I just bought a Cabin 4X loupe and I'm wondering if anyone knows anything about it. It seems to be a very nice loupe and goes for a little over $100 in Canada.

Since Cabin also sells ultra thin light boxes it makes sense for them to try to sell loupes at the same time. It also makes sense to me that Cabin wouldn't manufacture two completely different products such as light boxes and loupes. So I'm wondering if this is the like what Calumet does with Caltar II lenses. Rodenstock makes 'em and Calumet has Caltar II put on them. Any thoughts?

-- David Grandy (dgrandy@accesscable.net), May 11, 1999

Answers

>It also makes sense to me that Cabin wouldn't manufacture two completely different products such as light boxes and loupes.

Cabin is best known for their medium format slide projectors (marketed by Mamiya in the USA), so why wouldn't they make loupes as well?

-- Stewart Ethier (ethier@math.utah.edu), May 11, 1999.

I didn't know about the slide projectors. You may well be right about them making the loupe. Then again they may sub-contract the projector lens as well as the loupe. But this is the kind of information I'm interested in getting. Thank You.

-- David Grandy (dgrandy@accesscable.net), May 11, 1999.

The new Contax 2 1/4 that is being raved about is made by Yashica, too. Would I buy a Yashica camera?...I don't really know. Fortunately the designers were shortsighted enough to omit the leaf shutter to allow it to sync at any speed...so I'm not tempted to try

-- C MATTER (cmatter@riag.com), May 12, 1999.

Yashica is a division of Kyrocera. So is Contax.

Yashica is the low end line and Contax is the high end leine.

How does that differ from say Canon whose low end is a Rebel and whose high end is an EOS?

The only difference is that Canon, Nikon, Minolta, etc. put the same name on both their high and low end product while Kyocera differentiates between them.

BTW Leica is doing a similar thing since they own Minox. The high end P&S cameras carry the Leica name and the low end ones the Minox name.

Your comment regarding the Contax 645 are probably a result of your not looking at it up close.

-- Bob Salomon (bobsalomon@mindspring.com), May 12, 1999.