The tragedy before the German camera manufacturing giant sank

There are several 135 film cameras with the ZEISSIKONGVOIGTLANDER trademark on my bookcase. On this small nameplate, ZEISSIKON is at the top and VOIGTLANDER is at the bottom, separated by a horizontal line. The densely packed 20 capital letters occupy almost the entire space of the logo, which is neither eye-catching nor beautiful (Figure 1). It is this small and not pretty brand that records a history of joys and sorrows between two German camera manufacturers in the middle of the last century. It is a difficult journey of a company's tenacious struggle for survival, and it is also an important part of the story of the sinking of the German camera manufacturing ship.

In the first half of the last century, Germany's four largest camera manufacturers each dominated their own areas. They both had their own areas of expertise and also had overlapping and fiercely competing markets. Ernst leitz Wetzlar (hereinafter referred to as Leitz) has the most stable business direction. In addition to optical instruments such as telescopes and microscopes, it has been committed to the development and manufacturing of 135-size film small rangefinder cameras, Leica cameras It has almost become the standard specification for 135 film machines. Rollei-Werke Franke & Heidecke (hereinafter referred to as Rollei) is committed to producing medium-format film twin-lens reflex cameras. Rolleiflex cameras are imitated by camera manufacturers around the world. Voigtlander & Sohn A.G. (hereinafter referred to as Voigtlander) has the broadest business field. In addition to optical instruments, it also includes film and chemical materials. It has been fully committed to the development of cameras of various specifications. Although Zeiss Ikon A.G. was only established in 1926, its five founding companies all have a long history. Its core brand is Carl Zeiss. In addition to a wide range of optical instruments, we also feature a variety of lenses. In terms of camera manufacturing, Voigtl?nder and Zeiss Ikon can design and produce cameras of various specifications and have been competitors for many years.

Although the German camera manufacturing industry experienced a short-lived boom after the post-war recovery, it soon suffered widespread losses due to soaring raw material prices and rising labor costs. Voigtlander is no exception. Its major shareholder, Scheering, decided to get rid of this burden of losses and return to its old path of focusing on chemical products. In 1956 Scheering made the decision to sell Voigtlander and announced it to the public. The American Kodak Company and some Japanese companies are very interested in this, because after all, Voigtlander is the oldest photographic equipment company. It has accumulated rich experience in camera and lens manufacturing, and also gathered a group of excellent designers and Skilled technical workers, Voigtlander's brand has a very high reputation and good reputation. Just as these foreign companies were eager to acquire this famous brand, they did not notice that the German local brand Zeiss Ikon had actually been ready to compete for it.

After World War II, Chase Ikon has been looking for opportunities to merge with Voigtlander since he stood up again from the ruins of the war. Since buying shares of Voigtlander 20 in the late 1940s, , has never been able to achieve the goal of comprehensive acquisition, and of course it will never let go of this good opportunity easily now. In 1956, Chase Ikon made another big move, defeating his foreign rivals and buying 89.7% of Voigtlander's equity, becoming the absolute controlling shareholder of Voigtlander. Completed the plan to completely annex this competitor. Voigtlander has since become a branch of Zeiss Ikon, and the desperate struggle between the two well-known German camera brands in the market has ceased.

In the next ten years, Chase Ikon showed enough respect and tolerance for Voigtlander, and retained the original Voigtlander design team and manufacturing workers to the greatest extent possible. . The design concept of Voigtl?nder products was recognized and the remaining factory production lines continued to be produced.

Voigtlander's design, production and sales management teams have remained relatively independent, allowing them to determine their own new product development directions relatively freely. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Voigtlander basically launched new products according to its original product development route. The famous Vitomatic series of rangefinder cameras (Figure 2) and Bessamatic series of SLR cameras (Figure 3) were both launched on the market during this period.

Since 135 film cameras have begun to occupy an increasing share of the market after the 1950s, various camera manufacturing companies have shifted their development focus to this relatively narrow field, such as Chase Ikon and Fujifilm. The pattern of Lunda each maintaining its original development direction has brought about a big problem, the phenomenon of repeated development of 135 film camera products. In 1960, Voigtlander had worked hard to develop a new 135 SLR camera with CdS metering function, Bessaflex (Figure 4), which was about to be put into production for several years. The reason was to prevent it from being compared with the Zeiss camera. With the competition between Ikon's own-brand Contaflex and Contarex SLR models, the conflict between the two brands was put on the table for the first time. The abolition of Bessaflex brought a major impact to the Voigtlander design team, because it meant that the Voigtlander brand lost the autonomy to independently develop new products.

