Modern lens are made with techniques perfected in semiconductor manufacturing, and use advances in material science (meta materials in particular). I don't know how close this is to mass market, but I've seen superthin flat lens, with a marginal cost of production around ~$2 in a university facility, that work better than some $500 lens -- and the latter are expensive because they are hard to make the traditional way.

Canon putting Fresnel elements in their lenses to reduce size/weight: https://kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/400mm-f4-do-is-ii.htm

Canon making an f/11 800mm super telephoto lens that can still autofocus thanks to the new mirrorless camera bodies: https://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/eos-r/lenses/800mm.htm

I think we'll see a big pivot in the market (we're already seeing it, really) with the switch to mirrorless. What I'm hoping we'll see is a total rethink of what's possible in a lens; adapting this new technology to make new designs that exceed what was possible before, rather than just matching it. If they can bring costs down by making use of this new tech then I think it will re-open the market for "I want something that does more than a phone camera". At the moment lens prices are pretty bonkers but I think that Canon f/11 lens is a great indicator; it's basically less than 1/10th of the cost of a traditional 800mm lens and does more than enough for most people.

And yes, they are mostly better than previous generations across the board. Which is pretty cool, that something based on such a simple idea that’s been around hundreds of years still has room for major improvements.

Mirrorless in practice really just means the camera works more like your phone camera. You view the image on a screen instead of through an optical viewfinder. That brings some nice benefits, none of them are necessarily a game changer on their own but together it makes for a major step forward in the experience. Now the viewfinder shows you the picture more like it will actually look, the processor can see the image as you’re composing it before you take the shot and provide hints and show you that information overlayed on the image, the processor is involved in auto focusing and can do things like use ai models to focus on eyes, plus the physical benefits like there’s a big complex moving piece the camera no longer needs.

Camera makers then used this change to make a bigger platform shift at the same time. Just like a major version bump in software, if you have breaking changes you’ve been waiting to make you might want to make them all at once. They widened the mount diameter of lenses, which combined with the shorter distance to sensor because of the lack of a mirror gives more flexibility in letting in more light to the sensor. And they built a new set of lenses around it, whereas a lot of the lenses in their old lineups were sometimes decades old and not designed for the crazy high megapixel sensors we have now and in the near future. Most of these new lenses released in the past few years have been very high quality, so to answer your question that’s really where the improved image quality comes from, this new generation of lenses.

Sort of. The diameter of the front element is predetermined, a function of the sensor size, focal length, and aperture. Mirrorless cannot escape this.

But, the shorter distance from sensor to lens does simplify the design of a good wide angle. Sadly, wide angles were never the big heavy lenses in the first place.

The whole smaller & lighter thing is not a lie but pretty oversold. Some of the RF glass is actually bigger and heavier than the equivalent EF glass.

It's a trade-off, though. Seeing the actual image through the lens, and not a digital representation, which is what you get with a mirrorless system, has its benefits.

I never found those benefits. What would you say they are?

Early on, the problem was mirrorless were slow in autofocus, and they had relatively terrible EV quality. Now they have better autofocus than mirrorless, and more importantly, with the very high resolution EV displays they have now [1], what you see is exactly what you end up getting. You don't have to guess about anything anymore, like what's going to blow out, which is fantastic. What you see in an optical viewfinder with your eye is not what your sensor sees is going to portray. I don't see any benefit to optical viewfinders at this point.

[1] 5.7MP OLED EV!: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1494679-REG/sony_ilce...

Which is fine for what it is! If you aren't shooting in a studio, the reduced mass of equivalent lenses with mirrorless systems is a big quality of life upgrade all on its own, for example. But the color representation just isn't there, and it isn't going to be until we get better color in our display systems. It's being worked on, of course, but there's a long way to go.

I don't understand this. The EV displays are calibrated. It's what you're going to get on your high end monitor when you get home. Eyes do not work like camera sensors, so I don't see how this is a plus. White balance being a great example.

