On Sep 25, 2007, at 9:10 AM, Amita Guha wrote: >> Godfrey, you say that Panasonic does manufacturing. Does it include >> the lenses too? If so, basically it means that when a lens on >> Panasonic camera says Leica it is essentially Panasonic made. Or may >> be I misunderstand you?! > > Panasonic makes the electronics but Leica makes the glass for all > Panny or Leica cameras as far as I know. Nate has had 2 Panny digicams > and I have the Leica D-Lux 3 and they've all been labeled as having > Leica glass.
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. More specifically, Leica designs the lenses' optics then works with Panasonic on the manufacturing process. The glass lens elements are delivered from Leica to Panasonic, then Panasonic's production line assembles them with the mounts and electronics required. Products that are certified and branded with Leica's name, whether in the fixed lens digicams or for the DSLRs, have been manufactured after meeting Leica and Panasonic's agreed upon performance specification. A Leica controlled Development and Quality team is housed at Panasonic's manufacturing and engineering facilities. Post-manufacture, camera and lens units to be sold in Leica packaging with the Leica brand name and warranty are shipped to Leica, Germany for further, post production QA and packaging. These units have to meet higher quality control standards, a greater percentage of them are given reworks or returned to the factory for reclamation. It's one of the reasons why the Leica models have a higher price, aside from the brand's perceived market value-add. 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 ... ! This is quite similar to the relationship that Zeiss and Kyocera had with regard to the Contax line of 35mm and 645 cameras/lenses, and similar to what Zeiss does with Sony today. Zeiss also has relationships with Cosina for lens and camera production on the Zeiss Ikon camera and lens line, and the new Zeiss SLR lenses for Nikon, Pentax, etc. "Business as usual" in today's global marketplace. Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
