not specifically concerned, and we can continue to call these lenses "Nikon" or "Topcon" or "Minolta" like everybody calls them. --Rebollo fr 11:25, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

I'd start by disagreeing that everybody calls them that. They don't. I don't; and while I'm willing to believe that I'm unusual, I find it hard to believe that I'm unique or even very unusual.

It's not as if a lens were only branded "Nikkor" (for example) and only people who were knowledgable or looked up reference works would know that it was made by Nippon Kōgaku. On the contrary, the lens clearly says both "Nikkor" and "Nippon Kogaku", and does so because it would be (for LTM lenses) decades before the company renamed itself Nikon. (And saying that the lens was made by Nikon isn't merely an anachronism but also obscures a good example of an interesting phenomenon: a great number of Japanese camera companies started with one name, thought of another for their cameras, and came to rename themselves after their cameras: Canon, Konica, Nikon, Pentax, Petri, Topcon. The same thing happened elsewhere, of course.)

And yes, Camerapedia is a reference work, isn't it? I thought that a reference work was one that I could rely on for correct information. If I'm not very bright and therefore, say, "Nihon Kōgaku (later Nikon)" is too hard for me to understand, I suppose I can find plenty of dumbed-down alternatives.

We may have different understandings of "technical". Getting the name of the company right to the nearest year or so (let alone the nearest decade!) doesn't strike me as a mere technicality. What I'd call a technical quarrel would be, say, one between "Nippon Kōgaku" (correct transliteration of the name) and "Nippon Kogaku" (the name as it's engraved). -- Hoary 23:42, 10 May 2006 (EDT)