There are certain brand names that are indelibly linked to classic photography. Names like Agfa, Minolta, Rollei, and Yashica bring to mind the so-called golden age of analog imagery, having propelled the medium from a fringe area of experimentation to a mainstream, commercially viable industry.
Their products were amongst the best film cameras for beginners all the way to pros. However, times change and not every brand, whether they were iconic or not, made the transition into the digital age with equal success.
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This happened to me recently, while I was standing in a queue at a budget high street hardware store and I noticed a pile of AA batteries with Agfa titles on them. Wait, Agfa still exists? Apparently so, but not necessarily as you might remember it from the ‘good old days’.
You see, names live on, but the companies that own the rights to them change behind the scenes, without the general public ever realising what has happened. Sometimes, this is through understandable industry consolidation – brands like Manfrotto, Gitzo, Lowepro, and Sachtler, who make some of the best tripods and the best camera bags, are all currently owned and operated by Videndum plc, for example – but in other cases, the exchange is far less predictable.
AgfaPhoto
The initial Agfa company can trace its history all the way back to the mid-19th Century, where it started life as a dye production business. Over the next 150 years, it grew into one of the most successful and well-respected film manufacturers, producing some of my favorite emulsions like the monochrome Agfa APX 100 and 400 and the legendary Ultra 100, known for its rich colors and used to great effect by equally legendary photographers like Martin Parr.
The digital age was not kind to Agfa, unfortunately, and the turn of the century saw the struggling imaging division sold off. It limped on for another year as an independent entity known as AgfaPhoto GmbH, but eventual bankruptcy was inevitable. While Agfa still exists and prospers in other industries ranging from healthcare to “Green Hydrogen Solutions” (yes, your guess is as good as mine as to what that means), the imaging division is a little harder to trace.
AgfaPhoto Holding GmbH is all that remains of the parent company, but it licenses the name to various other firms that make imaging-centric products. Lupus Imaging & Media uses the name on an assortment of disposable cameras and memory cards, while Germany-based Plawa has an exclusive arrangement to use the AgfaPhoto name on digital cameras.
It currently produces the OPTIMA series of compact cameras, which are basic but suitable for casual everyday photographers. A glance at the specs shows that they still use CCD sensors rather than the CMOS units more commonly found in modern digital cameras, perhaps showing a reliance on the vintage blueprints used at the time of AgfaPhoto’s insolvency.
Adding to the complexity of the arrangements, many of these products are manufactured by a third (or is it fourth?) party in Europe or China, notably Ferrania of Italy, which itself has a complicated history of film production. As for those batteries I encountered bearing the AgfaPhoto name, those are made under license by GBT-Batteries, headquartered in Germany but made in China.
In short, if you see a camera, accessory, or indeed anything with AgfaPhoto written on it, it certainly hasn’t been produced by the Agfa we all used to know and love. As for Green Hydrogen, the Agfa corporate site confidently tells me that I “need a ZIRFON™ membrane inside your electrolyzer”.
Don’t we all….
Yashica
This is another brand that you would have been happy to see on the shelves of many a camera shop in the latter half of the 20th century. It was born in Japan in 1949 as Yashima, becoming Yashica after it expanded and acquired the Nicca Camera Company, which allowed it to enter the 35mm rangefinder market.
It holds the prestigious record for introducing the first-ever commercially viable electronically-controlled 35mm camera, the Yashica Electro 35, so it was an undisputed major player in the already brutally competitive camera market.
In a familiar turn of events, as this competition heated up over the decades, Yashica, by now owned by a ceramics company called Kyocera, was struggling to make money. Under Kyocera’s leadership – which also owned another iconic name, Contax – Yashica had moved away from being a top-level professional camera manufacturer to a more budget-friendly consumer-level brand.
Finally, in 2005, production of all Yashica-branded products ceased and it entered a dormant state for three years.
Then, in 2008, Kyocera sold the rights to use the Yashica name to MF Jebsen Group, a conglomerate based in Hong Kong. Under their management, the Yashica Y35 was released in 2017, a retro-styled camera designed to resemble the aforementioned Electro 35, and more recently, the Yashica FX-D 100 Digital Film Simulation Camera, followed by a cheap camcorder, the world’s smallest mirrorless camera, and even night vision binoculars.
Some of these products are clearly a world apart from the original Yashica, but the FX-D 100 has the look of a traditional Yashica SLR, with Yashica written on the chassis. However, the core company is entirely different from the one that launched the brand all those years ago.
Minolta
The technology of this once great independent camera brand found new life when Konica Minolta were bought by Sony in 2006. Since the assets Sony acquired included the lens mount and associated tech, this became the foundation for the Alpha camera family, which has gone forward to claim a significant share of the mirrorless market (albeit now with the E mount).
But look around the lesser-seen recesses of the internet, and in some consumer retailers, and you might still find a camera or two bearing the Minolta name. If Minolta as an independent entity ceased to exist, and Sony now owns the rights to use it, how can this be? Sony is pragmatic, but it’s not the type of corporation to readily license it’s intellectual property without a highly profitable cause.
The truth is, it didn’t. Nor did it use the Minolta name on any products which, as it turns out, was the problem. Under various countries’ laws, firms can only retain ownership of a brand name if they are actively using it on active products. Since Minolta lay dormant, it was snapped up by JMM Lee Properties, LLC – a California-based company that specializes in acquiring brand names with expired licenses.
JMM then licensed the name to New York-based Elite Brands Inc., who uses it on its own basic digital cameras and other products such as dash cams. If you see a Minolta camera, it has nothing to do with Konica Minolta or Sony. Or Minolta for that matter.
Rollei
Once again, this is a case of the parent company collapsing, leaving an orphaned, yet valuable, name. Rolleiflex went bust in the early 2000s and, as so often happens in these cases, the company’s assets were divided up.
This seems to be less of a tragic example as some of the others mentioned here, because at least Rollei as an entity has sort of lived on as an offshoot of that original company, although under new ownership. The company is now called Rollei GmbH & Co. KG and it still markets Rollei-branded photo products.
That’s not to say new ‘Rollei’ cameras are still made by Rollei to Rollei specifications, and the trail goes cold when digging to find out exactly who currently holds the licenses to manufacture Rollei lenses, for example. It seems that 7Artisans currently makes the Rollei AF mirrorless optics, including the 85mm f/1.8 for Nikon Z and Sony E mounts.
Meanwhile, the Rollei 35AF Camera Lens for the Rollei 35AF film camera is made by Mint Camera, and the Rolleiflex Hy6 mod2 medium format film camera system is produced by DW Photo, under license. The latter is actually quite uplifting since these cameras are made in very small batches, sometimes to order, in the former Rollei factory in Braunschweig, Germany.
There’s something about this setup which feels wholesome, and I can imagine a group of analog enthusiasts lovingly continuing the work of Rollei employees of decades long since passed.
It might not be like that at all, but it’s a far more positive outcome than some of the other examples on this list.
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