In 1982 it was reported
that Nikon was planning to assemble cameras in the US. Not only their less expensive, amateur
equipment, but also their top of the line, professional cameras. This was considered a very bold step. Even though nothing came of it, it did prove
the farsightedness of E. Leitz Wetzlar, to establish a North American branch in
1952.
Immediately after the war
it became apparent that it would take the German industry several years to be
able to produce enough goods to start exporting again. On the other hand, the majority of the German
population was hardly in a position to buy Leica cameras. The Leitz family had to look for a solution. It appeared to have come when Mr. Walter
Kluck joined the Ernst Leitz Co.
Walter Kluck
Before Walter Kluck
started to work for Leitz, he had considered opening a manufacturing plant in
France, together with a friend. When
presenting this idea to the Leitz family, it was generally agreed upon that
manufacturing Leicas in France would open the export market a lot sooner. The decision was made to start the operation
in the Saar territory which was under French occupation at that time. A lot of regulations had to be overcome, however,
and in order to speed things up, some of the machinery necessary was taken out
of Wetzlar by night and transported to the new location. So it was by some dubious means that this new
venture got its start.
Initially Leitz coated
only lenses of prewar production and later even manufactured complete lenses
and mechanical parts for the Bolex motion picture cameras. Finally even cameras were made. They had the famous “Monte en Saare”
engravings, cameras with a considerable collector's value today.
Things in Europe didn't
look too good, however. The cold war
began to heighten and the Leitz family began making plans to avoid losing the
entire operation once again to war. The
solution seemed to be an entirely different region. Suggestions like North Africa, South America,
Spain and Ireland came up, but eventually someone mentioned North America,
particularly Canada. After a lot of
considerations, Canada was finally chosen as the most logical place. After all, North America was the largest
export market. Another reason for going
to Canada instead of the US at the time was that the name Leitz was still under
alien property control in the US and Leitz would not have been able to use
their own name in this country. It was
also the case that the American immigration laws at the time were rather tight
and it would have taken too long to get entry permission for the number of
people necessary to start such a venture.
Thus Canada was the best choice.
Right from the beginning
it was decided to look for a location not larger than 30 or 40,000 people. In 1951 Leitz finally narrowed the choice to
three places, Granby in Quebec, Smith Falls, which is near Ottawa and, of
course Midland, Ontario. Smith Falls was
quickly eliminated from the list because the name was too difficult to
pronounce in German or Spanish as well as a number of other languages. Another consideration was the fact that
Midland had the same number of letters was Wetzlar. This enabled the insertion of the Midland
name in all of the Leitz trademarks without the necessity of any changes. Before the war a shipyard had operated in
Midland and a lot of the population had found employment there. But it had been decided to close the yard at
the end of the war. A lot of people were
out of work and since there were no other towns nearby that could have offered
jobs, the people in Midland were very eager to get Leitz to come to their
town. So Midland was the choice.
ELCAN Midland Ontario
A brick from the Leitz
plant in Wetzlar was fitted into
the wall at the main
entrance to the Midland plant.
But other obstacles had to
be overcome. One was that Leitz needed
permission from the German government because something like this had never
been done before. Leitz was actually the
first company to take such a step. It
was also necessary to establish a program that would allow some quick sales
right at the beginning because at the time Leitz was allowed to bring only
$50,000 into the country and they had to make sure that they would not run out
of money before new revenues started to come in.
Unfortunately, the new
facilities were not quite ready for operation when the “Leica people”
arrived. To avoid losing precious time,
an assembly facility was temporarily set up in the Midland Ice Arena. Under the leadership of Walter Kluck, the
first lens components were finished after only one week and the first completed
Leica lenses and cameras were ready after only four weeks.
Soon after moving into the
new facilities they started not only to assemble but to actually manufacture
part as well. After only three years of
operation the Midland design department was established. Initially it dealt only with mechanical
designs, but after borrowing an optical designer from Wetzlar, optical design
was also taken up. This designer had a
very good reputation and it was planned to “loan” him to Midland for only six
months. He never made it back to Wetzlar
and his skills were primarily responsible for establishing Midland as one of
the foremost lens design departments in the entire world. The gentleman's name was Professor Dr. Walter
Mandler. His crowning achievement was
the design of the 50mm f/1 Noctilux. The
design department became so successful that at the time most of the Leica
lenses were designed in Midland rather than in Wetzlar.
