Zeiss Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Zeiss is a German manufacturer of lenses and other optical systems, located in Oberkochen with an important subsidiary in Jena. Carl Zeiss is a subsidiary of the Carl Zeiss Foundation of which also Schott Glass located in Jena, is part.The company is named after its founder, the German optician Carl Zeiss (1816-1888).
Innovations
- Tessar® lens: from Greek 'tessares' ('four') and patented in 1904, this lens was invented by Dr. Paul Rudolph and featured four glass elements. Tessars were original fixed focal length, typically normal lenses. Further development yielded longer focal length telephoto lenses, and in 2002 Kyocera produced the T4 Zoom 35mm camera, equipped with the 28-70mm Vario-Tessar® T* f/4.5-8.0 lens, the first zoom Tessar.
- T* coating: a multi-layered antireflective coating for lenses. Pioneered by Zeiss, the technology was then further expanded in a joint venture with Rollei to yield 'HFT' lenses, sold under the Rollei name. According to Zeiss, there is no detectable difference between the two, and that HFT was developed in response to the low ouput volume plant Zeiss was capable at the time.
Reputation
Now over 100 years old, Zeiss continues to be associated with high-quality (and therefore expensive) optical lenses. Zeiss lenses are generally thought to be elegant (the Tessar, for example), well-constructed (metal parts continue to feature dominantly, in an age of increasingly plastic components), yielding high quality images. Zeiss believes that its lenses are sharp "wide open" (i.e. operated at the maximum aperture, lenses commonly are sharpest at a few apertures, typically a range in the middle varying on format).
Zeiss licensing allows its technologies to be manufactured by third party companies and indeed a great many have done so, including Kyocera as previously mentioned, Hasselblad (a prominent name in its own right), Rollei, Sony and Alpa. Notably absent from this list are Canon and Nikon, who by and large produce their own lenses.
The mirror reflex camera for example is born in Dresden, later ther were (also) Carl Zeiss Jena (east) and Carl Zeiss Oberkochem (west).
Until world war two Zeiss Ikon, together with dozens of other brands and factories in Dresden represented an important part of the world´s largest camera production location. After the war, bringing a lot of destruction, these firms recovered soon (VEB Zeiss Ikon) and later were splitted and united but kept being well known for an enormous amount of world patents. Already before the war they invented the world´s first slr camera (the Kine Exakta) and the first minature camera with good pciture quality. After a total economic collapse following Germanies reunification they came back onto the market. Since the 1990s these firms in and around Dresden developed to a broader technology network with several products like 3D-LCD screens and car industry products but they still produce cameras, PENTACON, PRAKTICA (their main camera brand today) and special use lenses (e.g.EXAKTA), CONTAX (this brand belongs to Zeiss today) for example, and for more international brands, even for space projets.
After the war Zeiss partly moved over also to Jena, the South Western German town of Oberkochem and also Braunschweig.
Today there are arguable mainly three companies with Zeiss Ikon tradition. Zeiss Germany, a quality brand still, Ikon from Finland and Sweden which bought the western German Zeiss Ikon AG, Pentacon/Praktica/Exakta as some of the Dresden camera brands which are rather famous in the former east block. Only the eastern Zeiss Ikon stayed independent. Jenoptik is as label not much related to Zeiss Germany which does also produce in Jena. There are some Asian firms still allowed to use the brand Exakta, probably this will be changed for quality reasons.
The following milestones were found out about only Praktica alone.