> the true dynamic range,

How can your eye tell you this though? Unless your'e doing HDR/exposure stacking, dynamic range from the perspective of the sensor is all you're going to get. With the EV, you get clipping/black indicators, and even a histogram. I'm never wondering if I'm going to blow out the sky or crush some details in shadows anymore. I can see if I am, without having to snap then preview.

> the ability to see to edges of the focal plane with greater clarity.

I don't understand this at all. The new EVs give you 100% crop (with some slightly reduced zoom so it fits), with complete clarity edge to edge.

I would suggest giving a new high end EV another try.

1. The color space of the EV's display (and even the wide-gamut monitors available for desktop use) do no fully encompass the colors we can see. https://i2.wp.com/digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/... for a diagrammatic example of common colorspaces vs. what our eyes are capable of perceiving. In particular, the greens and purples are abbreviated, and I prefer composing with the true colors in my eyepiece.

2. Knowing the condition of the light before it hits the sensor lets me compose more accurately. If I'm looking at the true light, I can tell at a glance if there is detail worth working to preserve in the highlights or shadows (by using a split neutral density filter, for example, to bring the sky brightness down some) or not.

3. I'm not talking about edge-to-edge clarity. I'm referring to the depth of the focal plane, and the rate of falloff. If you're shooting with a very wide aperture before infinity-focus distance, the plane is going to be very narrow, and seeing the rate of the falloff is easier when it isn't pixelated.

Hope that helps.

In either case, when the photo is taken, the mirror whips out of the road (which generates mirror slap, another problem), and the light travels to the film or sensor. Since this path is a different distance to the one used for focusing, it requires only a small calibration error between the body and lens to end up with out-of-focus images. It is very normal to have to tweak the focus (higher end bodies will let you do this), or to have to have a body or lens physically corrected. No matter how exquisite your optics - in fact paradoxically, this effect is worst with high-end optics - the way the light path works here can be a real pain for getting good focus.

Because mirrorless systems focus and capture from the same medium, this literally can't happen with your mirrorless camera.

Modern zoom lenses have anywhere from 11 to 30 elements, in 3-11 groups, that move at different speeds relative to each other. Doing that with a tiny electric motor, precisely, for a decade is a tough task, especially when the mass of the glass starts to exceed 1kg.

With a mirrorless camera, you can reduce the mass of the lens by ~10% for a full frame camera. With an APS-C sensor, mirrorless, you can reduce the mass by 33%. With a "micro four-thirds" sensor, the mass of the lens is less than 50% of a full frame. Rough numbers. As with everything, there are pros and cons to going with smaller sensors than full frame.

For example, for many years fast normal lenses on SLRs were 58mm “Biotar” not 50mm because a a new kind of focusing (retro focus) had to be adapted to work with a mirror in the way.

The switch is quite obvious from the Canon release schedule - I don't think they have a single non-RF (mirrorless mount) lens being released this year.

Aside, I enjoy that Ken also loves this lens, despite it being mostly plastic, which he usually shits all over. It actually seems like a feature here, for weight purposes.

Where the 400DO perhaps really shines is paired with a 1.4x TC - it's much more handleable than a 600/4 and paired with a decent body gets results as good as bodies 10 years ago would have got with the 600/4.

I have three different TCs which I got from a friend who switched to Sony. I haven't really used them much because they seem to drastically change the optic behavior in ways I don't like. Maybe I should give them another chance as they never come out of their cases.

But that tradeoff seems hardly new to me. Consumer 70-300 for ~300 $ vs. Pro 70-200 for 2000+ $. The "only" difference is build quality and the pro lens being 2-3 stops brighter. Price difference: ~10x.

Another example is if I focus on something and then zoom in and out some lenses have to refocus and others maintain focus. This is an important feature for video and any kind of fast shooting. Many lenses have much more "focus breathing" than others. That is, the change of the effective focal lens as the lens focuses closer and closer. I had a lens that was 200mm but it was really only at infinity. At close focus is was closer to 135mm since the focus breathing was so pronounced.

Bokeh, chromatic/comatic abberations, geometric distortion are other things I can go on and on about.

