Smartphones Are Killing the Camera Industry.Japanese Optics Companies Helped Each Other Out.What Would the Japanese Camera Industry Look Like if Nippon Kogaku Never Existed?.Nippon Kogaku Also Worked on a Medium Format SLR and a 16mm Subminiature, None Were Ever Released.There Were More Canon 7 Rangefinders Made Than All Nikon Rangefinders Combined.The Nikon F Was So Successful, It Killed the Nikon Rangefinder / The Nikon SPX and SP2 Was Built But Never Released.
David Douglas Duncan’s Role In Nikon’s History / Jun Miki.Tuberculosis Almost Killed Medium Format in Japan.Did Nippon Kogaku and Eastman Kodak Ever Collaborate On Anything?.Why Was the Nikon F So Successful? / Why the Canonflex Failed.Canon Made 33 Different Rangefinders Between 19.The Nikon S2 Originally Had Knobs for Wind and Rewind / Only Black Dial S2s Can Be Motorized.Nikon and Canon Had Different Approaches Toward Making Rangefinders.German SLRs Were Hampered by Their Own Reliance on the Compur Leaf Shutter.Nippon Kogaku Developed the Nikon F at the Same Time as the Nikon SP.Many Camera Companies Went Out of Business Between 1958-1962 / Differences Between Germany and Japan.Nikon Saw the Best Success in the US East and West Coasts, Not the Midwest.Zeiss-Ikon Stuttgart Had to Rebuild After the War / East Germany Was Winning For a While.Why Didn’t West Germany Have any Focal Plane SLRs like the Contax SLR?.Hubert Nerwin, Zeiss-Ikon, the West German Camera Industry, and the Kodak Instamatic.Why Did Zeiss-Ikon Make the Tenax II? / Which Came First, the Tenax or Robot?.Why Was Nikon So Successful? Why Didn’t Canon or Pentax Have the Same Level of Success?.Tenax II / Akarette / Akarelle / AGFA Ambi Silette / Lordomat.Wes Bought a Nikon S2 to Photograph in Caves / How Wes Got Started Researching Nikon.Next week, we will return with Episode 14, so look out for the Episode announcement this upcoming Sunday, November 28th! Rounding out our guests are Mark Faulkner, Nick Lyle, and Miles Libak! Returning from episode 8, author of “Making Kodak Film”, Robert Shanebrook surprises us with a visit to participate in the discussion and ask some questions. We go over everything from Nippon Kogaku’s role in the post war Japanese camera industry, why they were successful and Canon wasn’t, Nikon rangefinder prototypes, and a whole lot of other interesting topics.Īlso joining in on the discussion is none other than president of the Nikon Historical Society, and fellow author, Robert Rotoloni jumps in to add his thoughts and ask some questions of his own.
Michael Wescott Loder, Nikon historian and author of “The Nikon Camera in America 1946-1953”, joins us to discuss a huge number of topics regarding Nikon’s history along with the Zeiss-Ikon Tenax II and a huge number of other cameras that he is interested in. This week’s episode of the Camerosity Podcast is one for the ages.