Early computer
installation at ELCAN
ELCAN Picker x-ray lenses
Besides the Leica program,
Ernst Leitz Canad (ELC) became involved with the production of optical
equipment for other companies, such as Hughes Aircraft, RCS and Picker
X-ray. All told, there were about 100
companies that did business with Leitz.
Besides the civilian market, ELC was also heavily involved in
manufacturing for the US Defense Department, primarily the US army but also the
Navy which lead to the ELCAN HIGH RESOLUTION 35mm CAMERA SYSTEM. Already in
the 1960s they were aked by the US Navy to develop a high resolution 35mm
camera system. This was based on the
Leicaflex SL.
Leicaflex SL with 75mm f/2
ELCAN Lens
Photos: James L. Lager, Leica Illustrated History, Vol. II, 1994, p. 307, 309 and Vol. III, 1998,
p. 319
Resolution, the ability of
a lens to project fine detail has always been a measure of great importance in
the evaluation of photographic lenses.
The following are excerpts from an article by Joseph A. Schantz, Assistant
Head of Research and Development Department at the Navel Photographic Center in
Washington, DC.
Research by optical glass
manufacturers has resulted in optical glasses having improved properties with
respect to secondary color aberration.
Since this glass became available lenses having complete color
correction over an extended spectral range have been developed for a Navy 35mm
camera system.
Since 1963 the Navel
Photographic Center and the Navel Air Systems Command as a matter of continuous
policy have expanded efforts to upgrade 35mmphotography on a systematic
basis. The aim of this work was not only
to improve the quality of documentary and reported photography but also to
improve intelligence collection capabilities of the Navy’s cameras.
While most of this type of
photography by the Navy is classified, one application, according to a former
Navy officer, was in the Mediterranean.
For instance, US Navy ships often came into close contact with Russian
Navy vessels. It was common practice to
shoot a series of photographs of these ships during such encounters. The relative ease of operation of a 35mm
camera compared to medium format and even more so large format cameras proved
to render better photographs with 35mm equipment. It should be noted that the article by Mr.
Schantz was written prior to the advent of digital photography. However, the principles of lens design are
essentially the same in digital photography also. To get the necessary detail compared to
medium and large format photography it was necessary to develop a special, high
resolution 35mm camera system. Mr.
Schantz further writes:
It was recognized that the
resolution of a lens is limited in part due to a lack of correction of
secondary colors. Based on the light
refracting properties of available optical glasses, most lenses can only bring
two wavelengths to a common focus. The
optical designer must choose these wavelengths to best suit the intended use of
the lens. All other wavelengths are then
focused in planes predetermined by the properties of the glasses over which the
designer has no control.
Until the advent of extra
low dispersion glasses the only exceptions were apochromatic microscope lenses
and some telephoto lenses for 35mm camera systems which incorporated lens
elements made of calcium fluoride crystals or alum and some process lenses that
used large opposite powers in their element configuration. But these were limited to apertures of f/9 or
smaller.
Lenses utilizing elements
made of calcium fluoride have proven to be of very good performance. But they are not without drawbacks. Calcium fluoride unfortunately is very soft
and scratches easily. Therefore front
elements made of calcium fluoride usually are protected by a clear front glass
plate or a thin lens element made of conventional optical glass. Furthermore calcium fluoride has a rather
high temperature coefficient which means that it expands and contracts very
much during temperature changes. In some
instances this had led to calcium fluoride lens elements literally shattering
when objected to great temperature differences.
It is also the case that these elements do change their optical
properties during temperature changes which makes it necessary to allow lenses
incorporating such elements to be focused past the infinity mark. With other words, while the performance of
such lenses is quite high, this must be paid for with a number of drawbacks.