It's been a long time since I paid any attention to pro photographic equipment so I don't know if fast lenses are important with modern sensors performing so well in low light. But back in the analog/early digital days 2-3 stops was a huge advantage.

Also something to consider, the pro lenses also focus faster and more accurately. I was never sure if this was down to the software in the lens, which is proprietary and why 3rd party lenses are never as good as manufacturer. I could easily see Canon or Nikon tweaking the firmware on prosumer lenses to focus a fraction slower.

IIRC, the pro lenses (white Canons) focused faster as a result of them letting more light in, as well as having faster motors (USM), though mid-range lenses had these as well.

Around that time, the body also made a big difference since the 1D-series had ~45 AF points, and the lower and mid-range bodes had 9-20 AF points. Not sure if this is still relevant but I think even low end bodies have a ton of AF points these days.

Especially when it doesn't have a nice manual focus ring à la the Olympus m43 lenses.

More importantly, those things combine to make a certain je nais sai quoi that makes photos taken with it seem to have much higher quality. I took a quick test shot of my dog when I got it and my sister remarked that she could practically feel the dog with her eyes, just looking at the photo. Nobody has ever said that about pictures of the dog that I took with the old lens, even if I spent considerable time trying to get lighting right and the dog to hold still.

My old lens ruined a bunch of shots I took in a forest that required running at the extreme edge of its settings. This new lens doesn't look like it will do that.

Actual light transfer (e.g. t-stops in cine, but less quantitatively in SLRs, say - some lenses are brighter than others), sharpness, chromatic aberration, spatial aberration, focal speed and accuracy (assuming autofocus), consistency across the telephoto range (not for primes, obviously) - some lenses will have not just differet f-stops at different lengths, but really different characteristics. This doesn't even get into the subjective aspects (e.g. "bokeh") that some people care a lot about.

Is it brighter for the same camera body, aperture and depth of field?

If so, what would one look for in a lens's specifications to describe this difference?

Which makes it bigger and heavier, harder to manufacture, and smaller market - all of this pushes prices up (an order of magnitude is common)

As for relative aperture adjusted for actual, measured light transmission, that's a T-stop, but these are typically only marked and specified for cine lenses, e.g.,

https://www.zeiss.com/consumer-products/int/cinematography/m...

(IIRC, the Master Primes are geometrically f/1.2 at T1.3)

the maximum f-stop of the lens describes the ratio of sensor length (1D, diagonally is best comparison probably), to the diameter of lens aperture. because the opening and sensor are two dimensional, every sqrt(2) increase in f-stop describes halving the light. for example, a f 1.4 lens can allow ~twice as much light as an f 2.0 lens. Every doubling of light is considered a "stop", like {1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0}. An important consideration is that this number describes a ratio, not the absolute opening in the lens without respect to sensor size.

One possible conversion method is to consider the sensor size of the system against some popular standard. For example, "aps-c" sized sensors are about 1 stop "slower" than full frame sensors, due to being 1/(2.25) the size of full frame sensors in area, or 1/(1.5) linearly. This means that many lenses can be converted not only on focal length, but also for f-stop, to estimate the total light gathering power of the system, and the output "look" of the image. Full frame sensors (~36mm x 24mm) are most frequently used in the photography world as a standard comparison point. For example, a 50mm 1.4 lens gives 50mm 1.4 on full frame, but that same lens on an aps-c sensor (like a fuji X, sony 6xxx, canon 7d, etc.) would not only give a cropped 75mm [full frame] focal length equivalence, it would also give the depth of field of a 75mm _2.0_ lens [on full frame], not 75mm 1.4. At the same time, the exposure would still benefit from the light gathered at f1.4. This is why many say that smaller sensors give a larger depth of field (more in focus, less out of focus background). In reality, this is due to the lens aperture being measured only as a ratio to the sensor size. Finally, the smaller aps-c sensor will give a larger depth of field at the same f stop, but may also give higher noise at the same ISO (to a similarly advanced full frame sensor). This means that an aps-c camera takes the exact same image when it has ~1 more f stop, ~33% less focal length, ~1 stop lower ISO to the full frame system. A big confusion around any of this "equivalence" discussion is that sometimes people mean equivalence for lens "look", and other times, they mean equivalence for exposure, while others may be talking about absolute image quality and noise. They're actually all related, though much of this discussion isn't important to real world photography.

