How many lenses has Sony Sold?

[PhotoTraveler]

This is basically a question directed at David, but I'm sure others would be interested.

When KM punted the camera unit to Sony, it was often stated that Minolta had sold 16million AF lenses. Which isn't too bad, but it's rapidly behind Nikon and Canon who have been selling lenses at rates around 1.0-1.5 Million units a year.

Since this time, we haven't heard anything from Sony. We heard they sold about 500k A100s, and they surely have sold that many A200/A300/A350 combine units at this point.

So has Sony said anything about how many lenses they have sold? Have they sold over a million lenses yet, have they pushed the tally above 17million? I would think at one of these lens announcements, they would mention it. It would be a significant factoid in the growth of Sony. If they can get the number above 20 million it would definitely look good.

[Dr. Harout]

Let them just say how many lenses they have made...

[PhotoTraveler]

Well, numbers made verses numbers sold is one way to boost a number. How big are warehouses in Japan

[Dr. Harout]

Well, numbers made verses numbers sold is one way to boost a number. How big are warehouses in Japan

Don't know about the size of the warehouses but there's a joke which says that Japanese are so clever that they created a small thumbnail size bottle which takes a ton of water...

[David Kilpatrick]

No figures have been released, but for the high end (G) lenses, Sony has been working to capacity. The former Minolta production plant is not able to keep with the demand. I suspect that is one reason why we have G and Zeiss - they are made in different production units, and the Zeiss-producing facility may not have the same limits. As 18-70mms, I imagine they are as common as grains of rice. They have probably sold 1m of those since the Alpha 100 was launched.

David

[PhotoTraveler]

David, do you have anything on where they different lenses are produced. Can you confirm if the following is correct.

1) 35G, 70-200G, 300G are still made in the old plant by KM.
2) Sony is using what was the KM china plant (bought from KM) to make some of the lens (1.4/50 for example)

Do you know much on where other stuff is being made. Such as, are the new G lenses made by KM, or at the old KM plant (Osaka?) or does Sony have a new place making those.

Do you know who or where the ZAs are being made?

I've been curious if Sony has built there own lens plant someplace where they are making at least the high and G and ZA stuff in Japan, not sourcing it out to someone else. Along with that, do you know much about where Sony is making these bodies. They are all made in Japan, is this a new plant, or just a re-tooled Sony manufacturing facility built to make just about anything? I see some reports now of A200s being made in Maylasia which would imply Sony has now re-tooled the old KM plant there.

There is much rumor on this stuff, it would be nice to have a real answer. Especial on the ZA's as they tend to get trolled a lot in forums. One particular DPR troll who keeps inventing a new manufacture for them all the time from Cosina, to Sigma, to I believe his current claim is they are designed and built by Tamron. Gets old to say the least.

I would think even with them making G and ZAs at full capacity, it isn't a whole lot of lenses.

[David Kilpatrick]

David, do you have anything on where they different lenses are produced. Can you confirm if the following is correct.

1) 35G, 70-200G, 300G are still made in the old plant by KM.
2) Sony is using what was the KM china plant (bought from KM) to make some of the lens (1.4/50 for example)

Do you know much on where other stuff is being made. Such as, are the new G lenses made by KM, or at the old KM plant (Osaka?) or does Sony have a new place making those.

I don't know exactly where the lenses are made are my earliest information was that the entire contents of the Sakai (near Osaka) workshop was crated up in the weeks after Sony took over, and transported to a new location. The Sakai factory was not very large, more a big industrial unit. But then, later on, I have been told that Konica Minolta continues to supply some lenses on subcontract - which would mean Sakai (as you suggest above) was still operative, or that the equipment remained with KM and was removed to a new location.

Probably the only person who knew was the late Burt Keppler. Clearly, some of the lenses could not have been continued so easily unless the old KM plant (not necessarily the factory) had remained in use. But then, I do not know how long a lens line lasts for. I would assume you can not just set up to make a 20mm f2.8 in 1985 and expect the same production machinery to be turning them out in 2006. But the Russians uplifted the Zeiss Dresden and Contax production lines, and were still turning out cameras and lenses from them 30 years later!

So it's either the original machinery, or refurbished machinery, in a location in Japan. The CZ lenses - I have no idea. Everything Sony has said points to them using TWO locations to assemble the Zeiss lenses. The optics are produced in a Zeiss-controlled facility but mounted into the lens body by Sony, exactly the same way that the lens units for their consumer digicams always have been - Zeiss delivers the glass in a minimal mount, Sony put it in the camera. Seems they do the same with the CZ ZA glass, which is why every ZA lens has two serial numbers - one for the lens, which gets J Koike's QC signature, and one for the barrel.

As for the Chinese side, I have no idea whether Sony bought the Chinese plant because I thought it was only part-owned by KM - like many investments in China - and the other partner was Shanghai Optical, who have worked with KM/Minolta for over 20 years buying most of the disused Minolta manufacturing plant for both cameras and lenses, along with the rights to make Minolta MD mount film cameras (and the contract to supply the 'actual' X-370s or whatever the final plastic X-300 model was/is). Sony either works with this plant, or has taken over KM's share, or had other Chinese facilities. Maybe parts of the Sakai inventory were shipped to China (this was an early rumour). Some of the first CZ 16-80mms were apparently made in China (not mine) and QC proved inadequate. Like you I have read about the KM optical factory in China and its opening, but I do not know the full story, or whether there are other Chinese factories being used.