However, research has
produced optical glasses that do display the same or similar properties as
calcium fluoride, but without the above mentioned drawbacks. The first such glass was developed in the
late 60s and early 70s by the glass research laboratory at Ernst Leitz Wetzlar,
the maker of Leica cameras. Not until
approximately ten years later were similar glasses made available by other
glass manufacturers like Schott and Nikon.
These glasses are commonly referred to as extra low dispersion or fluor
crown glasses. They allow the easier
design and manufacture of apochromatic lenses.
Only true apochromats have the ability to focus all colors of the
visible spectrum at one common point.
Mr. Schantz further states:
A series of such
apochromates has been designed and manufactured under contract by Ernst Leitz
Canada Ltd (Elcan). The lenses were
designed by Professor Dr. Walter Mandler.
The lenses consist of: Elcan-R 75mm f/2, Elcan-R 180mm f/3.4, Elcan-R
450mm f/5.6.
ELCAN 75mm f/2
Photo: L Camera Forum
180mm f/3.4 Apo Telyt
Schematic of the 180mm
f/3.4
These lenses were designed
for the Leica R cameras and are color corrected from 400 to 900
nanometers. These lenses permit
photography in black and white, color and infrared with the same focal
setting. When subjected to a series of
filtered responses,(measurements with colored light) of blue, yellow, red and
infrared, the yellow, red and infrared responses were grouped over a focal
plane spread of only 0.02mm. (These are
data for the 180mm f/3.4 which was tested at maximum aperture. Initially a classified piece of equipment,
the lens later became available on the civilian market as the 180mm f/3.4 Apo
Telyt-R) The curve of the blue filter is shifted 0.07mm closer to the
lens. The maximum focal plane shift from
blue to infrared is 0.09mm or ±0.045mm.
If this lens is used only for daylight operations (no infrared), the
maximum focal plane shift is reduced to 0.08mm or ±0.04mm which is less than
1/2000 of an inch. Considering the
accuracies to which photographic cameras (from Leica) are built, this tolerance
falls within those specifications.
Most camera manufacturers
apply less stringent tolerances. The
industry average standard is 1/1000 of an inch, with a few manufacturers like
Canon, Nikon and Contax going to 1/1250 or 1/1500 of an inch. Leica cameras on the other hand continue to
be made to tolerances of 1/2500 of an inch or more precisely 1/100 of a
millimeter. Tolerances applied for the
manufacture of lenses often needs to be much smaller. Starting with the optical glass, Leica
applies a standard of ±0.0002% for the accuracy of the refractive index. This compares to the international standard
of ±0.001%. The accuracy of the Abbe number,
the measure for dispersion is ±0.2% for Leica compared to ±0.8%
internationally. For the manufacture of
individual lens elements Leica allows production tolerance of no more than ¼
lambda or ¼ of the average wavelength of light which corresponds to
approximately 500 nanometers or 0.0005mm for the accuracy of the lens
surface. In comparison, the tolerances
applied by other lens manufacturers are ½ lambda or 0.001mm. For the production of aspherical lens
elements Leica applies even tighter tolerances which cannot exceed 0.03
micrometer or 0.00003mm.
For comparison purposes
the same procedure was repeated with a representative sample of a high quality
photographic achromatic objective (only corrected for the primary
spectrum). The Leica Elmarit-R 180mm
f/2.8 lens was stopped down to f/3.4 for the test. It is strikingly evident that the different
colors focus at quite different locations on the lens axis. The maximum focal plane shift from blue to
infrared is 0.5mm compared to 0.09mm for the 180mm f/3.4 lens. This amounts to an increase by a factor of
5.6. The maximum focal plane shift under
daylight conditions is 0.2mm as compared to 0.08mm for the 180mm f/3.4 lens. This amounts to a factor of 2.5 over the
180mm f/3.4 lens.
The most obvious advantage
of the 180mm and the 450mm lenses occur when high resolution films are
used. The 180mm lens would outperform
any other lens with any type of photographic emulsion (or digital sensor)
The performance of the
180mm Apo Telyt-R is well known and Mr. Schantz’s article only confirms the
fact that the 180mm f.3.4 Apo Telyt-R is one of the best lenses ever made.
