Who made JC Penny brand lenses with Nikon mount?

[matt_needham]

Anyone know who made the JC Penny brand lenses that would have come

with a Nikon EM approx 1980?

[erickpro]

What or who exaclty is JC Penny. Is it the same brand as the clothing store?

[wayne_cornell2]

I had a JC Penny Nikon mount zoom that I picked up on Ebay out of curiosity. It actually was a fairly decent lens but I don't think it would have held up well under hard use. Don't know who made it.

[Jerry_]

Any chance your lens is marked "Made in Japan," or "Made in Korea?"

 

 

 

Kiron (?) used to make some lenses for retail stores. Some Sears lenses were 'put together' in Korea. Not much good quality then, not much good now.

[matt_needham]

These say "made in Japan".

[erickpro]

For some reason this puts a smile in my face. Just to think that there weree Sears and JC Penny on the market. That is funny to me, but maybe I am crazy.

[matt_needham]

Yeah, I've run across Sears brand camera equipment also.

 

These JC Penny lenses were in a camera bag I got from my father-in-law. It contained a Nikon EM, Nikon f/1.8 50mm, a motor winder labeled Nikon and JC Penny, and 2 zooms labeled JC Penny.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Sears in Detroit once sold a Tower TLR with a Nikkor lens. Sears also sold a Tower 35mm slr with a Nikon F mount. Sears also sold Nikon F's; and real Nikkors for them. Sears once had a huge photo catalog; and in larger cities was a huge local camera store; that sold Nikon rangefinders; Kodak Retina; then Nikon F's.

[tri-x1]

Those "Tower" camera with Nikkor lenses were actually rebranded Niccas. Try pricing one of them on Ebay today! They fetch more than Canons from the same period.

[lex_jenkins]

Some of the Sears branded cameras and lenses were pretty interesting. During the 1970s most Sears branded cameras were actually rebadged Ricohs with Pentax K-mounts. Good cameras.

 

At least one Sears branded lens I've seen in a pawn shop was identical to a Vivitar, a well regarded fast 100mm with true continuous macro focusing. However it's still a challenge to determine the maker because Vivitar didn't make lenses either - at most it designed the lenses and contracted out the manufacturing. Sometimes they simply bought an existing lens and relabeled it.

 

JC Penney is even more enigmatic. There may have been dozens of nearly anonymous Asian manufacturers of lenses and optical devices toiling behind the scenes. Several have been identified through research into the more interesting Vivitar Series 1 lenses, but other makers may never be identified.

[Matthew Currie]

I lack the time and connection speed this morning, but you might try mining this extensive site for more infomration. I seem to recall that somewhere buried in there is a list of who made what:

 

http://medfmt.8k.com/third/index.html

 

It wasn't that long ago that J.C. Penney, like Sears and Montgomery Ward, was a full-catalog outfit, offering just about everything. Like Sears, they had their own house brands of many items. Sears always had some advantage in that they actually own their own applicance manufacturing facility, but they all did a lot of relabeling of other things as well. Some were even the same; for example, both Sears and JCP sold slightly restyled Smith Corona typewriters under their own name.

[hayward]

Don't know, but I had a JC Penney 135mm in a Canon FD Mount. I kind aliked it.

[kc_dougherty]

My boss used to say that the only thing Vivitar made was advertising.

 

KC