They also have a 500mm 5.6 that's similarly tiny (compared to a non-PF version) and hard to get.

I'm planning on picking up one of the Nikon mirrorless FFs soon.

On the other hand, it doesn't behave like a good canon ultrasonic lens with immediate focus. not at all.

Sensor size comparison: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sensor_sizes_overlai...

I find this very fascinating because while I enjoy my ever-increasing smartphone camera and use it as a daily driver, I have a about 13 year old Canon DSLR (one of the first one they made now) with a few lenses and that 2007 model Canon D-SLR with the 1" large digital sensor can RUN INSANE LAPS AROUND TOP OF THE LINE SMARTPHONES with respect to the ability to take low light photos, get a lot of good light, and of course zoom on the telephoto, macro on the macro, etc. The autofocus is probably five times faster and the ~10 zones are lightyears ahead of the phone.

There's no comparison. Sure, the 7MP megapixels are bad. Sure, the ISO noise is pretty bad compared to modern smartphone postprocessing. But the telephoto isn't some pitiful "optical zoom", it's instead incredible powerful optics. The low aperture prime lenses produce beautiful shots whose distortion is matched to human preference.

The idea that phones can "catch up" to even 10 years ago on DSLR's would be very cool.

Unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath. Phone sensors are what 10X smaller? Doing great things with 10X less light is impressive, but at some point, you need a big sensor and good quality glass.

Would love to see us get DSLR quality pics from a phone tho.

To me, the old DSLR is simply not worth the weight of lugging it around any more. It's funny how we have such different perceptions of our old DSLRs.

I don't expect to do low-light without long exposure (ie, no impromptu shots) and I do have an external flash for bounce lighting indoors.

It's still better than my iPhone (which admittedly is a couple of years old), but weight is a huge factor I only use this when intending to get really good shots. Another is the extra time it takes to transfer files, sort through bursts and put into iCloud or smugmug.

https://www.flickr.com/cameras/canon/eos_digital_rebel_xsi/

Contributing factors may be that the pixels on the sensor are physically larger, and that the sensor-shift image stabilization helps with longer exposures.

2/3 of a second with an f/2 or f/2.8 lens means you can take pictures lit by not much more than starlight.

Actually, even without this, with an F/1.4 lens I can take a handheld picture using only light pollution.

It is now possible to build a telephoto lens for your DSLR, that costs $2 to make, is short and flat, yet has better optics than your current kit. When these become common, it will likely cause another seismic shift in the pure-camera market. Perhaps some of them will actually be bonded with the sensors, unlike what we have today.

Regardless, new lens technology -- while likely to make a greater impact on mobile phones -- is largely orthogonal to them.

Do you have any references you can share? I'm super interested.

edit: For anyone else interested, the key phrase that worked for me was "metasurface lenses".

But, I mean, it better not be considering both were about the same price!

This problem is basically solved already by taking multiple exposures and blending them in software. Once we're at the point where stacking 10 exposures works reliably even in challenging conditions (and we're pretty nearly there with the latest phones) then many of the advantages of a larger sensor are moot.

As far as glass "quality" is concerned, smart phone manufacturers benefit hugely from economy of scale. I wouldn't necessarily assume that smart phone lenses are manufactured to lower quality standards just because you're paying less for them.

Lenses on phones are limited by diffraction. They can never provide the quality of a larger lens because their aperture is so small that their airy disk is often over the size of a pixel.

Diffraction all comes out in the wash. Smaller sensors allow wider apertures (and phones have some room to grow in terms of sensor size).

The resolution advantage is actually quite moderate (people are often mislead by comparing the number of pixels rather than its square root).

Phones are simply not better at taking non-blury pictures in very lowlight. Cameras evolved since the 90s, we have 5 stops of IS, sharp f/1.4 lenses and exposure stacking.

