Sankor lenses - Nissin Optical

[luisalegria]

http://www.regionfilm.ru/linz/Sankor_Lenses.pdf

True source of the "Sankor" lenses, possibly.

These seem to be the people who made the very common anamorphic projection and taking lenses.

The Nissin connection seems to go pretty far back, into the 1960's anyway.

I did spot this some years ago -

http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic.php?t=18234&view=previous

- but for some reason I later associated them with Sankyo, the cine camera/projector maker, probably because someone spotted a "Sankor" lens on a Sankyo cine product.

For all I know there may have been some relation.

Since "Sankor" was a registered trademark its unlikely any other Japanese maker would have stepped on their toes, or they on anyone elses, for global distribution of projection and anamorphic lenses as well as other lenses, so odds are very good that Nissin was the owner of the Sankor trademarks for both the projection/anamorphic lenses and the SLR lenses.

The "Sankor" trademark seems to have lapsed and there is a trademark registration by a Sanko Optical as of either 1977 or 1992. Who knows, what combination of spinoffs and mergers went on in that time. There is still a Sanko Optical.

There are dozens of Japanese companies containing the names (in English transliteration) of "Sankyo" and "Nissin", so nothing here is going to be straightforward.