Konica Minolta maybe still has an active lens making plant in Japan, as their photocopier/scanner optics and supply of video camera lenses to JVC might indicate; but Tamron is a major video lens specialist, and KM could just be getting the brand put on a Tamron product. And with laser scanner/printers overtaking photocopiers, the optical side of office equipment must now be less dependent on chunks of glass.

Then there is the Malaysian plant, apparently inactive for some time - I have not seen a single item labelled made in Malaysia yet from Sony, but loads of KM gear had that label. Has anyone got anything out there with a Malaysia label on it?

David

[PhotoTraveler]

Good read.

On the malaysia plant, I only recently saw someone post that their A200 had been made there. So it sounds like they have shifted production.

Before the new wave of bodies, I had assumed Sony would have been re-tooling that plant to have much more output and do the entry level stuff, but A200/A300/A350 were all made in Japan. Maybe they now have got that plant going and are shifting production over there, first with the A200 which would be easiest due to it being so much like the A100, and then maybe later they shift A300/A350 over. Maybe they will eventually do high end stuff in Japan, and entry level in Malaysia. Or they will do initial production in Japan for all models and shift it later.

On lenses, I know my 1.4/50 Sony is made in China. So that has clearly shifted. I believe that lens would have been made in Sakai originally. It's the only non Japan lens I have. I do recall the 1.7/50 having been shifted over there before the end of KM (which could be a move like you mention with all the stuff over to seagull (Shanghai Optical = Seagull?).

The 16-80 had a preproduction run done in Japan, when Sony delayed it, they put in the press release that they were shifting production to Japan. To my knowledge no China versions ever were released. and the one early model that a person tried to sell on Ebay was pulled.

Far a setting back up. Well, that of course goes back to looking at what returned. Clearly they had set up for new runs of the 35G and 50 as they had just did a re-design for them. Other ones were still in active production. The ones that are hard to figure out are the 2.8/28, 2.8/20 and 2.8/16. I don't know where they are making them. They have said that lenses that came back were based on what could be brought to production the quickest. I think that's only a partial truth, obviously anything in current active production would have been as easy. I think they had an idea of what they wanted to bring back to fill in. If those lenses are made in China too, it could make some sense. KM may have been in the process of transferring them over to the Shanghai Optical as you mention for older stuff. The 1.7/50 went away, but the 2.8/28 got the RS makeover it never had. Maybe even before sony they were shifting that stuff to china and had a production run plotted for all of them with some face lifts. As they were still needed system lenses, but nothing of high value. And being so old, they have to sell at prices so low, that the cost to make them would have to be cut so low that they would have to be made in china, or they would need to be canceled. They very well had been in that shift, and had optical sets on order for those ones.

Much of the tooling would probably be ok. As a lot of it would be the assembly tools, which won't age. The glass would be to spec and sent to a glass/optics shop. I think Minolta had shut down their glass plant, so it was all outsourced. They should be able to send prints to any supplier at any time and they make them without issue using fairly standard processes. Unless you have APO elements I don't think there would be to much special tooling. Still a pain to make lenses. But just like gears and splines, they standardize the tools they make them with and can produce near infinite parts from that common tool set of hobbes and broaches and such. I would expect spherical lens production to be similar. The injection molded and pot metal parts would be the hard ones. Not so much because the tooling would be worn, but because the tools the tooling went into may not be used anymore. So you got the dies, but no machine to mount them in. But if they did that in house, they might be good to go, just load up the dies in the old machine and go. Of course, the molded parts are the main parts sony changed, so they might have made some new tooling quick, which would match with the price spikes. Most everything needed to make a lens should be crated up after every batch and put in storage and pulled out when needed. So I don't there is to much of an issue there. As long as there is no band materials involved, obsolete designs, or parts that cannot be sourced anymore (electronics mainly).

This is one of those things where you just wish Sony would just say it. I'm sure Japanese culture plays a part. But really, no one would think less if Sony said KM was still making the old Gs in the old Plant with the old People. It would even make peoples price complaints be reduced. On the ZA stuff, if they came out and said Zeiss makes the glass, Sony assemblies it in their own plant. That would go over very well to know. Sony and Zeiss's current stance is hurting them, as people make up ideas about who is making them. If it's a Zeiss shop in Japan or Germany making the glass, and the assembly in a Sony owned plant, that would raise the image of those lenses. Instead of having people claim they are Cosina or someone like that made.

[David Kilpatrick]

I notice that Canon make a point in their new 24mm f1.4 L release that the lens uses lead-free glass to comply with RoHS:

http://www.rohs.gov.uk/

Europe messing with things again, no-one is going to die from sucking the lead out of a lens.

But - remembering the nickel grip fiasco - it is possible that some of the unexpected omissions in the Sony lens line-up, like the 200mm f2.8, 200mm macro, 100-300mm APO D, classic G 17-35 etc might have been decided on things like lead and other metal content in the glass.

David

[Philip]

David, you mean to say you haven't tried curried macro? Sound's awefully fishy to me ....

Philip

[Winston]

Oh dear...I guess I had better stop licking my lenses clean.

[Dr. Harout]

Oh dear...I guess I had better stop licking my lenses clean.

Don't worry, you can still continue your habit, just drink a cup of fixage (fixer, Sodium thiosulfate) afterward.

[Winston]