[Cuthbert]

I recall hearing from a colleague that Ferrari does mix their own paint - on earlier models they used fewer layers and thinner paint on their cars in order to keep the weight down and the performance profile up, the only drawback to this approach is that the finish was easily damaged.

Ferrari also had corporate partnerships going with tyre makers who they get to make tyres to their rather exacting specifications.

I used to work in Ferrari and what you are saying is partially true for F1 cars, but today a Ferrari California weights 1600 kg dry so a layer or two more or less won't change the things.

It's true than in a 300 km/h car paint gets easily damage(my Alfa is a disaster) especially from truck spilling sand on the highway, so we developed a very expensive plastic film to protect the front of the car from micro-impacts.

Finally something I can speak to with a bit of knowledge. While car manufacturers like to claim expertise in all fields relating to the components used in their vehicles (Ford offered to license its insights into rubber chemistry to tire manufacturers, for instance), they are more likely to establish "partnerships" with tire manufacturers to add a degree of exclusivity to their vehicles than to push the tire manufacturers to improve their craft. More than one tire manufacturer is capable of making tires to Ferrari's spec's (or Porsche's for that matter.) In particular, Michelin and Goodyear have a history of having to convince auto manufacturers to take advantage of new tire technology, instead of the auto manufacturers providing impetus for the tire manufacturers to improve their products.

The point of this is that industrial specialization has produced real benefits and there is no intrinsic benefit to having a camera manufacturer (or kitchen appliance manufacturer, either) produce all of its own components. In fact, the opposite is true.

The game in automotive works like that:

1) Certain makers have prestige (Ferrari, AMG) or the numbers (Ford, FIAT-Chrysler) to impose their requirements to their suppliers. For instance, all these companies have engineering standards for everything, for instance the chemical composition of approved plastic for various parts of the cars. When a supplier is "Q" rated (Ford nomenclature) he receives all the standards from the customer as well as the CAD, he may asks for modification to fit his manufacturing process and he has to guarantee technical support for the components he supplies.

While Ford/FIAT makes gearboxes in house, Ferrari does not, so they go to Graziano/Getrac and says "allright, I need a transaxle dual clutch with this performance and bla bla" and the two companies start a co-design for this custom made component exclusive to Ferrari.

2) Small manufacturers (JLR, Aston Martin...) do not have the technical skills, money and or numbers to design something so sophisticated as a gearbox so they dependant from their suppliers (ZF, Getrac, whoever) so they buy a product "off the shelves" (like the 8HP70) for instance. Customisations are possible but usually the supplier has contorl in this negotiation so usually they leave the components off the shelf as it is.

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Last edited by Cuthbert; 06-02-2016 at 12:09 AM.

[clackers]

With SSDs I'd have to say it is less clear cut than that, it used to be Seagate and Western digital*. With SSDs it is Kingston,Corsair and Intel that are leading the race. Western digital really hasn't gotten fully on to the SSD bandwagon.

WD are trying to buy their way into the market ... they've acquired Sandisk.

[glasbak]

Pentax does not make glass.
Pentax does not make lenses.
Pentax does not make camera's.
Nowadays, Pentax is just a label used by Ricoh for camera and lenses related stuff.
Before Ricoh, it was Hoya who sold camera's using the pentax label.
Before Hoya acquired Pentax, Pentax did make lenses and camera's.

[clackers]

Pentax does not make glass.
Pentax does not make lenses.
Pentax does not make camera's.
Nowadays, Pentax is just a label used by Ricoh for camera and lenses related stuff.
Before Ricoh, it was Hoya who sold camera's using the pentax label.
Before Hoya acquired Pentax, Pentax did make lenses and camera's.

Read the K-1 publicity website, Glasbak, the designers have been around for years, probably predating Hoya ... Ricoh, like Hoya before them, had never sold let alone designed a DSLR.

It's made in what was the Pentax factory in the Philippines, not in existing Ricoh facilities, likewise lenses are produced in the Pentax facilities in Vietnam, not wherever the Ricoh ones came from.

Ricoh pay the staff salaries now, Hoya before that, and once upon a time, right at the beginning, it was a company called Asahi.

Your argument - ignoring the nature of these kinds of acquisitions - verges on trivial semantics, IMHO.

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Last edited by clackers; 06-03-2016 at 06:32 AM.

[victormeldrew]

The ownership of a company is fairly irrelevant in the modern world. Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti are all owned by Audi, but that doesn't mean an Aventador is 'made by Audi'.

[RGlasel]

The idiocy of some on the internet is legion. You can read all sorts of errant stuff.

Even though I'm guilty of getting side-tracked, this is the point of this thread, correct?

Is this legitimately a widely held belief?

The internet can make a solitary malcontent seem like a movement. Even worse than Cecil B. DeMille's instructions to have 6 extras running around in circles to create a mob scene. It is as likely that more people disagree with the quoted Facebook statement than agree with it, but no one takes a vote, as long you find a kindred spirit somewhere on the World Wide Web, you are affirmed.

[Cuthbert]

Actually, Audi is a subsidiary, too. They are all part of the VW group. And most of the Audisreuse a lot of parts from VW models. They're often made in the same factory, too. Several Bentleys and Bugattis are also at least partially assembled in VW plants.

The way the company is structured, Lamborghini is a subsidiary of Audi AG, which is a subsidiary of VW. The other two are direct subsidiaries of VW.