The resolution advantage is not moderate at all. A 12MP phone is around as sharp as a theoretically perfect 8MP sensor with a perfect lens, while current cameras are as sharp as 40+MP perfect sensor with a theoretically perfect lens.

Diffraction absolutely doesn't come out as a wash. What matters is the actual diameter of the aperture, not the ratio. Phones are a tenth of ILCs in this metric, or even less for non-optimal focal lengths.

It's actually the f stop that matters for diffraction, not the absolute diameter. Roughly, this is because the light spreads more with a longer focal length because it has a longer distance over which to diverge. If you crunch the numbers this exactly compensates for the larger absolute diameter of the aperture. Here is a post with a reference: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/21428

It's amazing how much enthusiast discussion about cameras is based on basic misconceptions about optics.

Here, the airy disk diameter is the image size. At the same magnification, the image height is proportional to the object size.

Since when the f number is smaller, at the same magnification, substituting in the thin lens formula with the magnification, you find that the object size is inversely proportional to the focal length.

From this you come to the conclusion that, at the same focus distance, the smallest object you can image is a function of the absolute diameter of the aperture.

Intuitively, this is because even though the airy disk has the same size, the focal length is much smaller, therefore the field of view is much wider for the same sensor size, therefore the angular confusion is much bigger, therefore for the same FoV at the same f number detail goes down.

Or put another way, yes the light spreads more, but the sensor on a camera is bigger, so in the end you have much more detail anyways.

This is why, for example, spy satellites despite operating at f/11 or so can resolve much more detail than a cellphone :)

This is a standard exam question if you ever take a Wave Optics class, by the way. But as you say, enthusiast discussion, such as on DPReview, is often based on basic misconceptions about optics :)

If the phone was using a slice of a DSLR sensor, then yes, the absolute aperture would be what was relevant, as you obviously cannot improve the resolution of an image merely by cropping it (if you imagine a ultra ultra wide DSLR lens which becomes a normal phone lens after the crop).

But two points:

First, you're then comparing resolution at a focal length that's irrelevant to DSLRs, so in practical terms it's not a like for like comparison.

Second, phones are using sensors with higher pixel density. The question is just whether the phone can use a wide enough fixed aperture to avoid being limited by diffraction at the desired resolution. A fixed aperture of e.g. f1.6 is practical at phone focal lengths but not (as a fixed aperture) at full frame focal lengths. If you calculate the theoretical linear resolution limit imposed by phone camera f-numbers, it's approaching 1000 lp/mm for the better models (e.g. an iPhone with an f1.6 aperture and a ~10mm sensor). I'm sure the real limits are lens aberrations and noise at the moment.

Secondly, I'm actually comparing resolution at fixed FoV, not a fixed focal length.

Again, the sensor size doesn't matter, what matters is the focal length. The focal length of an iPhone main lens isn't 10mm, the sensor size is 8.5mm but the focal length is actually around 5mm. You find the theoretical maximum linear resolution is more around 300-400 lp/mm. If you run the numbers, at f/1.6 the airy disk diameter is already bigger than the pixel pitch (2.11 microns airy disk and 1.7 micron pixel pitch). The resolution is already being seriously degraded by diffraction, although it's not completely diffraction yet. Lens aberrations make it even worse, of course. All in all, realistically the resolution is pretty much at its limit.

If you work at this regime where the linear resolution is close to equal to the airy disk, you start having a type of abberation where changing the wavelength of the system causes a change in the resolution, which can't be fixed. So pretty much in practice you can't really exceed the resolution we see now even in perfect light with a perfect lens, because you start having unavoidable abberrations that are very significant to the image.

Well, yes, but the two are obviously tightly linked if we're comparing a DSLR to a phone camera.

I'm going by the calculation in the 'Cameras' section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk It explains why only the f-number is relevant. If you plug values for an iPhone into the 'x =' equation, you'll see that an iPhone camera is not really close to being limited by diffraction. The minimum separation distance at 500nm wavelength at f1.6 comes out to 976nm. Along an 8mm sensor dimension that's 8188 line pairs. Now sure, that's by the Rayleigh criterion, so you're not resolving 8188 perfectly sharp line pairs. But that's a still a good margin over the sensor resolution, and it's an open question how good sharpening algorithms can get.

