It's more complex than that. The Eastern operation out of Jena made
some ordinary lenses and some rather good ones. Even some classics. But
do not confuse the Western Zeiss or East German 'Jena's' with the ones
made in the '90's - which I think someone said resulted from the Jena
operation selling off the name after re-unification (that sounds
likely).
There is a range of such lenses which appear to have been made in Korea
or China and are fairly ordinary. They often come in a reddish/tan
case. The design is clearly not European and the quality is low to
ordinary - not as good as a Tamron or non-ATX Tokina, for instance.
They would compete with cheapies like Zykkor, Cimko, Formula 5 and
some others I see around here. They also appear looking almost
identical under other German brand names like Exakta and Beroflex, who
have made a name more recently with whopping great cheap telephotos up
to 1200mm.
Unfortunately, some devious weasels on oboy use the confusion over the
Zeiss name to sell these at premium prices, sometimes referring
directly to the fine reputation of Zeiss optics. This is a scam. Get
something much better for much, much less.
AndrewF
On 15/09/2004, at 11:29 AM, Winsor Crosby wrote:
>
> It is all coming back...
>
> Seriously I remember reading about Zeiss Jena in several articles
> saying, "Move away from the lens. Your wallet is in danger even if it
> is cheap." I thought they were supposed to be really terrible quality
> which is why W.German Zeiss hated them so. Ruins the family name. I
> think it is the West German factory that had the manufacturing
> arrangement with Kyocera and there is no question about their high
> quality. But, I don't know anything about a specific lens.
>
>
> Winsor
> Long Beach, CA
> USA
> On Sep 14, 2004, at 6:02 PM, Andrew Gullen wrote:
>
>> I don't know about any Japanese production, but Carl Zeiss Jena was
>> made in
>> East Germany. I gather some of the factories ended up on each side of
>> the
>> line, so there were effectively two companies after the war. German
>> list
>> members...?
>>
>> [OT] My local camera store had a Kiev 6x6 for sale at a good price
>> with two
>> Jena lenses, one short and one long. I still regret my mortgage
>> persuaded me
>> to pass them up. The glass looked breathtaking. I bought a TLR
>> instead.
>
>
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