We agree on the fact that the Optar Illumina lens is one of the best modern Russian lens, however the rest is simply not true and for the benefit of the members I will present a brief time line for the Optar Illumina lens.
In actual fact the Optar Illumina high speed primes was first developed by Gregory Mirand in the early '90's, New Image International at the time, together with a Russian Optical Engineer at JSC Optika in St Petersburg from scratch. The project was fully funded by Gregory Mirand/New Image International. At the time, there was little funding for development other than from the West, just as with most Eastern block countries. The idea was to create a set of super 16 high speed primes T1.3 (7.5 x 12.4 format) for the North American market and a super 16 11-110 T2 zoom. A prototype of the 11-110 T2 zoom was developed but never went into production due to the Zeiss and Cooke zooms already available. There was however a market for the super 16 high speed primes and the 'Optar' Super 16 T1.3 lens was born. The production of the Optar lens then moved to Zenit/KMZ Krasnorgosk in 1995 due to manufacturing issues at JSC Optika and the lens was renamed 'Optar Illumina'. Peter Abel, our distributor at the time, suggested to add 'Illumina' to distance the lens manufactured at KMZ from the 'Optar' manufactured at JSC and Luma Tech, Inc was formed to distribute the Optar Illumina brand worldwide. JSC Optika formed JSC Optika 'Elite' to distribute the lens as Optar Elite, initially it was the identical lens with minor brand alterations. We did not have the muscle to tackle a copy right action in Russia at the time. You can view our Exclusive Designer Agreement on our website [http://www.optarillumina.com/#About%20Us].
Hopefully, this is helpful to dispel the assumptions and stories of the Optar Illumina lens. Gregory welcomes any questions you may have regarding the Optar Illumina lens, you can either email us or call.