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Norita Kōgaku (ノリタ光学) was a Japanese lens and camera maker. It was founded in 1951 by Norita Toshio (車田利夫),[1] a former employee of Tōkyō Kōgaku.[2] The company worked as a subcontractor for other companies, starting with lenses for binoculars and moving via binocular prisms to pentaprisms for SLR cameras including the Rittreck 6×6 of Musashino.[1]

After some time, the company started making lenses too, notably supplying the Rittron lenses sold by Musashino for the Rittreck 6×6[1] and at least some of the Zenzanon lenses sold by Bronica.[2][3] One of the lens designers was Maruyama Shūji (丸山修治), another former employee of Tōkyō Kōgaku, who previously worked on the postwar Simlar 5cm f/0.7.[4]

In 1969,[1] the Musashino company went bankrupt, and Norita took over the machine tools and some of the staff from production of the Rittreck 6×6, which was modified and rebadged Norita 66.[1] The new camera was produced for export from 1971,[5] and released on the Japanese market in 1972.[6] The company entered distribution agreements with Graflex (a division of Singer), which sold the camera in the United States as the Graflex Norita.

In 1976, the company stopped the production of cameras and camera-related products, but remained in business, making projection lenses and other products.[7] In 1994 Hagiya Takeshi wrote that the Norita products his readers were most likely to encounter were the three (RGB) lenses for large television projectors.[7]

Norita became a dependent company of Enplas in 2000 and was renamed Enplas Optics (エンプラスオプティクス) in 2001, but shut its doors in 2005.[2]

Products[]

  • Norita 66 and Graflex Norita 6×6cm SLR, 1972
  • Rittron lenses for the Rittreck 6×6
  • Noritar lenses for the Norita 66
  • Noritar lenses for the Graflex XL
  • some Zenzanon lenses for Bronica, including a 150mm[3]
  • lenses for 35mm cameras[8]

Notes[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Hagiya, p.82.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Norita Kōgaku in the Japanese Wikipedia.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Norita Club page 2, at the Topcon Club.
  4. This page of the Topcon Club.
  5. Hagiya, pp.82 and 90.
  6. Hagiya, p.87, and Norita Club page 1, at the Topcon Club.
  7. 7.0 7.1 Hagiya, p.90.
  8. Norita Club Page 1, at the Topcon Club.

Sources[]

Links[]

In Japanese with some English:

In Japanese:

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