Elan II Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Marc Kurth wrote:
That's actually interesting to me - I always wondered if Kiron or Tokina was making some of the Vivitar lenses that I bought way back when.
Marc
That's the easy part. Vivitar didn't make any of the lenses they branded. They were all made by other companies, even the ones where the design was commissioned by Vivitar. They did very conveniently code each lens to identify the actual manufacturer and assigned the first two digits of the serial number to that code. This is the known list:
06 - Olympus
09 - Cosina
13 - Schneider Optik
22 - Kiron (Kino Precision)
25 - Ozone Optical
28 - Komine
32 - Makinon
33 - Asanuma
37 - Tokina
42 - Bauer
44 - Perkin Elmer (US)
47 - Chinon
51 - Tokyo Trading
56 - Kyoe Schoji
75 - Hoya Optical
81 - Polar
There are a few others that have not been documented, 77 is one of those. I believe 77 is Cosina as well. So again, this is the easy part. The more difficult part is picking out the gems from the hundred plus lenses Vivitar branded. Kiron is the first brand people think of when gems come to mind, with lenses like the 24/2.0 and the 105/2.8 macro, which was also sold under their own brand as as Lester Dine. Tokina's major contribution is the 90/2.5 macro, the famous 'Bokina', as well as many other fine primes like the 17/3.5, and the amazing 35-105/3.5 vari-focal macro-zoom. But to me, the real standout is actually Komine, with lenses like the 200/3.0 (really a 2.8) and the 135/2.3 (again a 2.0) and some fine macro lenses like the 55/2.8 (1:1), 90/2.8 (1:1) and 135/2.8 (1:2).
Btw, to confuse things even further, other brands picked up Vivitar's idea and started to sell some of the same lenses under their name. So you can now find an Elicar, Panagor, or Spiratone lens that has a Vivitar twin and possibly the OEM version on top of that. Anyway, here I go again.. This gives you a decent overview, even though it's only scratching the surface. If you really want to get into it try to find publications by Robert Monaghan. He did more research on the subject that anyone else. His semi abandoned website is at this link:
http://medfmt.8k.com/third/index.html
Edited on Mar 28, 2008 at 08:12 PM
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