DID YOU KNOW

"MINOLTA"
Formed in 1928 under the name of the Japan-Germany Camera Company by Kazuo Tashima, the name was changed to Molta in 1931 from the German tiltle Mechanismus Optik und Linsen von Tashima. The company name was changed to Minolta in 1962 from the full name of Mechanical INstruments and OpticaL by TAshima.


"FUJI"
The name of Fuji is simply taken from the name of the highest mountain in Japan, Mount Fuji.



"LEICA"
Ernst Leitz started making lenses for microscopes and telescopes in 1849, and it wasn't until 1911 when Oskar Barnack joined the Leitz firm that it made its first camera. It was going to be called LECA, until someone suggested that LEICA (LEItz CAmera) sounded better. The name stuck.



"KONICA"
The firm of Konishiroku Kogaku have been involved in making photographic and lithographic materials for over 200 years. It adopted the name Konica when it started making cameras in the 1940's.



"MAMIYA"
The name was simply taken from the surname of the inventor and designer of the camera, Seiichi Mamiya.



"NIKON"
The original name for Nikon was Nippon Kogaku, meaning "Japanese Optical". The company was formed in 1917 and its name was changed to Nikon in 1946 by taking the "Ni" from Nippon and the "Ko" from Kogaku and adding an "n".


"CANON"
The original name for CANON cameras was "Kwanon", the Buddhist god of mercy. The first Kwanon camera was built in a small Tokyo workshop in 1934. The name was changed to CANON in 1935 to avoid offending religious groups

...that the former USSR was the world's largest producer of cameras? They produced more cameras than any other country in the world. The first models of the Soviet Leica FED and Zorki clones were made in more numbers than all Leica cameras ever produced. The total number of Leica-inspired Soviet cameras numbered in the millions. The Soviets tried to improve on the original- and they did succeed in many ways.

...that the first 35mm SLR was made in the Soviet Union? The GOMZ (later to become "LOMO", the maker of the cult LOMO LKA camera) produced the "Sport" ("Спорт") in 1935, a year before the German Kine-Exakta was released.

...that the Kiev rangefinder camera was probably the camera whose design had the longest production run? The camera was based on the mid 1930s Contax II and III. The Soviets captured the Contax works after WWII and shipped its tools and machines as war reparation to the Ukrainian "Arsenal" camera factory where production continued under the "Kiev" badge. The camera hardly departed from the original 1935/36 German design. The Kiev was discontinued in the middle or late 1980s. That's an almost 60-year production run.

...that the so-called "Pentax screw mount"- aka M42 screw mount- should be, and more accurately, called as "Contax Screw Mount"? Contax developed this lens mount and introduced it in their "Contax-S" camera in 1949. It was the first pentaprism 35mm SLR. This Contax SLR was the basis of all 35mm SLRs which followed it- Nikon, Canon, Pentax and everyone else included. Because of political/economic issues, this Contax (made in East Germany) had to be renamed Pentacon (PENTAprism CONtax) to avoid run-ins with West German Carl Zeiss who legally owned the Contax name outside the Eastern Bloc.