Lens names: How the heck do they come up with these things?

[jnanian]

and all this time i thought
lipitor was a bad guy in
graphic novels, who ...

lets just say lipids had something to do with his badness ...

[Steve Roberts]

.

The -ar suffix often denotes a Tessar derivative.

The staff of my now long-gone photographic shop used to refer to all cheap lenses as "BottomBottle-ars" leaving customers thoroughly confused as they handled lenses made by Derek Gardner, Prinz and most things Russian.

Steve

[George Papantoniou]

Glypto- has to do with paintings, tablets and suchlike, as in "glyptoteque", a collection of paintings. So a "Glyptar" could be a lens made for photographing paintings.

The -ar suffix often denotes a Tessar derivative.

In an obliquely related way, the -gon suffixe is derived from gonus, or angle. so most lenses ending in -gon or -on and wide angle lenses, or they are especially rectilinear reproducing angles correctly. Rodagon would then be a Rodenstock "gon".

Glypton means "Sculpture" in greek. Therefore, the lens seems to have been capable of rendering the images more 3-dimensional (I guess it has something to do with the plasticity of the image). Glyptotheque is the place where sculptures are exposed or kept.

Rodenstock has used the ending -gon for lenses that had nothing to do with wide angles (Imagon for example). I agree that it might come from the word for "angle", though...

[dmr]

There was one mentioned in a recent magazine which I had never heard of, Thambar. I did some googling and here's what I found. I don't know how accurate it is.

Brian, the Leica Thambar lens was designed mostly for photographing women, but as Jerry mentioned, you need the rare special filter with the small silver disk in the center, to do the job it was made for, that is, to give you the soft focus for female portraiture.

[Ole]

Glypton means "Sculpture" in greek. Therefore, the lens seems to have been capable of rendering the images more 3-dimensional (I guess it has something to do with the plasticity of the image). Glyptotheque is the place where sculptures are exposed or kept.

Rodenstock has used the ending -gon for lenses that had nothing to do with wide angles (Imagon for example). I agree that it might come from the word for "angle", though...

Thanks for the correction, George.

[George Papantoniou]

There was one mentioned in a recent magazine which I had never heard of, Thambar. I did some googling and here's what I found. I don't know how accurate it is.

"Thambos" means "blurred" or "not sharp" in Greek.

[dmr]

"Thambos" means "blurred" or "not sharp" in Greek.

Thank you. When I was googling it, the best I came up with as far as the origin of the term was an article about caste names in India. I'm sure that was coincidence.

[Murray@uptowngallery]

Speaking of India, an ektar is a one-stringed Indian musical instrument...but that's probably purely coincidental...

...or maybe since Ektar's were Kodak's best, one might only need a single lens, an Ektar...never mind, I think I've fallen off that limb...

[Kino]

If you think lens names are bad, you should peruse the names given early optical lanterns and motion picture systems!

Zoopraxinoscope, phenakistoscope, biograph, kinograph, heiliograph, and on and on and on...

[Murray@uptowngallery]

I think Ole cited at some point and time and place in the past the Greek word root for 'gon' being related to angle.