Hi Kimbo,

Exactly right!!

There are also other pitfalls...some German ebay sellers. usually dealers do not include German VAT on the auction....so unusually for ebay, the final winning bid price is subject to an extra 16% being added after the auction end! watch out for this.

Just to make you feel worse, as well as US citizens getting cheap goods, If they import from outside of the US, their customs charge them NOTHING on used goods...they take the view that any tax has already been paid on the item when new.

Cheers Steve.

Hi,

George is quite right, but it is not as clear cut as he states. I purposely said 'European' rather than EU for a reason. Although there is an EU wide agreement not to charge import duties on items bought within the EU group of states, in reality many items imported from 'European' states are ignored, so you may import free of duty from some and maybe all non-EU states which are in Europe. For example, Switzerland is in Europe, but not the EU, however I have imported several times from Switzerland items well over the duty level, but I have never been charged a bean.

Also, while duty fees are low (approx 3%) If you import an item over only £18 you will incur 17.5% vat on not only the value of the goods, but also the cost of the shipping...this can be expensive. You may also be charged a 'handling' fee by whoever pays the duty on your behalf...this is why I used the generic term 'customs fees' in my post, to cover all the possible fees.

Is this now as clear as mud?

Cheers Steve.M.

Hi,

Just to say, If you import from Germany, or any European country, you should not be charged ANY customs fees, or VAT when the item enters the UK, in other words you should just end up paying the retailers price plus ship cost.

Cheers Steve.M.

Hi,

I would like to make a few hopefully useful points...

1. For almost everyone, 6MP is more than adequate for good quality results, but everyone seems to be forgetting that the REALLY important point is how you use the equipment to take the photos in the first place! and with digital, how you process the captured images after shooting.

2. To some degree George is correct to say the lens is the limiting factor regarding potential sharpness, however the more important factor is how you use the camera. Anyone who hand holds a camera is immediately limiting the potential image sharpness to a huge degree, even If you use 'fast' shutter speeds! Zeiss conducted tests and found that hand holding a camera resulted in resolution dropping to approx 40 lines/mm when the resolution of the best film is approx 200 lines/mm. So unless you use a tripod the discusion about 'how many megapixels is best' is a bit pointless anyway.

3. There are many other very important aspects that make up a good image other than just resolution/ sharpness.....why do people keep talking about it as if nothing else matters?

4. The camera industry has now moved away from the engineering/ optical sector and unfortunately into the electronics industry, which uses the numbers game to entice unwary consumers into the 'upgrade game'. They have done this for years with hi-fi and are now applying the same untruthful advertising tactics with camera buyers.

I am always amazed how so many photographers agonise for so long over 'which camera is best' or 'which lens is best' etc, when how you use the damn stuff is FAR more important.

Cheers Steve.M. (just call me grumpy)

Hi,

I am a little confused how Sonnar can disagree, since the article by Samuel Tang proves my point. I did not say the Carl Zeiss Jena factory was 'fake' I said it was un-official and it is true that it was. However Samuel Tang is wholly incorrect on one important point, he says Carl Zeiss Jena was 'the original company in the original factory'..this is incorrect and his own article proves why :

A company is not bricks and mortar, a company is made up of people and designs and this is especially true of an optical company. As Samuel Tang himself says (and I said in my original post) before the Russians got their hands on the Jena factory, all the Zeiss management, designers, most of the workers, almost all of the machinery, all the designs and paperwork were taken to the US part of Germany, hence the russians were left with just a virtually empty Jena factory..this clearly does not constitute 'the original company', since the original company in essence had now been moved by the americans.

To quote the book 'On the trail of Contax vol 2' by Hans Jurgen Kuc : The americans took " the entire Zeiss board of directors and all the key personnel : scientists, designers, engineers, technicians and managers - 84 persons in total and another 41 skilled workers from the Schott glassworks also many family members who did not want to be under russian occupation. All the laboratory equipment was moved and 80,000 blueprints. Between the war end until the Berlin wall went up, over 1,600 Zeiss workers fled from Jena to the west. Bearing all this in mind, it is clear the Carl Zeiss factory in Jena was in no way the original company.

It is also worth stating that the Jena factory was one of several Zeiss facories and certainly not it's only one, as some people seem to think. Also Jena was heavily damaged by bombing in the war and so the russians not only had no Zeiss designers, no machines, virtually no workers they also had a bombed out building!!

When the russians did inherit the Jena factory, they stripped what was left of the machinery : 94 percent was dismantled and sent to the soviet union !! also over 250 Zeiss workers that were still in Jena were sent to Russia to run the soviet optical industry.

A court case between ' the peoples factory Carl Zeiss Jena' and the new but 'true' Carl Zeiss in West Germany began in 1954 and was settled in 1971. The East German authorities did not want to admit their factory in Jena was not the legal heir of the Carl Zeiss foundation, which the West German factory clearly was.