2004 Praktica starts the Luxmedia digital camera series and presents an 1 Gigapixel panorama film camera during the Photokina fair.Zeiss Ikon history
2001 Start of series production of a new scanner generation called Scan 3000 based on a fast Fire Wire interface
2000 Shipping of the first measurement systems equipped with features for professional electronical imaging
2000 Finalization of a research with IKTS institute in Dresden and manufacturing of the first ceramic injection moulding tool for KS injection moulding shops (volumes up to 1.000 pieces)
1999 Additions to the Scan2000 system with models: with adapters for most known cameras, with M39 lenses for repro, with bellow and M39 mount
1999 Dr. Richard Koo is making a documentation about the history of the PRAKTICA camera for the japanese TV
1999 Shipping the 35.000th camera of type BX20S
1998 Taking responsibility for sales of EXAKTA products
1998 Proceeding development of the digital printing plate expore system: the PENTACON CtP for the Speedmaster size. Introduction of the Scan 2000 - presented at the Photokina
1998 PENTACON GmbH Photo and Precision Mechanics takes over the operative business of Jos.Schneider Precision Mechanics Dresden
1996 PRAKTICA Color Scan - the beginning of a new generation of scanner cameras and digital printing plate expore based on laser
technology - both shown at the Photokina
1994 Introduction of the first PRAKTICA-B/W scanners at the Photokina (featured with the saxony design award) and development of a 'digital data back' für the mirror reflex camera BX20s
1993 Development of camera systems for special purposes with programmable data exposure on films
1993 Starting development of new output devices for pre print processing
1993 Introduction of a new mirror reflex camera for the image format 24 x 18 mm (72 images on a film) and development of video finders as a supplementation to the PRAKTICA-SRK product line
1992 Jos.Schneider Precision Mechanics GmbH&Co.KG continues using brand PRAKTICA by the introduction of the PRAKTICA BX20s
1991 Foundation of the Jos. Schneider Precision Mechanics GmbH & Co. KG
1990 Pentacon Dresden GmbH is going to be liquidated
1969 PRAKTICA LLC is the first monocular miniature-mirror-reflex camera with electrical diaphragm simulation between interchangeable lenses and camera body (world novelity) by the VEB Pentacon Dresden)
1965 PRAKTICA mat by VEB Pentacon Dresden is the first miniature-mirror-reflex-camera with TTL exposure measurement in Europe.
1959 Merger of the 'Dresdner Kamerabetriebe' (Camera Manufacturing of Dresden) to 'VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden' (VEB Pentacon Dresden since 1964)
1956 PRAKTICA FX2 by VEB Kamera-Werke Dresden-Niedersedlitz is the first miniature-mirror-reflex-camera with camera body inside releasing of diaphragm (world novelity)
1950 EXAKTA Varex by Ihagee Kamerawerk AG is the first monocular miniature-mirror-reflex-camera with interchangeable view-finder elements (world novelity)
1949 PRAKTICA monocular miniature-mirror-reflex camera with lens mounting M42x1
1949 Contax S: first monocular miniature-mirror-reflex camera with build in pentagonal prism viewfinder (world novelity) introduced by MECHANIK Zeiss Ikon VEB, at that time a 'state-owned' company.
1945 Heavy desctruction of the 'Dresdner Kamerabetriebe' (Camera Manufacturing of Dresden) through the bomb attacks on Februrary, 13th/14th 1945
1936 Kine-Exakta: first monocular miniature-mirror-reflex camera (world novelity) introduced by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co.
1935 Contaflex: first binocular miniature mirror reflex camera with integrated exposure meter (world novelity) introduced by Zeiss-Ikon AG
1933 EXAKTA 4 x 6,5 introduced by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co.
1926 Merging of four camera manufacturers from Dresden (e.g.. Ernemann AG und ICA AG) to Zeiss-Ikon AG becomes the biggest camera manufacturer in Europe with 3400 employees
1924 Objektive Ernostar 1:1,8 (world novelity) by Ernemann AG
1924 ER-NOX with objektiv Ernostar 1:2,0 (world novelity) by Ernemann AG
1923 Inauguration of the 48m high tower building of the Ernemann AG (see photography on the Pentacon GmbH page)
1919 Foundation of the camera shop of Benno Thorsch and Paul Guthe
1912 Foundation of the Industrie- und Handelsgesellschaft m.b.H., named Ihagee Kamerawerk GmbH since 1914
1906 The Hüttig-AG is becoming the biggest camera manufacturer in Europe with more than 800 employees
1903 The Ernemann-Kino (Kino=Cinema) uses 17,5mm One-hole-filmstripes for getting and displaying movies. The word Kino (cinema) has been born
1903 Bosco mirror camera for rolled films 9x9 by the Wünsche AG
1897/98 Foundationof the Aktiengesellschaft für Camera-Fabrikation Heinrich Ernemann in Dresden;
Foundation of the Aktiengesellschaft für photographische Industrie Emil Wünsche in Dresden
1896 Zeus-mirror reflex camera with plate magazin as first monocolar mirror-reflex-camera from Dresden by the company Richard Hüttig & Sohn
1887 Foundation of the camera manufacturing Richard Hüttig in Dresden