After entering the 1960s, Chase Ikon's financial situation continued to deteriorate. In order to reduce management expenses, in 1965 Chase Ikon's management finally decided to merge the two management teams that had long been independent into one. , the two independent product design departments were also merged, ending the conflict between the two brands. While trying to create a new marketing pitch, that trademark with the two brand names we mentioned earlier came up. The designer of this logo must have felt that these two company names were too important. Only by expressing them completely could the true strength represented behind the nameplate be expressed. In 1967, the Icarex 35 S camera (Figure 5) with the ZEISSIKONVOIGTLANDER logo was launched.

Although the name Voigtl?nder is added to the nameplate, the Icarex 35 S camera is actually more of a Zeiss Ikon style SLR camera. It is similar to the original Zeiss Ikon exclusive There is little difference between the trademarks of Icarex. Icarex is a quite large series. Its models include: Icarex, Icarex 35, Icarex35S, Icarex 35CS, etc. The interchangeable lenses have two different interfaces, BM and TM. The body is divided into replaceable viewfinders and fixed viewfinders. There are two types of viewfinders, and the viewfinders are divided into top-view viewfinders and viewfinders with CdS metering prisms (Figure 6-9). Icarex has a complete range of matching lenses covering various focal lengths, and later added some lens names of the original Voigtlander brand to the lenses.

In addition to bringing benefits in the market, adding the Voigtlander name may only bring a little psychological comfort to the developers of the Voigtlander brand, because Icarex is a more complete product from appearance to substance. Zeiss Icon camera series.

Since 1966, Zeiss Ikon has adopted a unified approach to external sales. The brochures with the Zeiss Ikon Voigtl?nder mark include models with separate Zeiss Ikon trademarks, as well as models with Zeiss Ikon trademarks. The model of the Convo Lunda trademark (Figure 10). Although the oval body of Voigtlander cameras has been gradually replaced by the octagonal rectangular body of the Zeiss Ikon, at least the Voigtlander name still plays an irreplaceable role in marketing. The Voigtlander brand was gradually integrated into the overall Zeiss Ikon.

From 1968 to 1970, another rangefinder camera series was named after Zeiss Ikon and Voigtlander *** Launched, this is the new Vitessa series (Figure 11-12). This series includes two film formats, 126 and 135.

Although the cameras in this series are defined as low- to mid-range, they are unambiguous in terms of camera quality. Most of the 8 cameras in the series are equipped with CdS metering, and the shutter speed reaches the fastest 1/1000 in the Vitessa 1000 SR. Seconds (Figure 13), several models also have linked ranging functions. The compact and exquisite body and advanced functions are particularly popular. Unfortunately, just when this series of cameras was launched on the market, the lifespan of the Chase Ikon had already entered a countdown.

In 1971, Chase Ikon declared bankruptcy due to continued losses, ended all camera production, and closed all assembly lines in 1972. Neither Voigtlander nor its parent company imagined that their journey of union would be so short. , it came to an end in more than ten years. Although Rollei took over the Voigtlander camera brand and its production line and continued the design of the new camera, and soon resumed production, at this time Voigtlander had already departed from Voigtlander in terms of its logo, appearance and camera design concept. The tradition of Voigtlander is getting further and further away, and even this situation did not last long. With the decline of Rollei, the Voigtlander brand changed hands several times, and finally fell into the hands of a Japanese company. In addition to developing some of its own models, it also began Another journey of working for Laika, this is already another story. The Voigtlander brand reappeared on the market after many years, and the only remaining relationship between the new Voigtlander and the Voigtlander that had created brilliant achievements was its name.

Zeiss Ikon is the second of Germany's four major camera manufacturers to fall. Its bankruptcy is different from the surrender of Voigtlander, because after Voigtlander was acquired by Zeiss Ikon, it basically did not affect the continuation of this famous brand. The end of Zeiss Ikon caused a heavy blow to the two brands and seriously affected the development of the German camera manufacturing industry. In fact, the final fate of Rollei and Leitz was similar. The overall collapse of the German camera manufacturing industry was due to the strong competition from the Japanese. We will have more in-depth analysis of the victory of Japanese camera manufacturers in the future, but we can at least summarize the following three painful lessons from the defeat of Chase Ikon.

