Ever Wondered?

It's mindboggling what goes into a lens, we only tend to see the outside casing and of course, the results image wise. The whole engineering and electronics side of it is fascinating but the thing that fascinates me the most is the glass manufacturing side of it and how such a perfect, flawless piece of glass can be formed from such raw materials.
 
The video is interesting though no surprises for me as I have a scientific background. It would be useful if Adobe (or similar) produced a video to explain the amount of work involved in software development because few seem to appreciate this.

Dave
 
Those manufacturing videos are very interesting but the one thing that strikes is that they all use the same core processes to create the individual elements.

The 'wonder' for me is the optical science behind the lens design process i.e. choice of glass formulation that dictates the RI of the elements and as such the whole lens design to make the "whole" usable lens. Afteral, the manufacturing cannot be done before the lens is designed ;)

I still recall the Leitz microscopes, in both the haematology & histopathology labs, I used in the 70's with their standard high magnification lenses and the oil immersion (with that usage the design of course has to account for the RI of the oil expected to be used) lenses for more critical examinations.......................now the machinery to make those lenses would be interesting, as the elements are small to tiny let alone the whole lens compared to camera lenses!
 
In the distant past lenses had very few elements and were fixed focal lengths. This is because the mathematics etc. to design lenses is not trivial and the more surfaces the greater the complexity. I seem to recall that it was not until the 1970's that sufficient computer power available to lens designers to deal with the more complex 10 or more elements and with moving elements for zoom.

Dave
 
In his book 'Zeiss Ikon Cameras 1926-39', D. B. Tubbs tells that the Sonnar lens was designed for the Contax rangefinder by a team of three people led by L.Bertele of Ernostar fame. It took these three people three years to carry out the necessary optical calculations, during which time they produced 3,200 pages of closely spaced working. The lens comprises three air-spaced elements!
 
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