Jeff Keller wrote:
> 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).
As the eSIF notes, "Strangely enough these lenses appear in early lens
tables /with/ the preceding characters but they were put into production
the the MC inscription." One may assume that this is simply a case of
poor communication between departments or that the decision to drop the
preceding letter designations was made after the booklets were printed.
> 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.
>
Well, they do exist, you just don't happen to have them. Again as the
eSIF says, but perhaps not quite in enough detail, when MC first came
out, all normal lenses were marked MC when the design was so updated.
Some years later, when all lenses being sold by Oly and everybody else
were MC, Oly dropped the MC marking
> 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.
>
This is a common trap, assuming that SC/MC and sliver/black noses are
related. The simple truth is that they really aren't. By unfortunate
coincidence, the folks who designed lenses started multicoating them at
about the same time whoever did the cosmetic design decided to change
the appearance of the lenses. The two events may or may not have have
some common source, but in any case, they were carried out independently
of each other but over roughly the same time period. Thus, most silver
nosed lenses are SC and most black nosed lenses are MC, but there are
significant numbers of MC lenses with silver noses and SC lenses with
black noses produced during the transition period
This simple way to avoid trouble is to ignore nose color except for
esthetic purposes and use only the front rings. Except for lenses which
may have had front ring translants, any normal lens with the preceding
character and dot in the form x.ZUIKO is SC and any lens marked simply
ZUIKO, without the preceding character, and whether marked MC or not, is
MC. It's really simple if you ignore the extraneous.
> 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.
Nice enough idea, but simply not true.
> However the 70-150 would probably not fall in a premium category.
Again, from the eSIF and my post, "Fisheye lenses, Shift lenses, Zoom
lenses and Macro lenses never carried the preceding characters."
> 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.
But that is speculation that disagrees with the results of extensive
research. And as noted above and below, the preceding letter
nomenclature never applied to the 50/3.5 or the 75-150.
> 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.
Again speculation, from a rather knowledgable person, but never verified.
> It appears there were quite a few inviduals making different choices with the
> nomenclature.
>
Again, I think you are finding it more confusing than is necessary by
paying attention to nose color and assuming it is related to coatings.
> I believe the only silver nosed zoom is the 70-150mm.
If you change that to read "the only SC zoom is the 75-150, you are
correct." Whether they are all silver nosed or not, I don't know nor
care, not even enough to pull a couple out and look at their noses.
What's important is that they take nice pictures and, being SC, are more
susceptible to flare that they would be if they were MC, so I pay more
attention to that.
> 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.
>
AGAIN, the preceding letter indicating the number of elements was NEVER
used on Fisheye lenses, Shift lenses, Zoom lenses and Macro lenses -
NEVER - EVER. Thus it's absence means nothing at all about whether they
are or are not SC or MC. Nor, as explained above, does the color of
their noses. There were different nomenclature rules for these lenses.
One cannot read anything into the lack of preceding letter and dot
because that form was never, ever used with theses categories of lens.
Have I said it in enough different ways yet?
> Which just gets me back to the beginning:
I'm getting dizzy, spinnnig around from beginning to ending and on and
on.... :-)
> the 16mm, 50mm f3.5, and 75-150mm seem to be the only silver nosed lenses
> labeled simply "ZUIKO".
The only ones you have, but that in meaningless with regard to the
50/3.5 and 75-150. That there are anomalies out there that don't fit the
naming rules, whether produced as such or as a result of front ring
changes, is known. What the situation with your particular 16/3.5 is, I
don't know, however, to draw a general conclusion about them from the
one example seems questionable to me. I don knoe that there are
documented examples of MC lenses with silver noses, so your example is
only anomalous if it is SC.
> There doesn't seem to be any meaning associated with the simple "ZUIKO" label.
>
That's because you have misread and or misunderstood the nomenclature
rules. Your statement is true of Fisheye lenses, Shift lenses, Zoom
lenses and Macro lenses, and not true of other lenses.
Moose
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