First of all, from the perspective of camera design and development concepts, we should insist on integrating the most advanced technology into new products as soon as possible. The 20th century marked 100 years of rapid advancement in camera manufacturing technology. In the first 50 years, most new technologies and inventions came from German companies. Zeiss Ikon and Voigtlander have always been pioneers in camera technology innovation. Japanese camera companies started out as imitators and only began to enter the international market in the 1950s. However, since the 1960s, they have continued to apply new technologies to their products immediately. More and more of the world's number one titles are held by Japanese brands. The new product development process of Zeiss Ikon and Voigtl?nder is too long. While they are also working on developing more complex mechanical devices, Japanese companies have put the design of more advanced and reliable electronic devices at the center of their new product development. , the research and development results were quickly applied to new products, and the novel and practical new technologies immediately attracted the attention of more consumers.

Secondly, in terms of camera production costs, the principle of "cost first" is the higher criterion for opening up the market. Although German cameras are famous for their high-precision mechanical functions, the addition of each new function means higher parts costs. For example, the Contarex series of high-end professional cameras developed by Zeiss Ikon have pushed the complex mechanical structure of German cameras to the extreme (Figure 14). Take the famous Contarex Bullseye (Figure 15) as an example. This camera, which was developed over nine years, has more than 1,100 high-precision parts, all of which are produced by Zeiss Ikon itself. The design and manufacturing costs are very high, and such a complex structure requires very professional technical personnel for assembly and testing. Chase Ikon has established strict quality control in all design, production and assembly links, which makes the camera Selling prices remain high. Major Japanese camera manufacturing companies emphasize cost first and adopt various methods to reduce costs and turn complexity into simplicity. It turned out that the high-quality German cameras were at a serious disadvantage in competing with the high-volume assembly-line production of Japanese cameras.

The third is that in terms of market sales, adjustments should be made in a timely manner according to market characteristics. In this regard, German companies clearly lag behind Japanese companies. For example, Chase Ikon has had an overly long product line since its establishment. This situation was exacerbated after the acquisition of Voigtl?nder. This situation continued until the day the company collapsed. There have been many models of cameras coexisting at the same time, many of which have no obvious difference in performance. Due to various reasons, they failed to make decisive choices and could not complement each other. Instead, they caused internal friction. The huge product catalog led to the dispersion of sales direction and focus. At the same time, several major Japanese camera brands, such as Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Pantex, and Olympus, had their own priorities and strengthened their respective technical advantages. On the other hand, they cooperated with each other. In Japanese private institutions, Under the coordination and control of the company, we will use their cost advantages to increase publicity and vigorously develop overseas markets with clear and firm short-term goals. Japanese companies attacked German companies one by one, and soon dominated the international camera market, never giving German cameras a chance to make a comeback.

With the maturity of digital technology, my few film cameras with the ZEISSIKONVOIGTLANDER nameplate are no longer useful and can only be displayed as decorations. I occasionally take them out to play with and try to treat yellow spots. The accuracy of focusing, listening to the crisp and melodious sound of the shutter, looking at these exquisite products that have been created by so many people, what comes to mind is the tragic scene when the German camera manufacturing giant ship sank.

Caption:

Figure 1 The trademark with the words Chase Ikon Voigtlander.

Figure 2 Voigtlander Vitomatic IIIc camera.

Figure 3 Voigtlander Bessamatic Delux camera.

Figure 4 Voigtlander Bessaflex camera prototype was terminated before it was put into production.

Figure 5 Zeiss Icarex Voigtlander Icarex 35 S type.

Figure 6 The Icarex 35S TM lens interface is a hook.

Figure 7 The Icarex 35S BM-type lens interface is a bayonet mount.

Figure 8 Icarex 35 SE with interchangeable top viewfinder and 135/4 lens.

Figure 9 Icarex 35 SE model equipped with Tiansai 2.8/50 standard lens, close-up viewfinder developed for this camera, German slogan on the top box: Part of the Gold Plan. Chase Ikon's promotional slogan from the 1960s.

Figure 10 The unified brochure with the Zeiss Ikon Voigtlander mark.

Figure 11 Vitessa 500/1000 series camera.

Figure 12 Beautiful wood grain version of the Vitessa 500 AE camera.

Figure 13 The fastest speed of Vitessa 1000 reached 1/1000 second.

Figure 14 Contarex SE camera, this series pushes the complex mechanical structure of German cameras to the extreme.

Figure 15 Contarex Bullseye camera with more than 1100 high-precision parts.