Mr. Schantz writes the
following about films:
When the improved lenses
were tested with regular fine grain films, little improvement could be noticed
over the performance of regular good lenses.
Through the cooperation of
film manufacturers a number of film samples were tested for performance with
the new lenses. Two classes of film
emulsions gave promising results. These
classes were (a) high definition aerial films and (b) high resolution document
copy films.
These aerial films are
fine grained, slow, high contrast and have extended red sensitivity. However, when processed as normally
recommended by the manufacturer for aerial use, they have too high contrast for
general ground photography. The same
holds true for the high contrast copy films since they were designed for high
contrast microfilming.
Kodak High Contrast Copy
Film when processed in the POTA developer of Marilyn Levy (Levy, M., “Wide
Latitude Photography,” Science and Eng. Vol. II Number I, January, February
1967) yield excellent high resolution negatives with adequate film speed. The Agfa High Contrast Copy film gives a
practical combination of good resolution and emulsion speed.
According to the research
done by Mr. Schantz, the best resolution obtainable with conventional film is
250 – 300 l/mm compared to 550 l/mm with the Agfa High Contrast Copy Film and
600 l/mm with Kodak 5069 and 3414 film.
Those are very impressive
figures. It was soon determined that in
order to make enlargements that would show this amount of detail, a special
enlarger was necessary. For that reason
Leitz made a modified version of their Focomat II enlarger where the standard
light source was replaced with a point light source. Only such illumination systems are capable to
reproducing extremely small detail from a negative.
The 35mm high resolution
camera system was classified material for several years.
Of the three lenses, the
180mm f.3.4 ELCAN lens proved to be the most practical one which resulted in a
declassification, allowing Leitz to make the 180mm part of their lens line for
the Leica reflex cameras. It entered the
market in 1975 as the 180mm f/3.4 Apo Telyt R.
Even today it ranks as one of the best lenses ever made for general
photography.
One of the most unusual
military developments was an underwater camera system which Leitz developed for
the US Navy. It primarily consisted of a
complete set of lenses for underwater work, not only for 35mm cameras but also
for medium format, 16mm motion picture and TV cameras. These were rather unique lenses because they
were not part of a camera that was simply put into a water tight housing. Instead the lenses were designed to be
exposed to the water with their front element.
The usual way of using under water housings for conventional cameras
incorporates lenses that are designed to work in air. When designing such lenses, Leitz even takes
the refractive index of air into consideration.
ELCAN under water housing
for Leica M camreas, front view
Back view
Inside, front and back view with Leica M4 camera installeed
Today the system is on display, together with other military equipment
at the Leica Museum in Wetzlar
ELCAN under water housing
for motion picture and video cameras
ELCAN under water lens
system with water contact front lens element
The Leitz under water
system instead was designed according to the refractive index of water. As a matter of fact, since this system was to
be used primarily in salt water, it was the refractive index of salt water that
was used in the design of these lenses.
However, not all oceans have the same salinity. So Leitz went one step further and took the
refractive index of the salinity of the various oceans into consideration. This was possible with an interchangeable
front element of their water contact lenses.
This overall design actually considers the water as an integral lens
element of the entire system. To avoid
the need to test these lenses in the various oceans all over the world, Leitz
built a large water tank that could be flooded with water of the appropriate
salinity.
Water salinity test tank
The correction of these
lenses is so good that, when water is clear enough, there is no way of telling
that the pictures were taken under water.
Leitz was the first company to suggest such a design.
What is even more amazing
is the fact that the thick water contact front element is so strong that the
lenses can be used in the greatest ocean depths without any problems at all,
including the deepest part on earth, the 36,200 feet deep Challenger Deep of
the Mariana Trench.
In the middle of the 1970s
ELC decided to look into the manufacture of cameras as well. Until then the whole operation had been
dependent on selling their wares to others.
They had been compared to a tire company supplying tires to car
manufacturers. ELC's success was
entirely dependent upon the successes of the companies they supplied. It was decided that the manufacture of
cameras would add a great new dimension to the Canadian Leitz operation. After Wetzlar had given its blessing and
given 100% support to this venture, all the tooling for the M4 cameras was
moved to Midland and a great number of specialists from Wetzlar helped to get
this venture off the ground. The first
camera of this new venture was the M4-2.
