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It's kinda of a side business (cine lenses, too), but "refined consumer / prosumer" would be Fuji o Leica. Not many lens-makers are more "pro oriented" than CZ,

It's kinda of a side business (cine lenses, too), but "refined consumer / prosumer" would be Fuji o Leica. Not many lens-makers are more "pro oriented" than CZ, maybe Rodenstock and Schneider-Kreuznach.

agumonkey 10y ago
Zeiss still made a lot of publicity on smartphones recently and digital cameras.
- frostburg 10y ago
  Not only recently: the 2005 Nokia N90 had a Zeiss branded camera."Branded" being the key word. Other culprits in this depressing marketing gimmick that I can recall without research: Leica, Hasselblad (!), Schneider-Kreuznach (!!). This mostly doesn't affect their actual product lines.
rplst8 10y ago
I'm not sure about Leica, but Fujifilm is not in the "refined consumer / prosumer" category either. Neither is Canon, Nikon, or even Olympus for that matter. AFAIK they all make high performance optics that are used in manufacturing, lithography, or machine vision in some capacity or another.
- frostburg 10y ago
  Leica (well, same parent company, I think that the structure is a bit complex) also makes microscopy equipment, but I'm talking about their lens lineup intended for photography. Leica makes very good things that are not very practical or realistically priced. Fuji makes good prosumer cameras and lenses, but they don't have wide professional adoption for ecosystem / features considerations.
  - rplst8 10y ago
    Again, I think you are wrong. Fujifilm makes extremely high quality professional lenses that are used on medium and large format cameras. Or at least did fairly recently. They've also announced a new medium format digital system with lenses to match. I have the Fuji "prosumer" X series system, and I can tell you that their lenses are very, very high quality - besting most of the Nikon and Canon offerings with metal construction and in some cases weather sealing.
    - frostburg 10y ago
      They stopped making those a few years ago. Their current offerings (the fuji x system) are good for people that like nice cameras but don't need to make a living with them (like me - when I shoot digitally I use a Sony A7r, but I wouldn't have picked that for actual work and could also have gone Fuji, but at the time they had only the 16mp first gen x-trans sensor), most of the lenses are good, but they don't have the coverage of the expansive Nikon or Canon ecosystems, mirrorless tracking autofocus is still lagging behind pro dslr bodies (I don't even use autofocus, but again, I don't generally have to get paid), etc. In the end a 2012 D800e outperforms a brand new X-T2 in image quality in most scenarios, despite the Fuji having better lenses (and you can always natively mount superior Otus or Apo-Sonnar lenses on the Nikon).
- agumonkey 10y ago
  In a way all these companies, when they know a bit about material and physics, can diversify through the complexity spectrum. Philips is known for consumer devices but had medicine level machines and electronics spinoffs, probably military too.
LeanderK 10y ago
as a german CS-Student it's always interesting to see german companies pop up (i have to work somewhere when this is finished). Nearly every time the stereotype is right. They are always building "pro oriented" specialised physical things, now lenses, a few days ago i stumbled across another one that builds really high performing magnets (i think, not into machine engineering) and is located not far away from where i was born. But i have jet to see the next promising Tinder/Slack/Social-Whatever from Germany. Everything is somehow related to machinery.

agumonkey 10y ago

Zeiss still made a lot of publicity on smartphones recently and digital cameras.

frostburg 10y ago
Not only recently: the 2005 Nokia N90 had a Zeiss branded camera."Branded" being the key word. Other culprits in this depressing marketing gimmick that I can recall without research: Leica, Hasselblad (!), Schneider-Kreuznach (!!). This mostly doesn't affect their actual product lines.

rplst8 10y ago

I'm not sure about Leica, but Fujifilm is not in the "refined consumer / prosumer" category either. Neither is Canon, Nikon, or even Olympus for that matter. AFAIK they all make high performance optics that are used in manufacturing, lithography, or machine vision in some capacity or another.

frostburg 10y ago
Leica (well, same parent company, I think that the structure is a bit complex) also makes microscopy equipment, but I'm talking about their lens lineup intended for photography. Leica makes very good things that are not very practical or realistically priced. Fuji makes good prosumer cameras and lenses, but they don't have wide professional adoption for ecosystem / features considerations.
- rplst8 10y ago
  Again, I think you are wrong. Fujifilm makes extremely high quality professional lenses that are used on medium and large format cameras. Or at least did fairly recently. They've also announced a new medium format digital system with lenses to match. I have the Fuji "prosumer" X series system, and I can tell you that their lenses are very, very high quality - besting most of the Nikon and Canon offerings with metal construction and in some cases weather sealing.
  - frostburg 10y ago
    They stopped making those a few years ago. Their current offerings (the fuji x system) are good for people that like nice cameras but don't need to make a living with them (like me - when I shoot digitally I use a Sony A7r, but I wouldn't have picked that for actual work and could also have gone Fuji, but at the time they had only the 16mp first gen x-trans sensor), most of the lenses are good, but they don't have the coverage of the expansive Nikon or Canon ecosystems, mirrorless tracking autofocus is still lagging behind pro dslr bodies (I don't even use autofocus, but again, I don't generally have to get paid), etc. In the end a 2012 D800e outperforms a brand new X-T2 in image quality in most scenarios, despite the Fuji having better lenses (and you can always natively mount superior Otus or Apo-Sonnar lenses on the Nikon).
agumonkey 10y ago
In a way all these companies, when they know a bit about material and physics, can diversify through the complexity spectrum. Philips is known for consumer devices but had medicine level machines and electronics spinoffs, probably military too.

LeanderK 10y ago

as a german CS-Student it's always interesting to see german companies pop up (i have to work somewhere when this is finished). Nearly every time the stereotype is right. They are always building "pro oriented" specialised physical things, now lenses, a few days ago i stumbled across another one that builds really high performing magnets (i think, not into machine engineering) and is located not far away from where i was born. But i have jet to see the next promising Tinder/Slack/Social-Whatever from Germany. Everything is somehow related to machinery.