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on Oct 5, 2023 0:23:17 GMT
Last Edit: Oct 5, 2023 0:23:52 GMT by simplejoy
While I feel like I've gotten a better theory what it could have been made for, I still struggle with the N.J.K. ... What if the N. stands for Nagano? Yashica/Tomioka were located there, correct? J. might be for Japan, but what would the K. stand for in that case? And why would that be important to note on the lens itself, if it was indeed a prototype.
And apart from that, do you think the M= stands for Model? Model=Tominon
If it stands for Manufacturer it would make more sense to add Tomioka after the =. I'm don't think Tominon means anything in terms of lens design though... as Tomioka seems to have used it for lenses with 4 elements, 6 elements, 8 elements etc.
Tomioka certainly had a quite chaotic way to label their lenses... 😱
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on Oct 8, 2023 20:15:26 GMT
Last Edit: Oct 8, 2023 20:18:05 GMT by lumiworx
Well, I don't recall seeing an equals symbol used on a lens in any part of its description, so that alone has me wondering what that symbology might mean. However, when it comes to the "Tominon" name on the lens surround, there's only one possible conclusion for me... that Tomioka was, at the very least, the manufacturer, and possibly it was also the designer and/or glass formulator. I'm hesitant to attribute anything to an "=" symbol without seeing some other time it was similarly used on another lens. A few searches for the same might shed some light on it, so I'll peek and poke a bit more.
It's quite possible that the Zeiss S-Planar 60mm was also made by Tomioka, and if there were dates engraved anywhere to pin down a timeline, it may have been produced in the same period as the Contax T* lenses, under either Yashica's tenure or later under Kyocera. My hunch is that it was somewhere in the former period, but that's only a hunch. Depending on how deep and how complete the eventual data dump is into the Zeiss archive, some of the details might come to light on the more obscure process lenses, including the 60mm and even the IBM monster, if it's really thorough.
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on Oct 9, 2023 22:43:32 GMT
Posted: Oct 9, 2023 22:43:32 GMT
Well, I don't recall seeing an equals symbol used on a lens in any part of its description, so that alone has me wondering what that symbology might mean. However, when it comes to the "Tominon" name on the lens surround, there's only one possible conclusion for me... that Tomioka was, at the very least, the manufacturer, and possibly it was also the designer and/or glass formulator. I'm hesitant to attribute anything to an "=" symbol without seeing some other time it was similarly used on another lens. A few searches for the same might shed some light on it, so I'll peek and poke a bit more.
It's quite possible that the Zeiss S-Planar 60mm was also made by Tomioka, and if there were dates engraved anywhere to pin down a timeline, it may have been produced in the same period as the Contax T* lenses, under either Yashica's tenure or later under Kyocera. My hunch is that it was somewhere in the former period, but that's only a hunch. Depending on how deep and how complete the eventual data dump is into the Zeiss archive, some of the details might come to light on the more obscure process lenses, including the 60mm and even the IBM monster, if it's really thorough.
Thanks a lot for your valuable input! The = symbol is quite common on lenses, however usually in combination with the focal length. Zeiss for example regularly uses something like f=32 mm on their lenses. The weird thing is the M in combination with the = as well as the red color it is in. From my experience red is often used for indicating coatings on the front of the lens. Most popular of course in the Zeiss T* but Tomioka also used it for example here: I think that the red C. and MC might indeed indicate Coated or Multi Coated in those samples. Again though, Tomioka is all over the place with their labeling... the E36 series alone has probably between 5 and 10 different versions of inscriptions. It almost looks like they just printed on that lens what the technician in charge vaguely remembered from the past 😂 Like a "game of telephone/chinese whispers in labeling". If the M= has indeed any relation to coating it should indicate Multicoating. However I'm not sure this prototype lens actually has Multicoating... At least it doesn't feature the bluish tones of what I perceive to be the finished product it probably was a prototype for (I'll probably get to that in the article, because I still need to do some more comparisons to make sure). I'm fairly confident both the significantly earlier Zeiss S-Planar 60 mm f/4 (1963) as well as the later Zeiss S-Planar 60 mm f/2.8 (1974) were indeed calculated at Oberkochen in Germany. The latter may have been manufactured in Japan as well, but they feature both of those lenses in all relevant detail in the Zeiss Archive, which I doubt they would if it was a mainly Tomioka-developed lens. The former was too early anyway. One thing which I thought of in the meantime, is that the N.J.K. doesn't necessarily have to be English. If it was part of the collaboration process with Zeiss, it's possible that those letters stand for German words. Technical terms with K seem more common in the German language, because it's used there regularly in cases where the letter C is rather used in English. Control = Kontrolle Clone = Klon Compact = Kompakt etc. While I haven't thought in-depth about it, it could very well stand for something like "Neue Japanische Kooperation" (New Japanese Cooperation) or "... Konzept/Kontrolle" (... Concept/Control). Of course those are just unrealistic examples, but the possibility is still there. I would be surprised if the Tominon IBM process lens had anything to do with Zeiss. It seems like a thing Tomioka just made for a specific industrial application. Zeiss made a similar lens (the S-Tessar 240 mm, which was made for a photocopying machine, however the 300 mm variant is way more commonly found...), but if your impression that the Tominon IBM has indeed 6 elements, it doesn't have too much in common.
