teddoman wrote: DavidBM wrote: teddoman wrote: freaklikeme wrote: Fred Miranda wrote:
We are really lacking 35mm lenses now.
Zeiss, where is the Loxia 35/2 II? (Sonnar formula)
I get the impression the three main Zeiss production partners (Sony, Tamron, and Cosina) saw little value in moving forward with new Zeiss-branded or co-branded lenses. All three have done just fine, if not better, marketing under their own house brands without the price of using the blue badge.
Cosina Voigtlander is also branded. So Cosina is still paying to use a well-known photography brand, but maybe there is something preferable about the deal they got with Voigtlander and they haven't felt the need to pay up for the Zeiss name.
I think there is a difference here: Cosina purchased the trademark, and uses it as their own, with no suggestion that someone else is involved. There is no Voigltaender these days other than Cosia-Voigtlaender, at lest in lens manufacture.
In the Case of Zeiss branding one gets the sense that they are paying Zeiss in an ongoing way, and it's a little misleading, as people often imagine Zeiss is involved in design.
I don't really know much about this other than what I googled, but apparently the Voigtlander brand is owned by Ringfoto and Cosina still has to pay them a licensing fee just like they have done to Zeiss.
This wikipedia article describes the Cosina relationship to Voigtlander the same.
Ringfoto owned the name; but they are just a distrintutor. Ringfoto certainly still owns and uses the name *for some product classes* and they are German distributor for Cosina.
But information is divided as to whether Ringfoto sold the name **for use in lenses and camera bodies** to CV or licenses it.
In either case it is a very different situation than with Zeiss. Zeiss still exists as an optics company, and selling its name to others
can give the impression that they are involved in those products.
Voigtländer on the other hand had not existed as an optics maker or camera maker (except as a brand name used by Cosina) for a very very long time. Rigfoto is a mere distributor and and at one point were the residual owner of some trademarks.
If you go to Ringfoto's "Voigtländer" pages, you see only products designed and manufactured by Cosina.
This is very unlike the situation with Sony and Zeiss, where Sony just pay for the name (sometimes claiming Zeiss help with QC sometimes not), and a bit unlike the situation with Cosina and Zeiss, where Zeiss did the design to a large degree, contracted manufacturing design and manufacture to Cosina, and distributed and marketed the lens themselves for the main part.