And this is of course the very best you can do at 26mm equivalent focal lengths, if you want a tighter or wider shot your image quality degrades because once again the optics don't fit and you'll have to reduce your f number.

2000 line pairs in perfect conditions is quite low. Better is expected from cheap DSLR zoom lenses.

Yes: the quantity calculated is the smallest separation two objects can have before they blur together (by the Raleigh criterion).

According to the standard notion of lp/mm, there is no need to halve the reciprocal of this quantity to get lp/mm. See e.g. the table on p.14 here: https://zenodo.org/record/3518178/files/Verhoeven%202019%20-... An airy disc of ~2um radius translates to ~500 lp/mm. The following page also agrees with this usage, as does every other source I can find at the moment. http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF1A.html

I think you are basically out by a factor of 4 by using the diameter instead of the radius and requiring line quads rather than line pairs. I believe the lp/mm value obtained is for ~9% MTF, so it's a fairly generous estimate of the available resolution, but not excessively so.

Regardless of the correct definition of lp/mm, the iPhone has plenty of room to increase the sensor resolution at f1.6. And phone cameras could certainly move to somewhat wider apertures and somewhat larger sensors.

As for the rest, lp/mm only makes sense at a given MTF rating. MTF50 is the standard. MTF9 is very, very, very generous. Incredibly so.

But anyways, sure, let's take 900lp/mm on the short edge for 4590lp/mm MTF9 - maybe I misremembered. A 5DSr with a real world zoom lens, the 24-70mm F2.8L, gets 7700lp/mm in the real world, and that's the MTF lens-sensor system, not just the lens. And that's not even close to the maximum possible resolution, nor to the maximum you can actually get in real life as you can. If you take the sharpest full-frame lens I know of whose MTF9 is limited to 400lp/mm because no testing apparatus was available that could go higher, the actual maximum is around 9600lp/mm. In any case, even the highest theoretical resolution of a phone is far lower than the practical resolutions of ILCs in use today, and is actually less than the sharpness of a 90$ lens on the very cheapest full-frame body you can find.

Indeed, take the Canon 50mm EF II, with an MTF50 yielding ~2000-2400lp/mm on the short edge of FF sensor. According to this source (https://www2.uned.es/personal/rosuna/resources/photography/D...), at around f/1.6 we should get around 420lp/mm, on the short edge that's 2142lp on the short edge, which is less than the cheapest EF lens in production right now. I don't know about you, but the best possible performance in theoretically perfect conditions being under the performance of the cheapest EF lens in the real world says something.

In real life, of course, the lens-sensor system will barely get close to the theoretically perfect result, and you will peak at the best possible result being around half the linear resolution of the cheapest production Canon lens.

Keep in mind, if you were to go for a larger sensor, you'd have to increase the focal length to compensate too. So 20% increase in sensor size length would need a 20% increase in focal length and at the same f number you'd need a 20% wider aperture too. And again, you'd be fixed at around 25mm FF eq. focal lengths, if you try more practical focal lengths like 50mm FF eq. you would see a drop in quality. They're already pretty much at their optical limits and have been for a while, actually f/1.6 isn't even the fastest phone lens - but those had smaller sensors still.

Here's the problem.

Doing "things in software" is akin to saying ultraprocessed food is gourmet "food".

Basically, it's a pretty common technique for increasing SNR, it's a very different kind of "doing things in software" than, say, an iPhone's fake bokeh. It's no surprise that phones are starting to use it.

I feel that phones usually make better decisions for contrast, white balance, exposure than DSLRs do. With a DSLR, reaching the same finished product usually requires a ton of manual work editing photos.

Of course, the DSLR has far better detail on the pixel level, and if you need to zoom in at all, it wins in a landslide. I wish I could combine the strengths of both platforms.

That said, the traditional camera manufacturers are pretty much laggards with respect to software so their better hardware isn't really used to full advantage a lot of the time.

