The Problem With Modern Optics

[milandro]

the apple story attributed to Newton is certainly apocryphal.

 

About beliefs.

 

Despite the fact that he was the most important genius of his era ( and of later eras too at least until Einstein) next to this incredible intelligence newton spent most of his time and money in being an alchemist.

 

Alchemy was not and still is no science but an idea simply based on a belief.

[Aswald]

Wrong example cited then.   

[milandro]

yep, but that’s the problem.

 

I too have preferences that i cannot explain.

 

There is not need to try to rationalize everything. One can simply say, I like it but I don’t know why.

Edited April 8, 2016 by milandro

[Aswald]

That's just being human.

[milandro]

aren’t we all 

[bhu]

I found the article... different.

 

You cannot cheat physics. Making a lens is an exercise in design trades.

 

Connecting lens design and photographic art skill the way the author did confused me. Physical optics is just going to remain separate in my head.

[milandro]

preferences, beliefs, likes and dislikes, don’t have much to do with science, generally.

 

If you try to explain the first with the latter you produce intellectual questionable things, like the triangle of lens intentions.

[gdanmitchell]

I disagree with the notion that there is something boring or "clinical" about modern lenses. Lenses are not "interesting" — photographs are, or are not. 

 

Yes, older lenses exhibited various sorts of anomalies and technical imperfections that some nostalgically associate with photographs from an earlier era, but it doesn't follow that just because that is how things looked in the past that the older look is better. Different? Yes. Better? No.

 

I've been doing photography for as long as those older alt lenses have been around, and I used some of that vintage stuff when it was new or almost new. I'm very happy to have the optimized equipment we have today.