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 the latter was the company name and it would be (for LTM lenses) decades before the company renamed itself Nikon.

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 somebody is so dimwitted that, say, "Nihon Kōgaku (later Nikon)" is too hard for him to understand, I suppose he can find plenty of dumbed-down alternatives to Camerapedia.

We may have different understandings of what's merely "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).

Incidentally, saying that the lens was made by Nikon isn't merely an anachronism, it 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: Rollei, Leica, etc.) -- Hoary 00:58, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

Under company name, or lens name?

Whether or not you agree with me that "Nikon" should here be "Nippon Kōgaku" (with or without macron), if the lenses are listed under this header, then Komura lenses should I think be under Sankyo (again with or without macron. Or if they're under Komura, then Nikkor lenses should be under Nikkor. I think company names are better, because (for example) to split Simlar lenses from Topcor lenses seems needlessly confusing. -- Hoary 01:20, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

Or something. I'm not at all certain that I'm right here and am open to other ideas -- but the existing non-system seems a bit odd. -- Hoary 09:38, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

Organization of this page

This page needs to be better organized, but I am a little lost. Once I tried to make separate pages, one for each manufacturer, and I setup the navigational template for this purpose. But it does not make too much sense to have a separate page for any maker that produced a couple of M39 lenses. A good idea would be to fix a lower limit, let's say 10 different lenses, to create a separate page. All the other makers can stay in this page, or go to something like "Other 39mm screw lenses". While at this we could fix the titles, I finally agree with User:Hoary that the company name is the only viable system. --Rebollo fr 11:45, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

That sounds fair enough. However, I don't think that numbers in themselves matter. For example, as long as nobody feels like writing anything about the Nikkor lenses, I don't see any point in moving them elsewhere. If on the other hand somebody writes a screenful about Yasuhara's single lens, that should go elsewhere.

Incidentally, I'm not at all happy with the title "39mm screw lenses". I think that "LTM" is gradually gaining ground (even among people like myself who don't actually use any Leitz/Leica equipment), and that it's useful for distinguishing between (i) these lenses and (ii) those for the Zenit (and perhaps others as well). -- Hoary 12:05, 16 May 2006 (EDT)