They're trying to solve two different problems. Nikon want to reproduce colors that are balanced and accurate. Apple want to produced colors that 'pop' and catch peoples eye when scrolling through Instagram.

My dream is a camera with a nice sensor/lens and an iphone brain. It likely already exists, up there orbiting the earth...

There's a ton of engineering that goes into designing eg; a zoom lens that can cover a focal range while retaining sharpness, minimal color fringing, etc. And that's assuming you can use software to correct for distortion... in the past that was a dealbreaker. The result is a lens that requires 10-20 (or sometimes even more) individual elements. No matter how you cut it that will be expensive.

There's no cheating physics sadly.

It was something reproducing a sort of "solar furnace" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace) at a micro scale, coordinated with electronics. Think creating a dynamic lens by redirecting light from many micro lenses (mirrors?).

The upside being dynamic focal lengths using extremely short lens (the whole thing being microscopic).

Am I day dreaming? I can swear I read something or saw a documentary somewhere.

Or is what I'm describing just another name for metamaterial lenses? Based on what I've read about metamaterials, right now, I don't think it is, but I can very easily be wrong.

Edit:

Ah, maybe microlenses? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlens

Does anyone know if they're applicable to camera lenses?

(1) Older digital sensors weren't good at all with high-iso (high read-noise, low photon-electron conversion efficiency, etc)

(2) An off-sensor DSLR AutoFocus array has a very small effective-aperture, making the lens aperture very important in low-light situations for autofocus (which a lot of nature photography is)

(3) Bokeh - Ofcource nothing beats large aperture bokeh, but this can be tackled perhaps through computation?

For (1) and (2) Modern imaging sensors perform beautifully in high-iso scenarios. Also, with mirrorless, there are cameras that can AF down to F/22 - something unimaginable (and impossible) with DSLRs.

While the demand for 600mm F/4 is there from a professional standpoint, there is an even larger demand for cheaper options - and.. this point is important, you can produce award-worthy images using those cheaper potions. In fact if you look at any nature competition a lot of the awards go to images made with cheap/budget gear.

Pick up a Canon CN-E 30-300 cinema lens and it is this exquisite, jewel-like thing that seems as though it is made by NASA. And it's $45K.

I always found Nikon cameras more my taste than canon. But that is just taste, in terms of quality, in the sense of the pictures, I never saw a difference. Not back the day when we still developed our black and white pictures ourselves and not now with digital cameras.

Lenses on the other hand a different thing altogether. There I saw defferences between the "cheaper" Sigma and the premium Nikkor ones. Not always but sometimes. I would assume that the new mirrirless cameras are less complex to build, so maybe the Thailand based manufacturing facilities are best suited. After all, it's the lense and the person behind the camera that counts.

But with the capabilities of modern cameras the production requirements for them are high and the challenge to make something that works for a variety of consumers even higher. I can't even look at a camera that isn't "weather-proofed" as I live in a place with a 90% chance of rain at any moment, for example. And a lot of these advancements are designed to work in combination with the lenses, such as in-body and in-lens stabilisation working together, weather seals that line up, etc. I think it's pretty important to maintain the same manufacturing quality between the two areas. I'm sure that's possible when moving production to Thailand, but I expect it will take time for them to iron out their processes.

My personal experience of Canon vs Nikon is that I prefer the software of Canon, and historically I preferred the physical ergonomics of Nikon, but the newest Canon models have improved a lot there. On the lens side it was always Canon for me, although I do have a lot of love for Sigma: my 150-600mm Sigma lens has a USB dock where I can actually manually configure the autofocus, among other things, which appeals to my gadget side (and honestly their quality has jumped up massively in the past decade).

It's totally hand-holdable, but reviews online make me wonder if everyone else has pipe cleaners for arms; it took a couple of weeks to get used to it but I don't have any trouble now. The image quality is fantastic and extremely competitive. The image-stabilisation works superbly, and the autofocus is very good - much better than their older lenses.

I mostly photograph birds and I'm extremely happy with the quality. All the recent bird photos I've uploaded are taken with it: https://www.flickr.com/photos/robotmay/50528664881/in/datepo...

