All you need to Know About Lens Design

Steve Smith · Oct 13, 2011

From a link in The Online Photographer:

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/08/lens-geneology-part-1

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/09/lens-genealogy-part-2

Steve.

Toffle · Oct 13, 2011

This is great, Steve. Thanks.

BrianShaw · Oct 13, 2011

I'm not too sure that this is exactly "all you need to know", but it is a good primer. Thanks for pointing it out, Steve. I especially appreciate the authors attitude about triplets - rather than holding them in distain he has elevated them to be the important lens design that they were.

Klainmeister · Oct 13, 2011

Really cool, thanks for posting that.

Steve Smith · Oct 13, 2011

BrianShaw said:
I'm not too sure that this is exactly "all you need to know", but it is a good primer.

Well, it's much more than I need to know... but very interesting!

Steve.

Sirius Glass · Oct 13, 2011

Wow! Thank you! I have been looking for this type of lens information.

Steve

Newt_on_Swings · Oct 14, 2011

Good info, nice clean diagrams. Not to much jargon and a quick read! I like! Thanks!

baachitraka · Oct 14, 2011

Very good info and just wondering where all my OM lenses will fall.

Jeff Kubach · Oct 14, 2011

Excellent information!

Jeff

MattKing · Oct 14, 2011

baachitraka said:
Very good info and just wondering where all my OM lenses will fall.

It is quite likely that your OM lenses are of the same lens "type" as a number of their competitors. The differences between lenses of the same "type" arise from issues like construction materials and methods, sample variance tolerance, glass quality and type, coating quality and type and flare prevention.

Generally those issues, along with issues like marketing and manufacturing economies of scale, are the issues that determine selling prices for new lenses.

John NYC · Oct 14, 2011

I don't get it... The author says a Zeiss sonnar is a descendent of a rapid rectilinear in part one and then a triplet in part two.

ntenny · Oct 14, 2011

John NYC said:
I don't get it... The author says a Zeiss sonnar is a descendent of a rapid rectilinear in part one and then a triplet in part two.

Yeah, that's a bit confusing. I think it stems from the fact that the Tessar is sort of a hybrid of the two designs---it's a triplet with the rear element replaced with a cemented group, and then on the other hand it's a RR with both elements replaced by groups (one cemented, the other not)---and the Sonnar certainly has some noticeable Tessar DNA. The same thing happens with the Elmar---it's listed in Part 1 as a Tessar derivative under the RR section, then in Part 2 as a triplet derivative.

The article acknowledges the ambiguity of the Tessar in Part 1, but kind of fudges around it in Part II. Maybe the attempt to keep the article simple went a little too far and obscured the fact that many lenses have more than one "ancestor".

-NT

John NYC · Oct 14, 2011

ntenny said:
Maybe the attempt to keep the article simple went a little too far and obscured the fact that many lenses have more than one "ancestor".

-NT

Yes, agree. *Oversimplifying* is actually more confusing than giving the more detailed but less ambiguous answer.

Sirius Glass · Oct 16, 2011

John NYC said:
I don't get it... The author says a Zeiss sonnar is a descendent of a rapid rectilinear in part one and then a triplet in part two.

The Zeiss Sonnar uses both the rapid retilinear and the triplet. The triplet is in the middle of the rapid rectilinear.

All you need to Know About Lens Design

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