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Henry
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 09:00 pm: | 
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Well into my evening brandy an old question reappears in my mind...
What the heck does those strange names mean that Leica uses for their lenses. Names like Elmarit, Summicron, etc. Winfried, you hail from Germany, can you shed some light on the matter?
Henry |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 12:09 am: |
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All I know is that the first Leitz photo lens was called 'Elmax'. EL are the initials of Ernst Leitz, Max was the first name of the lens designer , Max Berek (who did not just design photo optics, there is also the well known Berek condensor arrangement used for microscopes). Only a few lenses were made with Elmax engraving, it was changed soon to Elmar, probably since -ar was a 'traditional' ending for lens names. Elmarit etc. were derived from Elmar.
Many other lens names have their roots in latin and/or greec language. 'Summus' means 'highest' or 'best' in latin. 'Cron' is similar to the english word 'crown' or the german word 'Krone' which has the same meaning. I think there was also a greek goddess called Kronos. Summilux: lux is the latin word for light. Noctilux: nox (the genitiv is noctis) is the latin word for night.
Maybe someone else can help with lens names of greek origin (i.e. antique greek - the recent greek language is quite different from the old one), since greek classes did not exist any more on the college I visited. |
Mark Wood
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 02:43 am: |
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Many of the Leica history books discuss the origin of the names. The only one I can remember is "Hektor" which was named after lens designer, Max Berek's dog! |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 02:47 am: |
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More lens name trivia: Many lenses have an 'Anastigmat' or 'Orthostigmat' (Steinheil) designator. 'Stigma' is the greek word for 'dot' or 'spot'. A- or an- is the preamble to negate a word in greek, or to turn it into its opposite meaning. So A-stigmat would be a lens that does NOT show an undistorted image of a spot. An-A-Stigmat is a lens which does the opposite, i.e. which does NOT show a DIStorted image of a spot. 'Ortho-' means 'correct' or 'right', so an Orthostigmat is a lens which gives a correct (i.e. undistorted) image of a spot. |
Ezio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 04:57 am: |
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Winfried: Kronos was the son of the primigenial god, Uranus (whom he killed at ate) and the father of Zeus, but he was very much a male - that is, until Zeus proceeded to, hum, chop that part off. Not that this has anything to do with lenses' name. As another bit of trivia, I seem to understand that at least for a while Zeiss used names ending in -ar for normal and tele lenses (Tessar, Sonnar...) and in -on for wide angle ones (Flektogon). Also, Xenar seems clearly derived from Xenon, but I'm puzzled as to this choice because it means "strange". Perhaps it was a reference to Xenon being used in flashtubes? Were flashtubes already around when the first Xenar appeared? You can also make your own names. For instance, the fisheye lens that I did build using a door peephole is called "Pippogon" - "Pippo" being the Italian name for Goofy. |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 06:53 am: |
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I thing the ending -gon in Zeiss wide angle lenses refers to the greek word 'gonios' which means 'angle'. (As I mentioned I had no opportunity to learn antique greek, but many technical expressions still have greek roots so I am just a bit familiar with some words.)
I don't think that the lens name Xenon has anything to do with the gas xenon. Maybe xenon was used for technical applications then in flash tubes but the only types of flashes used before WWII for photography were bulb flashes and powder flashes.
BTW the french lens manufacturer Angenieux used simple letters and numbers for many of their photo lens designators. I have two french cameras with Angenieux U1 and X1 lenses. The french SOM Berthiot Flor lens (the french Tessar) got its name from its designer whose first name was Florian. |
Henry
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 07:13 am: |
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This is all very interesting! Maybe I should spend more time looking through camera history books instead of so much time staring through the head loupe.
Thanks, this is great.
Henry |
rick oleson
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 08:43 am: |
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I knew of the Hektor connection but hadn't thought of it before in this sense.... I wonder if Berek felt the original 50mm Hektor was a dog (which it was generally considered to be) when he designed it....
my 135mm Hektor is a pretty good lens... |
rick oleson
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 09:24 am: |
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I think Xenon was probably just derived from Xenar, indicating a higher specification lens and not thinking of chemistry.....
: ) = |
Werner J. Becker
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 12:44 pm: |
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Humpty Dumpty still puts it this way "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less". Maybe the naming game is like other linguistic features just a matter of making names of industrial products sound promising, interesting, useful, "progressive", demanding, outstanding etc. but without bearing too much etymological meaning. Language, as the saying goes, is not logical.
In my understanding "chronos" is Greek for "time", which takes us to understanding "Summicron" meaning something like "the highest or best of its time", perhaps this is why Leica photogs are often (some would say: considered being) so special.
But I still wonder about Rokkors, Ektars and hyphenated Yashinon-DXs. |
Ezio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 01:50 pm: |
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Ric is almost certainly correct in suggesting that "Xenon" simply means a better "Xenar" (although this did break the "Zeiss rule" in that the focal length was the same), but this brings us back to what Xenar as supposed to mean. I don't totally agree with Werner; the use of totally meaningless names, choosen simply for their phonetic or suggestive value, is a rather recent marketing phenomenon, and it would have been untinkable in the more serious times we are talking about. "Tessar" is an obvious reference to the optical formula, because "tessares" means "four" in Greek. There was a note in a Graflex chat site saying that "Ektar" meant "our best of this type"in EKC's internal jargon, but this was not explained. Rather, its sounds like a contraction of "EK" and "Tessar" when it became unsavoury to suggest any connection to German products or designs. |
charlie stobbs
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 03:49 pm: |
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Isn't a Schneider a tailor? So maybe they mean to cut or alter any rules Zeiss set up. |
James
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 04:14 pm: |
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> But I still wonder about Rokkors, Ektars and
> hyphenated Yashinon-DXs.
Well Rokkor lenses were so named because the Minolta factory was near Mt. Rokko. Eastman Kodak used their EK initials probably because Kodar didn't sound as nice. Anybody know what Takumar comes from?
James |
Francis Otto
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 10, 2004 - 02:15 pm: |
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Reverting to Winfried's note of Dec.the 9th., I think the Greek prefix 'ana' means 'against' or 'opposite' or 'back' and that a 'stigma' is more a tear-shaped object (comma?) than a dot or point. So an 'Anastimgat/ic' lens would be one that did not render what should be points (of light) as tear-drop shaped, but as 'points'. The Greek 'orthos' means 'right' or 'correct' so an Orthostigmat is correcting the stigmata.
I wonder whether the -ar ending followed from Dallmeyer/Steinheil's Rapid Rectilinear lens (last two letters), indicating a lens that built on and outdid that four-element design: the Cooke lens was merely called a Triplet, 'Tessar' might have been intended to suggest an advance on the 'RR', but with four elements not three. The proclivity for -ar endings continued with the Cooke 'Aviar' (a WWI'Tessar-clone'),and then there was the Houghton/Butcher/Ensign 'Ensar', to name but two.
I believe that Dr. Kingslake somewhere refers to the Tessar as 'a vile lens'! |
