Take a good look at the mounting face of a Cosina‘s high-end interchangeable lens. We have brought back the slotted-head screw mainly on our rangefinder products. The above photograph was taken during that part of the manufacturing process.

A screw head can have either a slot or a cross. But, undeniably, phillips head screws are newer and the predominant standard today. We recognize that many people think that way. Nevertheless, there are a few customers who actually remember how slotted-head screws, not phillips head screws, were used with European interchangeable lenses prior to the 1980s. We understand how they feel that something is missing when only phillips head screws are used with today’s optical products.

Phillips head screws became the de facto standard because of a standpoint of emphasis on efficiency. With a slotted-head screw, you have to think about which way the blade is facing when you grab the screwdriver so as to set the screw on it. With a phillips head screw, that can be done with very little thought at all. It’s not a big deal if you are talking about a few screws, but on production floors where several hundred screws need to be repeatedly tightened, slotted-head screws caused too much loss. The phillips head screw is definitely effective for making a large volume of products quickly and efficiently. And, precisely because of the stigma associated with mass-produced items, phillips head screws are still not used today with handcrafts and luxury watches made in Europe.

Phillips head screws are overwhelmingly cheaper in terms of part costs. They are advantageous in terms of work efficiency. And, the screwdriver blade can slip out of the slot of a slotted-head screw unless the worker is focused on. So, why on earth do we use a screw with just a single slot? Because it symbolizes and visualizes the deliberately attentive manufacturing we do. These slotted-head screws are seen and concealed every time a lens is changed. We want users to view our high-end optical products as carefully assembled works of art. The slotted-head screws we brought back carry that message.