John, this is good news. I have my MX just a year (bought from 1st hand, female, looks not much used). In 1981 I hadn't the curage to buy a MX instead of an ME super... longevity neither the MX nor the LX have best reputation here. Maybe because some photographs with big fingers just don't have trust them?
Anyway the small size is what I like most at it... coming back to the roots of Asahi-Pentax 1957 or even Asahiflex beeing as compact as possible SLRs... similar to the MZ later? Don't have experience with them, "too young" for me...
cheers, Frank

The reason why I'm curious about the production numbers of the ME/MX sisters is my understanding that PENTAX did kind of a "market test" with them, kind of "what will sell better", electronics/simple to use/automatic exposure (ME) or 100% manually (MX). You can add the KX (bigger manual camera, build more like the Spotmatic series) and K2 (the best of two worlds) to that experiment.
Now we know that electronics was the winner, but in the early 70's this was not so clear to anticipate...
It seemed to me that the K-series was outranged soon due to lack of success - with exception of the K-1000 marketed with some right as "beginners camera", low-priced, probably could be mounted at the "old" Spotmatic facilities.
But the next who was outranged was the MX. There was a MEsuper, MV and so on but no "MXsuper" - with some right the LX can be considered as the follower of the MX but not in the same price league and incorporated a lot more electronics.
So my rough estimation is the MX got outselled by the ME by a multiple! Good for Pentax in some way because they made much more money with the ME, which was cheaper to manufacture than the MX...

cheers, Frank

Hi Peter, your wife proved a fine sense for aestethics...

Who knows how many MX were produced in total?
AFAIK there were two production runs, started with 4.xxx.xxxx and 9.xxx.xxx
It would be interesting to have the total numbers compared with her electronic sister, the ME/ ME super.
For these who are too young to remember that camera back in the 1970's - one of the nicest SLRs ever build - here is my one:
http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras/Pentax_MX_e.html

sorry if the information is posted somewhere else, but I did a serach on "MX" and nothing found !

cheers, Frank

Hi Steve,

since the "cold war" is over and Germany re-unified (maybe some people -even Germans - didn't noticed) there is no discussion worth which is the "true", "original" Zeiss and which is not, neither in kind of designs, nor staff, nor quality of output (which marketing aspects was the hidden reason why this argument was taken by CZ Oberkochen)
There were two Carl Zeiss between 1945 and 1991. This cannot be denied in terms of history. At least Hans Harting remained at Carl Zeiss Jena after 1945, so there is no point management move. There were good and bad lenses of Carl Zeiss Jena and Oberkochen as well.
AND a lot of people lost their jobs at Carl Zeiss Jena after reunification of both works.
What Kuc is written may be right or not. I know his book about the Contarex - not a bad book, but he missed any critical distance to his object which makes not just a book-writing "fan" but a good Journalist.

cheers, Frank

Sorry - I allow to disagree

Samuel Tang (Austrailia) wrote in www.rangefinderforum.com (I cite his text with his permission):

"To recap: the East German company Carl Zeiss Jena was not, as many was led to believe, a "fake" company bearing the name of Carl Zeiss to leech off the reputation of the name; it was the original company in the original factories where all the pre-WWII lenses were made. For that matter, the company name was "Carl Zeiss", as as per the custom of the time, the location of the company was also marked on the lens: in much the same way, the company who made the Leica lenses was not "Leitz Wetzlar" but "Leitz".

The US forces reached Jena first and according to the agreement reached at the Yalta conference, the US occupying forces would vacate for the Soviet forces to take over administration. Thus "Operation Paperclip" was put into action: several hundred Carl Zeiss personnels were "escorted" at gunpoint, along with a huge amount of material resources, to the area destined to be under US control, so that a new optical company could be established there. The Carl Zeiss company name was registered in a hurry, and so was the Carl Zeiss Foundation.

Meanwhile, the company in Jena was pretty much left in the cold but it still tried its best to get back into business, but as the original Carl Zeiss Stiftung re-registerred with the authorities a matter of days later than the new one in the west, it lost its legitimacy as seen in many overseas countries. In much the same way, Carl Zeiss Jena did that too, for not having the rights to the name it had been using since the latter days of the 19th century.