Basically identical to the old M4, it was modified to accept a motor
winder which greatly enhanced the versatility of the camera. Soon additional development of this camera
resulted in the M4-P with the added versatility of a 28mm and 75mm viewing
frame and a motor winder capable of running continuously at the rate of three
frames per second.
One little known fact is
that in 1970 Ernst Leitz Canada was awarded the design and manufacturing
contract for the new 70mm IMAX projection system and in 1983 Ernst Leitz Canada
began work with Panavision for their state of the art cinematographic
lenses. These are just two examples of
the many designs and manufacture they did for outside companies, both for
civilian and military use.
ELCAN Panavision lenses
Thus Midland had developed
into a fully independent camera and lens manufacturer. Their name Ernst Leitz Canada and their trade
mark ELCAN have earned the highest reputation throughout the world and it was
only a matter of time until additional new and exciting developments from this
branch of Leitz would make the news.
Lens coating machine
Camera assembly
EROS IV optical transfer
analyzer
ELCAN mechanical
department
When Leitz decided to
build the manufacturing plant in Midland there was no doubt that it should
operate and manufacture at the same high standards that the world had grown
accustomed to with the products from Wetzlar.
Thus it came as no surprise to me on my first visit to Midland that the
interior was very much like that in Wetzlar. Although the buildings were not anywhere near
as large as the main plant in Wetzlar, the interior of the actual work areas
was almost identical. The relatively
stark interior immediately showed a no frills, but an all business
attitude. Quality control was as tight
as in Wetzlar. Everywhere, regardless of
what work was being performed, there were people doing checks and
rechecks. Virtually all workbenches had
some sort of testing instrument on them.
The whole place had a rather unhurried atmosphere. The workers were under no time pressure at
all. Everyone could take the time
necessary to do things right. This was
further enhanced by the total absence of assembly lines. All work was done on individual workbenches.
The same was the case in
the lens grinding department. A lot of
the work was performed by machines, but I saw at least one person busy grinding
a lens element by hand. It is a known
fact that nothing can replace hand grinding when ultimate precision is of the
essence and Leitz was still doing it.
While there were obviously
a lot of people from the Midland area employed there. It was very obvious that
there still was a large German contingent, easily recognized by the many German
accents that could be heard in almost all conversations.
1982 marked the 30th
anniversary of the Midland operation. It
had established itself as one of the foremost optical design companies in the
world and Leitz would not have been at that time what they were without the branch
in Midland.
In 1990 Hughes Aircraft
Co. purchased Ernst Leitz Canada. The company expanded its operations as Hughes
Leitz Optical Technologies. During the
period from 1997 to 1999 Raytheon acquired the optical business units of Texas
Instruments and Hughes Aircraft Co. Midland and Richardson, Texas. The units were merged to form ELCAN Optical
Technologies. From 2000 to 2002 ELCAN
Optical Technologies underwent an aggressive marketing and technology
development program and focused its combined experience to serve
telecommunications, defense, commercial and industrial markets. In 2003 ELCAN integrated with Raytheon's
microelectronics facility in Malaga, Spain. Established in 1992, this advanced
electronics manufacturing plant expanded ELCAN's capabilities with complete EMS
operations, electro optical integration and better access to European
customers. The same year ELCAN launched
SpecterIR™, the world's first uncooled infrared rifle scope focused on Homeland
Security and low cost military applications.
In 2004 ELCAN launched PhantomIR™, a novel uncooled infrared binoculars
also focused on Homeland Security and military applications. In 2005 Elcan became the world's largest
manufacturer of military electronic rifle scopes and released its first consumer
rifle scope: DigitalHunter™. The world's first fully electronic rifle sighting
system designed for sportsmen, DigitalHunter™ is a quantum leap in sporting
optics technology, eclipsing the traditional glass-and-metal design of
conventional rifle scopes.
Today Elcan's total
capabilities include manufacturing in the fields of medical, electronic,
defense and security, sighting systems, and contract manufacturing.
________________________________________________________________________________________
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