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Leica SCHOTT Glass - Questions (1 Viewer)

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payj

Well-known member
Does Zeiss own this company (SCHOTT)? I am trying to do a bit of research on the glass itself. You guys would know best! Could not find too much on the subject and am trying to educate myself on the subject - of the glass itself.

If Zeiss does own it and use the same glass as Leica would they not have the same quality in terms of clarity etc? When people mention the quality of Zeiss, it seems the complaints stem more from the actual build quality than the glass. Is that correct?

Any and all info directly or indirectly pertaining to Leica glass would be appreciated!

Thank you!
 
Others on this site are vastly more knowledgeable that I on the topic and hopefully they will be willing to help.
My understanding is that Schott and Zeiss are owned by the same foundation, but are operated entirely independently.
Schott sells glass to Swaro and Leica and many others. It has factories worldwide.
Schott has several large competitors in the specialty glass business in Japan and in China, so I doubt there are in fact unique competencies in the material.
 
I've never really heard many complaints about Zeiss build quality other than the SF, and that was pretty over played.

Schott supplies a lot of companies, I have a Minox with Schott glass.
 
Interesting. Thank you for the replies.

So if who is the grand house here that owns both Zeiss and Schott? Is Schott based out of Europe - I would assume so?

So, if many of these upper tier companies source their glass from the same places, does the difference in clarity etc etc come down to the art and philosophy of how each company feels best to cut and place the glass in the housings?
 
While Schott has some excellent glass, including high clarity types, it doesn't have a high performance ED glass for instance. I wouldn't assume even the big guys use Schott exclusively and there could easily be a bit of Ohara or Hoya in there somewhere. The designers just use what works best.

Most of the differences in 'clarity', 'brightness' colour we perceive are not down to the glass but the technology and choices made in the various lens and prism coatings.

David
 
payj said:
Interesting. Thank you for the replies.

So if who is the grand house here that owns both Zeiss and Schott? Is Schott based out of Europe - I would assume so?

So, if many of these upper tier companies source their glass from the same places, does the difference in clarity etc etc come down to the art and philosophy of how each company feels best to cut and place the glass in the housings?
Click to expand...

As Etudiant pointed out, both Schott and Zeiss are owned by a Foundation. If you dig into the history of Zeiss or Schott it will be obvious.

Regarding the glass; to put it black and white: there are about 120 sort of types suiteble for optical purposes. Sometimes a manufacturer buys a certain type of glass from Schott, just because on that moment their price is better than from Ohara (and visa versa).

With your last remark you hit the nail:t:.

Jan
 
Is this company Ohara also of the same house or someone else? Before the HD+ the HD used different glass, where was that glass from?

Is Leica part of a holding house too? Or are they on their own? How about Swaro?
 
payj said:
Is this company Ohara also of the same house or someone else? Before the HD+ the HD used different glass, where was that glass from?

Is Leica part of a holding house too? Or are they on their own? How about Swaro?
Click to expand...

Sometimes a brand mentions the type of glass, like Zeiss uses Schott HT glass in the Zeiss HT binocular, otherwise it is impossible to tell. In the plant you'll find boxes optical glass from Hoya, Ohara and/or Schott. So in the productionlife of the binocular you could find in the same model a Schott lens in production year 2006 and a Hoya lens 2014.

Ohara and Hoya are independent glass manufacturers.

Leica is on its own and the same counts for Swarovski, which is divided in Optical, Crystal and Tirolyt.

Jan
 
Hey Lee,

Thank you for the good read! So it looks like way back when Schott paired with Zeiss, as sort of a team effort, but both were doing their own thing per say. Then When Zeiss passed his business parter and Schott formed a Organization, which both seem to put money into to further studies on optics and possibly just donate money to other things?

So from what I gather - they are different, but grew up together close by and have been working close together. It got a bit more fuzzy for me as we fast forward to the late 80s and early 90s when tentions were high.

BUT to say Schott is under the same house like Rolex is with lets say one of their acquisitions over time for things would be wrong. Right?
 
Leica had numerous patents on their own glass types.
Minolta made 150 types of glass.
Look at Schott glass catalogues which change perhaps yearly?
Kodak had numerous glass types.
Barr and Stroud used Scottish glass from Scottish sand. It was dirty grey.
There must be thousands of glass types now and in the past.
 
payj said:
Hey Lee,

Thank you for the good read! So it looks like way back when Schott paired with Zeiss, as sort of a team effort, but both were doing their own thing per say. Then When Zeiss passed his business parter and Schott formed a Organization, which both seem to put money into to further studies on optics and possibly just donate money to other things?