I'd like to get myself a long lense for those kinds of shots but I really can't afford Nikon prices!

Can't agree more on the weather-proof part. I was ather funny to be out taking pictures all day, only to find the camera was sitting in 5 cm of water in its protective bag. Nikon did work better druing that, than. Just an anecdote so, some Nikon's didn't like it that good neither.

Some Sigma lenses were really good back than, some on par with Nikkor. Canon lenses were, if I remember well, mostly on par with Nikkor. Been used to Nikon so, I always to break the lighter Canon camera bodies.

Nikon have already been making weather-sealed cameras in Thailand for ages (e.g. the D7500). I think your concerns here are overblown. Any quality problems with their Thai manufacturing operation would already be apparent, given that most of their cameras are made there.

They always have. Yet strangely you can buy an L lens and it may outlast a whole series of bodies. (if we continue to have DSLRs that is).

I've always wondered what the difference is between Sigma and a brand like Canon or Nikon.

I used to have both Canon and Sigma lenses. The Sigmas felt different, and the pictures they produced had a different "look" for what was supposed to be an equivalent lens. My eye isn't trained for these sorts of things, so I was never able to quantify it.

What is it that Sigma does that makes its lenses cheaper than the others?

So they also do a 150-600mm Contemporary model, which has 90% of the performance. It doesn't have full weather-sealing, and it has a different element arrangement which slightly changes the picture quality, but it also drops a huge chunk off the weight and about £400 off the price. It's not quite as solidly built but for a lot of people it's more than enough and provides a good alternative.

In my personal experience Sigma lenses tend to be heavier than Canon for equivalent build quality. ~10 years ago I'd say the picture quality was slightly poorer, but now they compete very well in a variety of ranges.

My use case also involves a fair amount of tripod work, and I even picked up a gimbal just recently.

So I'm glad that Sigma is making lenses which are cheaper / better for the price by leaving out OSS, because there are ways to not need it. If you figure OSS would cost another $200 per lens, which seems a little low but is in the ballpark, then with the Sigma 'trio' of 1.4 primes, the difference between the a6100 and a6600 is just about a wash.

Agreed on customer service.

Nikon still make many of their top tier lenses in Japan as well. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Apple’s cross functional business org makes them really effective at transferring expertise across product lines. Just subsidizing the high end camera line might be worth it to transfer technology and expertise to iPhone cameras.

(Plus slapping an Apple logo on Nikon cameras would probably boost sales overnight)

Seems if I add any lenses to my collection I'll be buying used or new from Sigma/Zeiss. I saw the shift happening already and had mostly already been doing that. I will say the new PF series pro lenses with fresnel lens elements are really great though. While I still have my older 300mm, I also got the new pro series 300mm prime from Nikon as it's significantly smaller and lighter weight, doesn't even require a lens foot and can be shot hand-held if you have a steady grip. I suppose I should start budgeting to acquire the 500mm version of the PF lens before they move production out of Japan as I find it unlikely I'd buy anything else that's Nikon branded for lenses. For shorter focal length stuff Zeiss is far far superior.

All the Leica m43 glass are so called Pana-Leica glass: Panasonic designed and manufactured but Leica rubber stamped. They still are really nice glass, though :)

Disclaimer: used Olympus 4/3 and m43 for reaally long time but the mirrorless full frame gear feels so much better in the closely same sized package.

Last year I cracked the lens mount on my d810, and I took it to the shop where I bought it, and they sent it off and had it repaired no questions asked for a reasonable price (it's out of warranty). It took longer than I would have liked, but other than that a good experience.

Over at Fred Miranda and DPR, canon shooters always lament about the lack of competitiveness Canon was regarding Nikon glass.

I really would like to have the 13mm Rectilinear lens if only it isn't worth several tens of thousands of dollars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikkor_13mm_f/5.6#:~:text=The%....

Sigma is probably the best of the third-party lens manufacturers. I have a first-generation Sigma 50mm f/1.4 with Nikon mount (purchased around ~2011) — the build quality is great, and the bokeh is fabulous.

I can't say the same for Tamron.