Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/05/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>>At 06:30 PM 5/5/96 +0200, Gerard Captijn wrote: >> >>It is interesting that Leica was able to improve the Tessar-type design >>further as the general opinion of the optical community was that the potential of >>the design has been realized. >> >>Gerard > >Can you provide a source for this statement? I believe Zeiss, at any rate, >has felt that new glasses and computational techniques have made the Tessar >capable of quite a bit of further development. I had a discussion with an optical designer from Schneider at one of the former Photokina's where he made above statement. His line was that so many optical designers have invested so much time in improving this basically simple design during the last 60 years (at the time) that all that potentially can be obtained is there by now. He felt that there were just not enough surfaces and lenses to work on to obtain the best possible image quality at large apertures. According to him, the future would be for high-aperture Gauss designs. Some time later I read an article about lens design in the 20th century that confirmed above opinion. I would have to go through my papers to give you the exact source. I makes sense that as new glass and new calculating methods are developed, the limits of the Tessar design will be extended (which is precisely what Leica did with their new Elmar 50mm/f2.8). Gerard Captijn, Geneva, Switzerland. E-mail: captyng@vtx.ch Fax: +41 (22) 700 39 28