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Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

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

#201

Post by orbital-decay »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #122
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…

There are "Light field cameras" that try to capture lightfields / light flux. However, their ray angular resolution isn't anywhere enough to really do too much fun stuff.

There are also single-pixel compressive sensing cameras, which don't need focusing optics at all, so they can be made lensless (and potentially flat). They also have plenty of downsides though, such as poor performance in scenes with movement, or very high computational requirements for image reconstruction.

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

#202

Post by _ph_ »

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…

A junky single-piece lens won't do it, you can't correct everything in post-processing. Information that is lost is lost. But there are corrections which can be well made computationally, like lens distortion. As a consequence, there are several modern lenses which trade more distortion for general improved sharpness. The distortion then gets corrected digitally. As a consequence, you do get improved picture quality vs. what would have been possible in the same package otherwise.

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

#203

Post by copperx »

sp332 wrote: post #62
jaywalk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And some TVs only offer low latency on certain inputs, so it pays to do some research.

Research sounds like a huge time investment. Just read the manual.

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

#204

Post by copperx »

foldr wrote: post #148
bitL wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now do the same with Sigma SD1 and quality lens and you'd be frustrated with the "sharp images from new cameras" the same way you consider old ones "faulty". Some things can't be unseen once you see them the first time.

I think a lot of this must be psychological. Anyone can generate an extremely high res image nowadays by using a longer focal length and stitching four images together with a consumer grade SLR. Expensive bits of gear can be superior to that method in terms of the workflow (and sometimes results, given the limitations of stitching) but they aren’t magical. I know some will vociferously disagree with this statement, b…

Are you saying that the medium format look isn't real?

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

#205

Post by tzs »

hatsunearu wrote: post #190
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…

>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? that's what phone cameras are... And a lot of lens aberrations not correctable robustly. LCA is basically impossible to correct, field curvature is impossible to correct, bokeh quality is impossible to correct (within reason), wide depth of field is impossible to correct, dynam…

Camera phones have had multi-element lenses for years, typically around six.

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

#206

Post by Sebb767 »

lr1970 wrote: post #196

These modern 50mm lenses are certainly marvels of optical engineering. But the future seem to belong to simpler, cheaper and lighter lens designs with optical imperfections corrected digitally. Modern phones take stunning images (in good light) with optically inferior lenses.

Not really. Phone cameras have become really good, yes. But that's in well lit conditions on a phone screen. But zoom in and you'll start to see imperfections and noise. Under worse conditions they'll not be worth anything if you want to use that photo.

Phones effectively killed the small camera market, but anything on the prosumer level or higher will run circles around them.

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

#207

Post by jeffbee »

astrange wrote: post #157
meowzero wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most image processing has to do with imitating full frame sensors (better low light photography, DOF, etc.) So I'm not sure if full frame/APSC/Med-format cameras need the same image processing that camera phones have. Also, most people who use the bigger sensor cameras are probably pros. Most of them would prefer a "blank slate" and use RAWs.

Camera phones have significantly better processing than newer full frame cameras at this point; obviously they can't take the same pictures, but full frame cameras can't do HDR, noise stacking, night mode etc very well. You can do it by hand by shooting raws and editing them together but it's inconvenient. The autofocus is also more advanced in iPhones with lidar. I assume part of this is that the camera companies ar…

My Olympus does in-body HDR, noise reduction with stacking, low-light handheld with sensor stabilization, and more. It's not "full-frame" but full-frame is a meaningless condescension from the 35mm crowd.

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

#208

Post by DavidVoid »

reader_mode wrote: post #4
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…

>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…

hbomberguy made a pretty decent video about this a few years ago [1]. From around the 10-minute mark he talks about how many horror/thriller films worked much better on VHS than they did in the cinema, because on VHS there weren't enough details to make out if there was a monster lurking in the background or not, and you also couldn't see how unrealistic the old cgi effects were.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbZMqS-fW-8

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

#209

Post by jk7tarYZAQNpTQa »

jcun4128 wrote: post #134
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while ago I read a comment that was really eye opener: most big YouTube photography channels out there are mostly about gear, not about "taking pictures". It shows how much money the industry moves (or how prevalent GAS is).

> GAS Haha... I was getting sucked into this, still am in a way. I spent about a year (2019) with a now cheap Sony Nex-5n with an 18-55 kit lens... but wanted to upgrade, more MP, higher video quality... got an A7II (24MP, 1080P) and then an A7RIII (42MP, 4K) ... I bought a 12-24mm F4 G lens at $1.3K __USED__ which to me is insane and that's not even that much in this space. It's just my car is $2K... I still can't c…

On contrast, I've been into photography for more than 20 years, and I currently own a Nikon D60 that was gifted to me 2 or 3 years ago (and that would cost less than $200 if I would have bought it instead). I can afford an A7IV or whatever is the latest gear, I just don't want to.

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

#210

Post by dharma1 »

Saris wrote: post #152
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…

That's basically what micro 4/3 cameras are doing. As far as I know they all can do distortion correction in-camera for JPEG output, and the prime lenses are generally quite cheap and very compact. For example Panasonic has a 25mm f/1.7 lens that is 125 grams and costs $150 brand new. Of course you can also buy similar focal length lenses that are huge and weigh over a pound, while spending $1500+. But I don't know h…

I like m43 cameras, but the depth of field with that sensor size is nowhere near that of full frame
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