This doesn't make a Bentley or a Lamborghini a German car. They are still made in Good Ole England and in Emilialand respectively.

Regarding Bentleys, as far as I know they get engines completed by Audi, but the car assembly is all made in the UK.

[bertwert]

No wonder my pictures are no good!
I haven't got any lens on my camera...

[clackers]

Yep, it's just so superficial to argue that since 1909, Cadillac hasn't made a car, only General Motors has.

[nosliwmit]

I don't mind dropping into a bit of a rabbit hole (like this one) when the conversation consists primarily of intelligent statements/viewpoints by people who know something about what they're saying. I enjoyed this thread (and learned a few tidbits) even though it's not terribly relevant to me. But I do so enjoy interesting trivia and wish there was more of it here in the ether...

[victormeldrew]

In my experience, once the original post is adequately answered, most threads here descend into meandering discussions of dubious merit but of reasonable entertainment.

...really the better analogy is whether Mercedes smelts their own steel. Glass making, like steel making, is a specialised and industrial process that has little to do with the art and engineering of turning that raw material into a finished product. Likewise, most photographers don't make their own paper but that doesn't mean they don't really make photos.

All the same I still believe the facebook poster probably believed that all Pentax lenses are third party rebadges.

[RobA_Oz]

Did anyone ever discover the actual meaning of the hapless Facebook poster's original words?

Let's assume he did mean "glass" when he said "glass", and not "lenses". The only valid reasons for doing that these days are either because you have trade secrets you wish to protect to the greatest extent possible, or because you can't find a specialist supplier who can make it to your specification, or possibly because your unit production is so large that vertical integration makes economic sense. I doubt that anything but the latter is likely to be the case with Canon, but maybe they have a glass formula whose production method they wish to protect. Probably more likely is that company history has dominated their thinking about how they conduct their business. The fact that they fell behind significantly in sensor performance suggests this is the case.

You could take the originating proposition further, and suggest that anyone who doesn't make their own manufacturing machinery or measuring instruments is a lesser maker. Some do, of course, to some extent.

Still, it's been a fun thread to read through. In a similar vein, and as a parting thought, has anyone accused Stradivari of not making his best musical instruments because he didn't grow the timber he used?

[Nicolas06]

Pentax does not make glass.
Pentax does not make lenses.
Pentax does not make camera's.
Nowadays, Pentax is just a label used by Ricoh for camera and lenses related stuff.
Before Ricoh, it was Hoya who sold camera's using the pentax label.
Before Hoya acquired Pentax, Pentax did make lenses and camera's.

First and foremost, who care? Pentax and Ricoh like Leica or Ferrari are just brand and names. Nothing more. Nothing else.

Sure that in some case different brand are designed/produced by same people, even to the sames specifications and quality. Often inside the same brand, the set of specs/quality/design is different and the people working on it are different too.

Sure that Audi, Volkswagen and Seat products share lot of things but even under the same brand like Pentax a tamron rebadge and a FAltd can be seen as very different... Or mabe not as some well know pentax lens engineer is now working for Tamron.

All theses stuff are really complex and brands are just that, brands, labels, name. They out to simplify buyer decision by sticking to a design philosophy, level of quality or what ever else that is the brand soul, but they are also marketing tools too. And it elvolve over time, some products are just failures etc... Nothing is pure white or pure black.

If we want to play on that isn't the Japanese goverment the real lens maker then because they likely have share of most Camera maker company? Or are the banks finally the lens maker because all theses company have debt?

Maybe it is the company that sell the rice to the Japaneses designer... Without that rice, without food the lens designer would have other priority than to design lens.

But does it really make any sense to argue like that? Really? This is just useless.

[StephenHampshire]

In my experience, once the original post is adequately answered, most threads here descend into meandering discussions of dubious merit but of reasonable entertainment.

...really the better analogy is whether Mercedes smelts their own steel. Glass making, like steel making, is a specialised and industrial process that has little to do with the art and engineering of turning that raw material into a finished product. Likewise, most photographers don't make their own paper but that doesn't mean they don't really make photos.

All the same I still believe the facebook poster probably believed that all Pentax lenses are third party rebadges.

Victor, you should tell him that you don't believe it...........

[monochrome]

Actually, Audi is a subsidiary, too. They are all part of the VW group. And most of the Audisreuse a lot of parts from VW models. They're often made in the same factory, too. Several Bentleys and Bugattis are also at least partially assembled in VW plants.

The way the company is structured, Lamborghini is a subsidiary of Audi AG, which is a subsidiary of VW. The other two are direct subsidiaries of VW.

This doesn't make a Bentley or a Lamborghini a German car. They are still made in Good Ole England and in Emilialand respectively.

Regarding Bentleys, as far as I know they get engines completed by Audi, but the car assembly is all made in the UK.

My wife's Mini Cooper is assembled in Oxford, England. Mini is owned by BMW. The engine is a three-cyl. BMW engine also used in their hybrids (including the M8). The electronics (dash panel / console / computer) are based on the 5-Series. The brakes, throttle and steering are BMW drive-by-wire technology. The trans is, I think, still supplied by a Japanese sub-contractor (but the 2015 models may have changed that). The interior bits are much higher quality and design than I expected when we first drove it.

In my mind a Mini Hardtop is just another BMW model series.