At 10:09 AM 2/23/98 -0800, David Wright wrote:

>For what it's worth, the Leica literature indicates that they do use
>fluorite in the objective lens of their APO Televid scope -- in fact,
>the APO Televid has two fluorite elements whereas Kowa (at least in the
>old TSN 3/4) uses a single fluorite element.

Cool! Do you happen to know if they're made in Germany, or are they
manufacturing it in Japan? Just curious because they don't use this
technology in their big camera teles. They manufacture some camera
lenses in Canada, for instance.

Of course, if Canon IS selling blanks to other companies, it may only be
in the smallish (72-80mm) diameters found in spotting scopes rather than
the larger (130-160mm) diameters found in fast telephoto lenses.

Or perhaps there's a thriving third-party source for these smaller blanks.

I can't imagine Leica investing in the crystal growing technology themselves
and then only using it in spotting scopes and not camera lenses, doesn't
seem like the market's big enough to justify that.

Oh well, the world of the optics industry is full of mysteries.


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
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