Shutterbug Strasse

Posted by Bold Eagle (A) on July 06, 2005 at 12:14:02

In Reply to: How To Get A Leica Owner REALLY Pissed Off: posted by Vinylly on July 4, 2005 at 08:43:10:

Not true. There are only a few companies that make optical glass in the world, but there are still several that make a lot of their own lenses, Nikon for one, Pentax for another. There is a good deal of subcontracting going on, and some Camera brand lenses have been made by Tamron. Nikon is one they made. For the major brands, it seems they sub out the lower end lenses, and keep their top stuff in-house.

His data is way out of date, too. Leica once had a plant in Canada, but I believe they shut that down a while back.

As far as building cameras in-house, they do. Olympus recently announced that they were expanding in-house capacity to bring more production (it was 33%) back in-house. Nikon recently built a plant in Thailand to build 70D D-SLR's at the rate of 80,000/month. And Kodak bought a 100% interest in Chinon to build their digital cameras. They used to own 45%. Chinon does act as a major subcontractor for other companies. Lots of that going on, but it's a long way from the 100% that guy suggests.

Jerry

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