So from what I gather - they are different, but grew up together close by and have been working close together. It got a bit more fuzzy for me as we fast forward to the late 80s and early 90s when tentions were high.

BUT to say Schott is under the same house like Rolex is with lets say one of their acquisitions over time for things would be wrong. Right?
Click to expand...


Currently I would consider them more like ETA and the Swatch Group.
 
ahh, far better comparison.

I wonder why Leica does not do their own stuff through and through - I guess like the watch world it all ties in and the line blur the deeper you look. Unless your Seiko. They do it all, even grow their own crystal...Even Patek outsources some things.

Oops getting off topic!

I guess there would be far more "work" and science to do with the glass as it is raw I am guessing when bought by them
 
payj said:
ahh, far better comparison.

I wonder why Leica does not do their own stuff through and through - I guess like the watch world it all ties in and the line blur the deeper you look. Unless your Seiko. They do it all, even grow their own crystal...Even Patek outsources some things.

Oops getting off topic!

I guess there would be far more "work" and science to do with the glass as it is raw I am guessing when bought by them
Click to expand...


Probably can buy good stuff cheaper than they can tool up to produce it their self. Lotta money in a plant to produce glass, if it werent there would be a bunch of them. Swaro doesnt produce their own glass, Leica is smaller still.
 
. Some of the modern glasses are so exotic that they tarnish almost as soon as you make them. The only way they can properly be used is to coat them as soon as you make them. Without this sophisticated multi-coating there would be no point in trying to use them.
So you have to have the facilities to make them and coat them.
In addition, the top makers of lenses specify individual edge blackening for each element. There are two coats baked on.

Leica could I suppose specify their own glass and then have somebody make it up for them.

I think that Nikon used to make their own glass but I don't know if this is still the case.

P. S.
The reason why the area around Wetzlar and the position of the Schott glass factory became pre-eminent, was basically, I think, because the local sands happened to produce very high quality glass.

I have a Dallmeyer lens from around 1880, which contains radioactive glass. The reason for this is probably because this particular batch of glass was better than other apparently similar glasses. This was well before radioactivity was understood and before such compounds were used in glass. Some of this glass material came from India.
 
Last edited:
. It seems that the glass for some of the very early Leica cameras actually came from an old Goertz factory, and this factory was eventually bought and then made different types of glass to the Schott glasses.

The Leica camera lenses had a front element which was very soft, and the lenses were re-computed to use Schott glass.

In the 1950s Leica had many patents for glasses and these were probably made for Leica by the Schott factory. However, the proviso was that these special glasses could only be used by Leica or with permission by Leica for use for social endeavours such as scientific research lenses and lenses related to health matters.
Leica would not want other lens makers to just copy their camera lenses, which were patented.

However, some lenses like the Xenon, were copied without licence from Taylor Taylor Hobson lenses. Taylor Taylor Hobson was of course not at all happy and eventually they licenced the Taylor Hobson designs to the offenders for a licence fee.

In fact, many of the Taylor Taylor Hobson lenses were better than some supposedly top lenses made in other countries. Even some relatively inexpensive Corfield lenses made in Britain were better. This was shown to be the case when owners of expensive non-British lenses were invited to put their lenses on Corfield's projector and compare the images with the British lenses. People wondered why they had spent so much money when the British lenses were actually better. This was of course not always the case, as there were many fine lenses made by many different makers in different countries.

As an aside, talking about good lenses. There was the U.S. Itek 66 inch focus lens on their high-resolution aerial camera. But I just read that they also made a 240 inch focus lens for photography from 80,000 feet altitude for oblique photos.
 
I am not sure of the type of glass used in this design, but Leica
does use this type of shot glass, at the new headquarters in Wetzlar.

This one is used at closing time.

Jerry
 

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I'll reiterate and emphasise something that has come up a few times in the discussion, but the optical glass used is a raw material and as with any raw material, comes in different grades. Schott, Ohara, Hoya and others all produce a myriad of optical glass types and grades, with each producing poor quality (read:cheaper) glass grades within a particular glass type, i.e. having more or larger bubbles or settling lines, meaning that it is somewhat less important who actually produces the optical glass used within a product, as long as the quality level chosen from that company reflects the needs of the optical system.

It is incredibly important that high quality raw materials (glass, alu, mag, silicon etc.) are used in the creation of a great pair of binoculars, but the vast 90% of the result comes from the design, manufacturing and quality control decisions made. I'm sure L have chosen suitable raw materials for their top products, but at the end of the day, its those creation decisions that have made it what it is.
 
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