A true story not so hard to believe!

[rick_keir]

You're getting a bit of a ribbing on this one, but I believe you. I agree that Nikon Corporation

wouldn't have to ask your friend's son to bring in a Leica lens to get their hands on it, but

that doesn't mean that every single branch of Nikon and every single Nikon employee had

the budget to buy a Summicron to mess around with. I'm sure that many Nikon employees

are interested in the stars of other manufacturers' lineups, and that they go and play with

them when they can.

[dankapsner]

I have it on good authority that the engineers at Olympus who were working on the long-

awaited follow up to the E-1 body acquired the leading Canon and Nikon gear, but while they

were studying it a sudden outbreak of sleeping sickness swept through their ranks and they

haven't been heard from since. Apparently the marketing and promotion people at the

company aren't aware of this tragedy and have been promising a replacement for some time

now.

[christian hilmersen www.]

Agreee with Rick Keir. I used a personal development license at ABB - a 200 000 employee company: the department didn't have enough budget at the time. I frequently bring my own books to work: it is just easier and faster than going through the company procedures.

[michael_ginex1]

One night at my local camera club's meeting I pulled out my Nikon D2Xs fitted with a 50mm 1.8 Nikkor. An old timer stepped over to take a closer look and said something revealing, it seemed to me. He said he had the same lens in his Nikon outfit, and that his son, who worked for a well known German camera company, was repeatedly asked to bring his dad's lens in to work, ostensibly to make comparisons against. Sort of adds meaning to the phrase "setting the standard".

 

That camera company name starts with a big L....but that's all you'll get out of me. ;)

[doug grosjean]

When I worked in design at automotive transmission company, we had a room downstairs where our competitors' products were disassembled and put up on display on the walls, so we could see how it was done elsewhere, be inspired, compare - whatever.

 

I'm still in design. My current job, if we want to buy something for comparison to our own products, we do. An employee can buy it, and be reimbursed. Nobody at the local dealer would even know.

 

Well, it gets a little funny if one employee buys, say, 6 units from 6 different makers, all at one store, on the same day. But then the employee just explains "For comparison and testing," and all is well. No big deal.

 

The lens story could be true - at first. But if Nikon studied a Leica lens in-depth, I bet it didn't study a loaner. Nikon would've bought one they could disassemble, do some real analysis, maybe some destructive testing to figure out the composition of the glass. Bearing in mind that I don't design cameras or optics, so I'm guessing at how to reverse-engineer such a unit.

[dirk-san1]

As photographers we should know that context is everything.