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on Oct 11, 2023 20:49:19 GMT
Posted: Oct 11, 2023 20:49:19 GMT
I would consider the '=' symbol as part of the lens formula when it's used as "f=60mm", as opposed to being part of the branding or model description, as it is in "M=Tominon". I should have clarified that better. So yes, they most definitely do show up rather often in that context.
And... thinking about what the order of letters might mean, and the question of who's involved, if indeed, the letters are some kind of amalgam of makers, there may be another contender for the 'K', being Komine. I don't have a large base of German lenses to pull possibilities from, my guess is that makers from Japan would be less likely to use anything other than English letters and terms, even when the resulting buyer/contractor is German, i.e., the Zeiss T* lenses -BUT- that might be competely backwards for process lenses, where maker/tech may prefer their native language. Kinda seems like contract details are needed to help with that aspect.
Something else struck me too. Could it be possible that the M=Tominon only refers to the Multi coating as being one applied by Tomioka, and other parts/processes were made/done by others. As this is basically a process lens and the only persons likely to ever open a machine and see it and/or repair or replace it, are the maker of the machine or repair techs. There's little incentive in making any of the markings mean anything from a marketing standpoint, as these would never be presented for public viewing, and any details offered from reading them may only make tech sense. Insert new or replace according to marked specs for a specific use case.
If that were a possibility and 3 or 4 or more makers had their hand in it, the N.J.K. could be Nikon Japan Komine (or Kino, or, etc...) w/ a Tominon coating.
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on Oct 12, 2023 23:14:06 GMT
Posted: Oct 12, 2023 23:14:06 GMT
I would consider the '=' symbol as part of the lens formula when it's used as "f=60mm", as opposed to being part of the branding or model description, as it is in "M=Tominon". I should have clarified that better. So yes, they most definitely do show up rather often in that context.
And... thinking about what the order of letters might mean, and the question of who's involved, if indeed, the letters are some kind of amalgam of makers, there may be another contender for the 'K', being Komine. I don't have a large base of German lenses to pull possibilities from, my guess is that makers from Japan would be less likely to use anything other than English letters and terms, even when the resulting buyer/contractor is German, i.e., the Zeiss T* lenses -BUT- that might be competely backwards for process lenses, where maker/tech may prefer their native language. Kinda seems like contract details are needed to help with that aspect.
Something else struck me too. Could it be possible that the M=Tominon only refers to the Multi coating as being one applied by Tomioka, and other parts/processes were made/done by others. As this is basically a process lens and the only persons likely to ever open a machine and see it and/or repair or replace it, are the maker of the machine or repair techs. There's little incentive in making any of the markings mean anything from a marketing standpoint, as these would never be presented for public viewing, and any details offered from reading them may only make tech sense. Insert new or replace according to marked specs for a specific use case.
If that were a possibility and 3 or 4 or more makers had their hand in it, the N.J.K. could be Nikon Japan Komine (or Kino, or, etc...) w/ a Tominon coating.
Good points - a lot of that sounds reasonable! I particularly agree, that the likelyhood of N.J.K. being anything but English letters seems very low. Because you mentioned Komine (which is such a strange company, seemingly almost without any real documentation...) I remembered another company which used the name "Kominar" for some of their lenses: Nitto Kogaku. If what I read is correct they may have worked with Yashica, so they certainly seem like another (probably more likely) candidate for a possible meaning of N.J.K. than Nikon. Here's another discovery I made recently, which has developed into a theory about the actual mass-produced lens this might have been a prototype for: My sample of the Tominon 60 mm f/4 N.J.K. is in a pretty worn-down state and misses its aperture blades. Thus it's always wide open. When I wanted to compare it to the similarly looking Zeiss S-Planar 60/4 I therefore quickly realized that it actually seems to be a f/2.8 lens. (The S-Planar might be as well, because it clearly has some kind of internal limiting baffle, but that's beside the point....). With those specs in mind another Tomioka-made lens sprung to mind immediately, the Macro-Yashinon 60 mm f/2.8
Comparing the images those two lenses produce, looking at the dimensions and very closely at the reflections, I'm getting more and more confident, that the mystery Tominon lens I got is an early prototype of the Macro-Yashinon. I'm not sure if that opens up new possibilities for the meaning of the N.J.K. letters, the M= (perhaps "Macro") etc. It certainly brings two more brands to mind: Mamiya and Ricoh, because as far as I know this lens has sold by those as well. Maybe you have some ideas...
