>"Face it,this country has never really learned to make high quality cameras like the Germans, and later the Japanese."

Whoever said this has never seen what can be done using a Speed Graphic with a Kodak Ektar lens, a Bausch and Lomb Tessar (B&L is still in business, Rochester, NY), a C. P. Goerz (NYC) apocrhomatic lens with Waterhouse stops. Leni Refenstahl's cameramen preferred Wollensak cameras when they filmed Triumph of the Will--which won the 1934 or 1935 Cannes Festival for its genre--and the 1936 olympics (Wollensak went out of business in 1972). For sharpness and clarity, I'll take a Goertz Artar (apochomatic lens) over a digital camera any day, make, and country of manufacture (Eliot Porter used them for his color views). And never mind the US-made lenses for the spy satellites.