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Thread: spherical aberration solved?

  1. #1
    Resident Heretic Bruce Watson's Avatar
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    spherical aberration solved?

    Looks like the 2000 year old question of how to eliminate spherical aberration in camera lenses might actually be solved.

    Some of you are good at lens math. What say you?

    [EDIT]
    Looks like this is old news from last year. Well, maybe someone will find it interesting. Has this been reported on LFP.info before? If so I must have missed it.
    [/EDIT]

    [EDIT_2]
    Published in Applied Optics, they'll let you read the abstract for free anyway.

    If you can make a singlet lens that's free of spherical aberration it would seem you could eliminate some elements in a view camera lens, making it sharper, lighter weight, and cheaper. If anyone were still making large format lenses that is. Maybe Cooke will make some just for fun as they have done before.

    But even if they did, and this eliminated some of the sharpness problems of shooting wide open, would we? Shoot wide open I mean. Because in LF, there are other reasons to stop down. But more choice would be better than less choice, yes?
    [/EDIT_2]

    Bruce Watson

  2. #2
    Kevin Kolosky
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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

    I have to start eating more bread with Nutella spread on it!

  3. #3
    ic-racer's Avatar
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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

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  4. #4

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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

    IMHO spheric aberration cannot be considered as the single factor, because we also want field flatness, low distortion, to correct primary and secondary chromatic aberrations, low fall-off... we also want the lens to work well for a range of magnifications... and we also may want a good bokeh...

    That paper should have importance for scholars, but IMHO it is no industrial revolution, it's an analytical method... but I'd say that current designs are optimized with software.

    Of course aspheric surfaces are useful to correct spheric aberration, but manufaturing high quality aspheric surfaces has been industrially challenging, what is an industrial revolution is the way that manufacturing has improved, specially in costs.

    An remarkable industrial leap forward was compound aspherical elements. In the cheapo (now old) Nikon 28-80mm 3.3-5.6 kit lens the front element is a compound aspherical. "This means Nikon glues a thin plastic corrector over another spherical glass element". The result was an atonishing performance in a crazy cheap lens made in mass production conditions.

    https://kenrockwell.com/nikon/28-80mm-g.htm


    Amazigly, manufacturers don't play care in the important/easy things, like a round iris or the spheric aberration correction strategy in the OOF that delivers a pleasing bokeh.


    This gives an advantage to true LF artists, they have little competition when beauty counts because they have the true good glass for capturing beauty. Today industry is too focussed in dxo ratings and sadly ignoring beauty.

  5. #5
    Mark Sawyer's Avatar
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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

    For all practical purposes, spherical aberration was eliminated by WWII or earlier. This is sort of like someone saying they've just designed the first apochromatic lens.
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  6. #6
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

    Toy store talk. Look up Tinsley Labs. There's a little film showing the operation on their website (coherent.com) It's just up the road about ten minutes from me. You identify what kind of lens you need, you can have it with absolutely no compromises. Just remember to bring along your NASA or NSA credit card, with no spending limit of course.

  7. #7

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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

    Mark, yes but by wwii that required several elements, now it is done with a bi asph singlet, analytically.

  8. #8

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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

    Question remains: will my photos be any better because of it?
    Expert in non-working solutions.

  9. #9

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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

    What is "better" in the photography art?

  10. #10
    Mark Sawyer's Avatar
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    Re: spherical aberration solved?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pere Casals View Post
    Mark, yes but by wwii that required several elements, now it is done with a bi asph singlet, analytically.
    Then they've got chromatic aberration, coma, curved field, and distortion to replace the spherical aberration. Yay...
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

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