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on Oct 24, 2023 16:36:21 GMT
Posted: Oct 24, 2023 16:36:21 GMT
And don't leave Sears, Revue, and several other labels out of the list of Tominon lenses.
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on Oct 24, 2023 23:05:35 GMT
Posted: Oct 24, 2023 23:05:35 GMT
And don't leave Sears, Revue, and several other labels out of the list of Tominon lenses. Well... apart from some mention as brands/labels I pretty much have to leave them out of the article, because it's not going to be about regular taking lenses at all. And as far as I know none of those had any Tomioka-made enlarging/repro lenses for sale under their own labels, correct?
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on Oct 31, 2023 14:18:48 GMT
Posted: Oct 31, 2023 14:18:48 GMT
I don't know anything different.
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on Oct 31, 2023 20:50:23 GMT
Posted: Oct 31, 2023 20:50:23 GMT
I don't know anything different. Thanks! Though - as I've recently learned, when I found my first ever "Mamiya/Sekor" labeled (35 film format) enlarging lens - things can change quickly! Because I certainly wasn't expecting to find that one...
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on Oct 31, 2023 20:55:00 GMT
Posted: Oct 31, 2023 20:55:00 GMT
While I feel like I've gotten a better theory what it could have been made for, I still struggle with the N.J.K. ... What if the N. stands for Nagano? Yashica/Tomioka were located there, correct? J. might be for Japan, but what would the K. stand for in that case? And why would that be important to note on the lens itself, if it was indeed a prototype. What about Nagano Japan Koshina? Or some variant of that? Someone reminded me recently that a lot of things are pointing towards some ties between Tomioka and Cosina and that the latter might have been a source of excellent optical glass, long before they were known as a lens maker. Does anyone here know if Tomioka might have sourced some of their materials/parts from Cosina?
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on Nov 2, 2023 10:29:13 GMT
Posted: Nov 2, 2023 10:29:13 GMT
For the upcoming article on Tomioka enlarging/industrial lenses, I've prepared a (sloppy) timeline. Because all of you here are way more knowledgeable on the matter, I would really appreciate it, if you could take a look and let me know what's missing/wrong/redundant or if you have any ideas how to group things differently etc. As mentioned before I'm only mentioning taking lenses to give some context, but because it's not a big part of the article, I want to keep those to a minimum (not go into the distinctions of when or what was produced for whom), so the big block of OEM/3rd party lenses (are those terms correct here?) is an attempt at that and does of course omit a lot of relevant distinctions etc. There are also a couple of assumptions in there (for example the transfer of lens production to Cosina etc.), so where it won't be possible to give a clear answer or point in time, I'm going to mention that in the article. Just realized that the cooperation with Zeiss isn't placed correctly (according to official information it started in 1974?) - I'll have to adjust that. I really hope you're willing to help me out here in creating a somewhat consistent overview!
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on Nov 7, 2023 23:37:52 GMT
Posted: Nov 7, 2023 23:37:52 GMT
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on Nov 7, 2023 23:55:05 GMT
Posted: Nov 7, 2023 23:55:05 GMT
Thanks - that‘s a great looking timeline! Excellent work!
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on Nov 23, 2023 16:19:20 GMT
Posted: Nov 23, 2023 16:19:20 GMT
Great graph. You might want to add another red line -- delineating when Yashica started making cameras (1954?). My understanding is that they always used Tominon lenses from the start, and that they only used Tominon (until Kyocera/Cosina) -- but that might not be completely accurate.
Also, I was unaware of any Mamiya / Sekor enlarging lenses except the ENLAHEAD with 25mm f3.5 (they made five versions) for 16mm (10x14mm) film. Can you provide details on their other enlarging lenses?
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on Nov 23, 2023 22:09:29 GMT
Posted: Nov 23, 2023 22:09:29 GMT
Great graph. You might want to add another red line -- delineating when Yashica started making cameras (1954?). My understanding is that they always used Tominon lenses from the start, and that they only used Tominon (until Kyocera/Cosina) -- but that might not be completely accurate. Also, I was unaware of any Mamiya / Sekor enlarging lenses except the ENLAHEAD with 25mm f3.5 (they made five versions) for 16mm (10x14mm) film. Can you provide details on their other enlarging lenses? I've also been very surprised to see that... however I can confirm it's a 35mm format enlarging lens, with somewhat unassuming 50 mm f/3.5 specs, very likely a 4/3 Tessar design, featuring an interesting rounded square aperture and from the inscription clearly a Setagaya/Mamiya made lens: Here are some captures I took with it: Capturing the essence by simple.joy, on Flickr Get with the times! by simple.joy, on Flickr More pixels to fill creative holes... by simple.joy, on Flickr Transforming taste info pixels by simple.joy, on Flickr I like it - seems like a pretty decent lens. So far that's the only one I've seen. No idea if there are other focal lengths and if it was ever produced in any significant numbers.
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