The whole and correct story is in the superb book : ON THE TRAIL OF THE CONTAX VOL 1 & 2 by HANS-JURGEN KUC ( WITTIG BOOKS, Germany)

Cheers all, sorry for the history lesson, but the whole Contax & Zeiss story is a fascinating read...Steve.M

Hi all,

Just to make some things a little clearer....the only 'Zeiss' lenses specifically produced to fit other camera makers products were made in the old Zeiss factory in Jena (Eastern Gremany) they were M42 screw mount and of low quality and always marked CARL ZEISS JENA.

The East German factory was run by the Russians and was an 'un-official' factory and nothing at all to do with the Carl Zeiss from before the war and nothing to do with the Contax/ Zeiss brand we now know. The Russians simply inherited the four walls of the old Zeiss factory in Jena, as the americans and british cleared out almost all of the staff, paperwork, designs, tools etc so the Russians could not use them.

When in the early 70's Zeiss were looking for a Japanese partner to make the cameras for the forthcoming Contax RTS system the first choice of Zeiss was Pentax. A relationship was started, but only lasted about a year. During this time Zeiss actually designed the Pentax K mount, which is why it looks so similar to the Contax/Yashica bayonet mount which appeared shortly after. Also the Pentax K 28mm f2 lens is remarkably similar to the Zeiss 28/2 along with one or two others..so it seems lens design was also shared for this short time. The partnership foundered for some unknown reason and then Zeiss took up with Yashica as a second choice.

Hope this makes things clearer...cheers Steve.

Hi,

re : The advice of George : throw it away and buy a digital....mmmm....

not at all environmentally sound advice.....and perhaps you should as a note of caution bear witness to a professional who got through no less than FOUR brand new Nikon D2X's before Nikon UK could find one that actually worked properly!

Cheers Grumpy...

Hi George,

My sister is very well and has seen my photos many times. She likes them and also thinks they are very good.

However If you read my posting properly you will see it was my sister IN LAW who paid lots of money for inferior goods. I have only recently got to know her (she lives a long way away) and she has not yet had the opportunity to browse my 6x4's...

And yes, you are right, my sister-in-law does seem to like spontaneity and fun, but this does not alter the fact that so-called pro's are selling inferior photos....you can (and indeed should) have fun and produce excellent quality at the same time...they are not mutually exclusive!

It just reminds us that so many people who think one thing is better than another are only judging from their particular viewpoint and experience of what constitutes 'good'. An owner of an old Ford Escort would think a new VW Golf GTI was great, but the owner of a Ferrari would think it was rubbish! Everthing is relative.....

.....I must slip back into my mangrove swamp and watch out for those rather large rocks falling out of the sky.......

......BLIMEY !!!!!

I thought this thread was buried...I do like controversy...

George...

Kim ...

Kimbo...

I am a former professional studio photographer, college trained, with 34 years photography behind me and I have not yet seen any large digital display print to rival a large display print taken from 35mm transparency film, let alone medium format film.....witness the stunning 6 feet X 4 feet prints from 35mm trannies that formed the travelling 'earth from the air' show not so long back.

People talk about resolution and sharpness, but completely overlook or ignore tonal qualities, tonal range, micro-contrast, TRUE colour reproduction and many other aspects that form a truly top notch photographic print...to my eyes almost all prints taken from digital simply look unreal, ie. they do not look as if they are reproducing the original scene in a 'correct' and natural way.

As an aside, has anyone seen the new chain of so-called professional studios on the high street called 'Venture' ? they shoot portraits in a new 'fun' way....I have seen prints from several of their studios and they are REALLY AWFUL quality..truly bad and yet when my sister-in-law paid over £200 pounds for them to shoot her family she was very pleased with the results...because she has no idea what 'proper' professional quality work should be like. They use digital and exhibit all that is wrong with so much of it....far too much contrast, no shadow detail, highlights completely blown out, truly awful colour reproduction etc etc....but people all up and down our fair land are happily shelling out large sums of money and walking away happy. It is sad.

Happy xmas to all....Steve.M.

ps...I use a Pentax 1st D (as stated in my original post) and I shoot lots of film!

Hi again,

Thought this might ensure some discussion!!

The ONLY reason I use digital is for internet/ web use, otherwise I would not bother. I actually do not buy this argument that digital lets you assess images at the point of taking them. I use a Pentax 1stD, which I assume is a good camera. The screen on the back is so poor, it is impossible to assess for depth of field, focus point and not even exposure. The screen image changes considerably as you move you viewpoint. The only thing the screen lets you preview with any kind of accuracy is composition .I still have to bracket !!! to ensure a spot on exposure....correcting these things after is not sensible and just smacks of 'sort it out later' mentality (and degrades the image)

Interestingly, I very rarely have to bracket on transparency with my Contax ST, I get super & consistent results.. and yet I always need to with the digital......

Bye...