Japanese Carl Zeiss Jena?

[jamaeolus]

This post on the bay has me a bit puzzled.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CARL-ZEISS-24-MM-F-2-8-FOR-OLYMPUS-/331505261807?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4d2f40dcef

Clearly has the Japanese inspection sticker and looks like a Japanese lens of the era. I'm pretty sure Carl Zeiss didn't move the town of Jena to Japan. Rebadged? Scam? Anyone?

[Lloydy]

It's a CZJ lens, but it's a rebadged Japanese lens, probably Cosina made, and not very good at all. Certainly not worth buying for $80, there are great lenses out there for that money.

[wolfhansen]

See here: Maybe Cosina

[y]

[buerokratiehasser]

I don't know about your lens (didn't check) but I do remember that in the economic turmoil after 1990, CZJ went to license their brand name to japanese zoom lenses, yes Vivitar would not be wrong (that's a cheap white label brand itself)

I do remember this from people asking about it after 2000, and images, not from having bought or seen one in 1991

That doesn't mean the lens itself is bad but iirc testers weren't too impressed. It's probably a standard midrange zoom from the 80s, it wouldn't sell for $5 today under its real brand name probably (gosh, another so-so slow 29-86 midrange zoom, yeah, that's really useful, like a sarcasm font)

[paulhofseth]

This brings to mind the "fake lenses" thread. Farming out production of lenses with a once famous name to cheaper producers does not result in fakes, but does intend to lead customers to buy an inferior product. "Label engineering" is well known in the car market.

From a "commercially defined" collection point of view, japanese CZJ -if actually comissioned, bought in and marketed by CZJ should be part of the company history. If only the rights to tha name was sold off and another company continued marketing, th lenses would not belong in a CZJ collection.

From an "optical technology defined" collection point of view, japanese CZJ zooms would not belong unless they had been designed in Jena and just produced and assembled in Japan.

Consider the case of Jaguars over time . The Ford "Mondeo" or something very similar which was slightly changed and labelled as Jaguar: a "genuine fake" made after the demise of BLC, while the Daimler Sovereign with an XK engine was a more benign case of badge engineering, with the enire product designed by the Jaguar team.

p.

[buerokratiehasser]

It's certainly part of history, It think I remember having seen a CZJ ad leaflet for those which someone posted like, 2 years ago?

Doubt there was anything CZJ than the labelling and packaging though. What use would that have been? CZJ didn't do many zooms, the japanese did, they had experience manufacturing their designs (glasses available, how to make aspericals..), CZJ didn't. Plus to make new design, take it into production, de-bug QA, this kind of thing takes 1..2 years and cash CZJ didn't have.

[buerokratiehasser]

See http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic.php?t=64284 describing a 75-300 and some "genuine" zooms (though I remember one that really looked like a vivitar)
Apparently these (fake ones) were even available as AF versions!

[Lightshow]

I have the 28mm version in MD, it's not a crap lens, it's fairly sharp, a touch of barrel distortion, and Zeissy colors.
I also had the 70-210, I really liked it on my Canon 1DIII, I wonder if I sold it too quick when I moved to my NEX-7.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lightshow-photography/tags/czjzeiss70210macro/

[paulhofseth]

In my comment above I forgot to add another important selection principle to those of "commercial history" and "technological history". Satisfaction in use should of course be mentioned. Then, however, both labelling and origin becomes irrelevant, except as clues guiding others with similar taste towards the products.

p.