Tomioka/Yashica/Spiratone

Oct 22, 2016 13:04:47 GMT xkaes said:

Dusting off the 1980's shelves, it appears that the Yashica, Tomioka-made 500mm f8 mirror lens (Yashinon-DX) was also sold as the Spiratone Minitel -- at a substantial discount.  It was apparently an "under the table" sort of thing.  I'll be putting together a message with all the details I can find in the next few days.  I hope you find it interesting.

The Spira company has been around a very long time - certainly since the beginning of the 1940s as a film distributor and developer. When it comes to the Spiratone 500 f8 Minitel, you may find that you have to dedicate a couple of weeks of your life to researching the lens.

There are several different versions out there; Spira commissioned a number of manufacturers to produce the lenses - all originally with T-mounts so they could be adapted to pretty much any camera.  I understand that the Spiratone brand also changed hands a couple of times since the 1960s before it stopped trading at the end of the 1990s.  It is possible that in his initial days as a commissioner of lenses Fred Spira may have approached Tomioka for a T-mount design and, as they already had a good lens produced for their owners Yashica, it may well have formed the basis of the design.  It is worth keeping an eye on the front of the lens as most of the Spiratone reflex lenses used front filters (to keep manufacturing costs low) and the 500 f8 was produced in 72mm and 77mm versions; there may also have been others. 

In additional to the 500 f8 Minitel they also produced the more substantial 500 f8 Mirror-Ultratel version.  Both these lenses had a reputation for low contrast (nowadays not a problem with many corrective software options) with the exception of the Minitel-M version marked as 'Plura-Coat'.  Sadly, only the Ultratel makes a good doorstop as the Minitel is too light.

If your research can show a formal connection between Fred Spira and Yashica, I would be very interested.

Hi xkaes,

Thank you for that. 

Popular Photography usually got their facts right so as suspected, Fred Spira commissioned the Tomioka plant, already Yashica-owned, to produce a low-cost rival to its own lens.  I suppose the Yashica thinking was that they already had the DX version in a C/Y mount and had the ML Reflex under development to replace it so why not get rid of the large amount of excess stock...?  I wonder after reading the article how many C/Y camera owners rushed out to buy the Spiratone with the T adapter and used it instead of the Yashica version...   I would have, especially as according to the article the Spiratone was multi-coated - that must mean that production coincided with the switch on the DX Reflex to multi-coating, probably like that found on the DS-M lenses. 

Do you know the date of the article?  I would expect it to be somewhere between 1979 and 1982. 

What is equally interesting is that the most successful Spiratone 500 f8 was not the Minitel but the Minitel-M.  It was available in a C/Y mount and as the second 'M' implies, even more mini.  This was the lens with the 72mm front filter, unlike the DX-derived Minitel with the 77mm front filter.  I've attached a scan from Popular Photography in June 1983 which shows the details, including the low price; by comparison, the Yashica 500 f8 Reflex was typically around $280 at this time.  That is actually lower than the price quoted in your article for the Spiratone - perhaps an indication of a response to the sales gained by the cheaper lens and Yashica's realisation that selling their own technology to a successful American entrepreneur operating in their biggest market may not have been the brightest idea...