Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#21

Post by NikolaNovak » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

jclardy wrote: post #7

reader_mode wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have you ever watched an old TV show and despaired how unwatchable it is because of low quality of image? Yes, that's the same thing -- our tastes change. I've had the opposite reaction - I'd watch something I've seen before in 4k remastered or something and it would be a worse experience because the extra details reveal the low quality tricks you can get away with on lower reproduction quality. I've even noticed po…

I had this experience watching the Hobbit in high frame rate - it felt like I was watching a play, a bunch of actors on a stage.

Second that; Hobbit in particular seemed like a mid-budget British made-for-TV show. I get that it's all psychological, that I'm used to deliberate Hollywood motion-blur look... but I still couldn't bear it.

But clearly we learned something or there was something special about Hobbit, because that hasn't necessarily been my experience with all 4k / high-frame shows or movies...

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#22

Post by iamacyborg » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

infofarmer wrote: post #9

reader_mode wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have you ever watched an old TV show and despaired how unwatchable it is because of low quality of image? Yes, that's the same thing -- our tastes change. I've had the opposite reaction - I'd watch something I've seen before in 4k remastered or something and it would be a worse experience because the extra details reveal the low quality tricks you can get away with on lower reproduction quality. I've even noticed po…

Sweat. Beads of sweat on everyone. They were invisible at 720p and in cinematic projection, but 1080p and especially 4K remasters at close range at home reveal more about human skin than I cared to know.

I don't know how true this is but I always found it interesting that new makeup was developed (HD foundation) as a result of the switch towards high definition tv/cinema formats.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#23

Post by sumtechguy » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

evandev wrote: post #6

reader_mode wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have you ever watched an old TV show and despaired how unwatchable it is because of low quality of image? Yes, that's the same thing -- our tastes change. I've had the opposite reaction - I'd watch something I've seen before in 4k remastered or something and it would be a worse experience because the extra details reveal the low quality tricks you can get away with on lower reproduction quality. I've even noticed po…

Turn off motion smoothing on your TV. It's also called the "Soap Opera Effect".

What is more fun is the latency those effects add to images. Found that out the hard way playing some twitchy 'have to be just right' on the controls games. In my case it was almost 1/4-1/2 of a second. Even with all of the settings 'off' there is still a decent latency on the screen (down to about 70ms) which is just enough to mess me up on some games but not all.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#24

Post by ajross » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

What I don't understand isn't the design of the lenses, which are chasing ever-tightening windows of precision in a competetive market with high margins and discriminating consumers. Of course they're going to be overdesigned.

What gets me is that lens distortion is a fully reversible convolution. It's not lossy, at all. Or rather, it's only lossy in the sense that the existing quantization in the sensor is already lossy: pixel boundaries, spectrum of the color sensors, etc... all have straightforward analogs in both space and frequency domain.

Basically: why hasn't someone come out with a camera with a junky single-piece lens and a fancy image processing backend and won the market?

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#25

Post by dylan604 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #22

infofarmer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweat. Beads of sweat on everyone. They were invisible at 720p and in cinematic projection, but 1080p and especially 4K remasters at close range at home reveal more about human skin than I cared to know.

I don't know how true this is but I always found it interesting that new makeup was developed (HD foundation) as a result of the switch towards high definition tv/cinema formats.

There was also a resurgence in Soft F/X type filters until the Photoshop in a Can type of makeups came out.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#26

Post by dheera » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #3

I have a bunch of full frame lenses. Recently I looked at some very old ones I haven't used in a long time. I thought they are faulty (soft). After some diagnosing I found that it is not the fault of lenses but rather in the meantime I have started looking at images at 1:1 in Lightroom and gotten used to ridiculously sharp images from new cameras. Have you ever watched an old TV show and despaired how unwatchable it…

Interestingly, I tried several modern Canon lenses about 8-10 years ago and very quickly sold them because they were all not only producing subpar images compared to almost all my lenses from the 1960s-1980s, but they were also made of f-ing plastic and had an incredible amount of backlash in the rings.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#27

Post by jaywalk » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #22

infofarmer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweat. Beads of sweat on everyone. They were invisible at 720p and in cinematic projection, but 1080p and especially 4K remasters at close range at home reveal more about human skin than I cared to know.

I don't know how true this is but I always found it interesting that new makeup was developed (HD foundation) as a result of the switch towards high definition tv/cinema formats.

It's 100% true. HD changed everything from the makeup to how sets are constructed, painted and lit. Even at the level of your local newscast.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#28

Post by ghaff » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #19

amelius wrote: post #8

How are these lens systems designed? Do they use "black box" optimization methods like gradient descent, simulated annealing or even genetic algorithms to find the optimal configuration of lenses?

How it used to be done: https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/ Super-experienced people backed up by a small army of people doing ray-tracing by hand. Wikipedia might give you starting points to find modern answers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_lens_design#Lens_optim... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_d... And if you want to get a general feel for how the modern designs work, Bil…

Yeah, modern lenses are definitely computer-designed but if there's any ML being used, it's almost certainly very recent.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#29

Post by jaywalk » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

sumtechguy wrote: post #23

evandev wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off motion smoothing on your TV. It's also called the "Soap Opera Effect".

What is more fun is the latency those effects add to images. Found that out the hard way playing some twitchy 'have to be just right' on the controls games. In my case it was almost 1/4-1/2 of a second. Even with all of the settings 'off' there is still a decent latency on the screen (down to about 70ms) which is just enough to mess me up on some games but not all.

Most newer TVs have a game mode that significantly reduces latency by getting rid of almost all processing, including stuff that you otherwise can't disable in the menu.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#30

Post by tachion » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #24

What I don't understand isn't the design of the lenses, which are chasing ever-tightening windows of precision in a competetive market with high margins and discriminating consumers. Of course they're going to be overdesigned. What gets me is that lens distortion is a fully reversible convolution. It's not lossy, at all. Or rather, it's only lossy in the sense that the existing quantization in the sensor is already l…

But of course they have - every major smartphone manufacturer is eating the whole consumer camera market alive for quite few years now.