While East Germany manufactured cameras of many types. the original Zeiss Ikon company in Dresden took little time to shift from rangefinder cameras to single-lens reflex cameras, although for a number of years afterwards, Carl Zeiss Jena still produced lenses for the West German-made Contax IIa and IIIa cameras. But Carl Zess Jena had to satisfy the demans of domestic manufacturers of cameras and other markets too, so apart from specialist photographic optics (such as the Apo-Germinar process lenses), the photographic lenses it produces were for reflex cameras, made by Exakta and KW (which later became Pentacon).

Consider the two brands 35mm single-lens reflex cameras, Carl Zeiss Jena was one of the two main supplier of lenses to them, the other being Hugo Meyer. With the exception of some short-lived detours such as Praktina and Pentina, a staggering quantity of lenses were made in Exakta, Praktica M42 screw and Praktica B mounts; the B-mount ones were of course the last made and many of completely new designs. Using a M42-mount 35mm single-lens reflex would be a good way to access these Carl Zeiss lenses (along with the many fine Meyer ones too).

But back to the CRF topic: Carl Zeiss Jena, after the way, did produce a series of 35mm compact cameras called the Werra, of various specifications; the top model, thte Werramatic, featured exposure meter, coupled rangefinder, and three interchangeable lenses: 35mm Flektogon, 50mm Tessar and 100mm Cardinar, all very fine performers, and with a Prestor leaf shutter with rotating blades which could give a marked top speed of 1/750s (although it can indeed run at 1/1000s with ease.

(..) Another thing which has a lot of people confused is that, even before the partition of Germany, there were three organizations with the name of Zeiss. Carl Zeiss Optical came first, established by Carl Zeiss, and after his death the sole ownership passed on to his partner Ernse Abbe, who established the Carl Zeiss Stiftung who acquire Carl Zeiss Optical as one of its core dividions. Carl Zeiss Stiftung grew from that and carried on acquiring other businesses and at the same tieme diversifying, and in 1926, acquired four camera manufacturers, merged them to form Zeiss Ikon, its photographic equipment division, and based in Dresden. Zeiss Ikon bought lenses from Carl Zeiss Optical for its cameras but Carl Zeiss was of course free to supply its lenses and other products to other camera makers too.

After the war, the new Carl Zeiss Stiftung, Carl Zeiss Optical and Zeiss Ikon were established in the American Zone, but only the new Zeiss Ikon in Stuttgart had any historical link with the old Zeiss Ikon, because one of the companies which was acquired to form Zeiss Ikon was the Stuttgart-based Contessa-Nettel.

By the way, some of the earlier lenses by the new Carl Zeiss Optical (then using the Zeiss-Opton name) in Oberkochen were of extremely poor quality; while the glass parts might be acceptable, the mounting was very badly designed and would indeed disintegrate after some years; I do feel that many Zeiss-Opton Tessars were affected by this problem but not sure if those lenses made for the Contax Iia and IIIa suffered similar issues."

cheers, Frank

http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras

Even Zeiss West build a few M42 lenses, in the late 60's, early 70's... for the Icarex TM/ ZeissIkon SL706 series... but too late, and to be honest, these lenses don't meet PENTAX standards at that time. At least not mechanically..

BTW, Pentax and Zeiss did a some cooperation in the early 70's. The 3.5/15mm SLR lenses of both look *very* similar..

cheers, Frank
hrttp://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras

Yes the BessaL is a great wideangle photo machine... brought me back to photography some years ago (and to rangefinder cameras)
The body plus 4.5/15mm Heliar weights the same as a 3.5/15mm SLR lens alone!
The BessaL 4/25mm combo is also great for street photographing.
have fun, Frank

Take the C/V ultrwide far enough off the film area for using it with an SLR and you will see how "big" the DOF of an ultrawide lens in the microfocus area is... just give it a try.. about from 2-3mm

George, a 12mm moves *very little* when focus is shifted from infinity to 0,2m - just fractions of milimeters. If "infinity focussing is not necessary due to large DOF" it would be much simpler to design ultra-wideangle-lenses for SLRs than it actually is. They would look similar, ins size and costs, to the C/V 15 or 12mm. In reality, such small wideangle designs are possible *solely* for Rangefinder cameras. Just a matter of optics.

cheers, Frank