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[OM] Re: Zuiko Silver Nose Trivia

Subject: [OM] Re: Zuiko Silver Nose Trivia
From: "Jeff Keller" <jrk_om@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 23:40:08 -0800
Thanks Moose,

I got the info about the 50/3.5 off the front of the lens.
http://www.olympus-photography.com/For_Sale/zuiko-50mm-f3-5/

I could barely afford a few "cheap" zuikos in the 70's. I thought I 
remembered the booklet showing all the nice F2 lenses having lens group 
letters (I can't find my box of booklets at this moment).  Now that I've got 
a few F2 lenses, I simply looked at them to see if the simple "ZUIKO" label 
could be associated with anything. I noticed NO lens group letter just the 
"ZUIKO MC" label on the silver nosed F2 lenses.

I get confused trying to figure out what the sequence is in the esif quote 
you posted. There had to have been silver nosed "ZUIKO MC" F2 lenses made 
before the black nosed "E.ZUIKO" etc single coated lenses. So the labeling 
didn't make a simple consistant change with time.

One of my thoughts had been that early on the "E.ZUIKO" label was used for 
standard lenses while the "ZUIKO" label was used for premium lenses such as 
the 16mm or 50/3.5. However the 70-150 would probably not fall in a premium 
category. It would seem the silver nosed 16mm, 50mm f3.5, and 70-150mm just 
happened to be labeled "ZUIKO" before a decision was made to stop using the 
"E.ZUIKO" type label. I think Mark made a statement that the designers of 
the different lenses apparently made their own decisions about whether to 
restart the serial number sequence when the design was changed. It appears 
there were quite a few inviduals making different choices with the 
nomenclature.

I believe the only silver nosed zoom is the 70-150mm. I don't think either 
of the shift lenses were ever silver nosed. My 20mm f3.5 is labeled "ZUIKO 
MC" while my 38mm f3.5 is labeled "ZUIKO" both of which are black nosed of 
course.

Which just gets me back to the beginning: the 16mm, 50mm f3.5, and 75-150mm 
seem to be the only silver nosed lenses labeled simply "ZUIKO". There 
doesn't seem to be any meaning associated with the simple "ZUIKO" label.

-jeff

----Original Message Follows----
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: Zuiko Silver Nose Trivia
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 21:09:44 -0800

Jeff Keller wrote:
 > A potential buyer asked me if a silver nosed 50mm f3.5 was multicoated.
 >
 > This lead to some poking around which turned up some trivia that I wasn't
 > aware of:
 > 1.) The 16mm zuiko and 50mm f3.5 were made in silver nosed "ZUIKO" 
labeled
 > versions. They didn't have the preceeding letter such as H.ZUIKO, nor did
 > they have the following "MC" that the early silver nosed F2 lenses had.
 >
Where did you get that about the 50/3.5? The multi-coating survey shows
a very early 50/3.5 with silver nose, but marked MC. It didn't have the
preceding letter for the reason explained below.

50    3.5  101179  Chrome      MC    Yes       Zuiko MC Macro
50    3.5  160629  Black       MC    Yes       Zuiko MC

 > 2.) The silver nosed 75-150mm f4 zoom was also labeled "ZUIKO".
 >
This one is easy. Oly never made any zooms with the preceeding letter
indicating number of elements. All zooms were always multi coated except
for the 75-150, which never was.
 > 3.) I don't have a clue (which is not surprising) why Olympus used the
 > letter indicating the lens grouping on some lenses and not on others
 >
I don't know why, but here's what the eSIF says:

"By the time single coated lenses were replaced by multicoated versions,
the preceding characters were dropped and the characters MC
(=multicoated) were put after the word ZUIKO. The first lenses that were
labeled as such were the lenses that were never made in a single coated
version: the 18mm/F3.5, 21mm/F2, 24mm/F2, 28mm/F2 and 35mm/F2 lenses.
Strangely enough these lenses appear in early lens tables with the
preceding characters but they were put into production the the MC
inscription.
Fisheye lenses, Shift lenses, Zoom lenses and Macro lenses never carried
the preceding characters. :
 > Was the 18mm made in a silver nosed version?
 >
No, see quote above.


Moose

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