What makes the tiny digicams lenses so good?

Colin Wilson wrote:
Let's say £300 was my budget (for divorce's sake). Is there a range of
models in the UK that would produce studio-worthy photos that will
satisfy a trained eye such as your own? Should I concentrate on what
they're calling the "prosumer" quality range and spend a bit more?

See the recent thread where the Canon S3 IS was mentioned (amongst
others)

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/s3is.html

Have used Steve's Digicams before...good site. Will check out the
Canon. Always hear good things about this brand.

Steven Campbell wrote:
Get yourself along to www.ephotozine.com
Good bunch of folk there on the forums who will gladly answer your
questions.
You can also browse the gallery and see what pictures were taken with what
camera.
www.dpreview.com is American based but has some good guides.
http://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk/index.html is a good price comparison
site.
SLR camera is the way to go if you can afford it.


I will certainly check these out...thanks.

I would hesitate getting an SLR because of the heavy use the camera
would suffer at the hands of the whole family. I certainly don't want
to have to clean dirt off the sensor.

HLAH wrote:
"Steven Campbell" wrote in message
...

"chrisu" wrote in message
...


Steven Campbell wrote:

"Evan" wrote in message
egroups.com...
Joseph and Don,



I don't mean to hijack this thread, but it might illicit some educated
responses from camera afficionados out there like you.


snip



There are times when a point and shhot thats fits in the pocket is just
the job - I have a Ixus 60 - having said that I'm pretty impressed with
my EOS400D.

Totally agree with you but out of curiosity, if you think your Ixus 60
does the job, why do you also have the 400D?
P&S is great for convenience but no so on versatility.

snip
Also other problems are, it's noisy in low light and it can fluff the focus
a bit too often. The battery warning is rubbish as well.

I expect the 400D doesn't have these problems but you would have to be some
fat ******* to slip one into your pocket like I can an Ixus :-)

H


who are you calling fat ????............. ;-)

as above P&S is P&S for true versatility/control you need an SLR - I do
a lot of horse event photography - a DSLR gets the shot but from a safe
distance.

day to day its the ixis 60 thats with me at all times.




--
1976 Z900, 1980 Z1R, 1973 Beamish suzuki, 1976 GT250, 2000 ZRX1200

On 02 Oct 2006, jpc wrote:

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:55:48 +0100, Don W wrote:


Inexpensive high quaiity molded aspheric lens and better lens design
program are among the main reasons. The lens on my newest pocket
camera-an OLY 350-- has six elements of which rhree are apsherics and
it's close to aberation free thruout its zoom range

jpc



Moulded lenses - that souds like a big money saver when it somes to
manufacturing.

On Tue, 03 Oct 2006 12:44:09 +0100, Andy wrote:

On 02 Oct 2006, jpc wrote:

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:55:48 +0100, Don W wrote:


Inexpensive high quaiity molded aspheric lens and better lens design
program are among the main reasons. The lens on my newest pocket
camera-an OLY 350-- has six elements of which rhree are apsherics and
it's close to aberation free thruout its zoom range

jpc



Moulded lenses - that souds like a big money saver when it somes to
manufacturing.

It is a money saver, but it also allows aspheric lens shapes, which
would be prohibitively expensive if made from glass.
--
Bill Funk
replace "g" with "a"

On Tue, 03 Oct 2006 12:44:09 +0100, Andy wrote:

On 02 Oct 2006, jpc wrote:

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:55:48 +0100, Don W wrote:


Inexpensive high quaiity molded aspheric lens and better lens design
program are among the main reasons. The lens on my newest pocket
camera-an OLY 350-- has six elements of which rhree are apsherics and
it's close to aberation free thruout its zoom range

jpc



Moulded lenses - that souds like a big money saver when it somes to
manufacturing.


Took a lot of upfront money to get there. But once you have the molds
and the right optical grade plastics and the techniques to mold the
parts without introducing so much birefringence the lens is useless
you ought to be able to turn out aspherics for a couple bucks a piece
as compated with a couple gand apiece back in the handwork days.

jpc

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Don W
], who wrote in article :
Then recently I got to use one of the modern digital compacts. It was a
Canon Powershot SD450. (UK: Canon IXUS 55.) 5 MP. A 6 element lens
in 5 groups. Max aperture of f/2.8 at full wide angle (less on
telephoto)

My! Oh my! The results are really very good. I look at the tiny weeny
little microscopic lens and when I see what it can do then I'm very
impressed. Reviews suggest it I could get a really very decent 10 x 8
color print from this.

Of course contrast, color, vignetting, fringing, distortion may not be
100% but they are nevertheless more than adequate for a lot of photos.

Some of these are not a tiny bit important in digital world, since
they can be 100% corrected without any (or, at least, a significant)
image degradation.

The principal reason for the effect you see is that, as it turns out,
lenses has very little effect in 35mm world: the quality of film in
35mm formfactor is so abysmal, that the *principal* damage comes from
film, not from lens.

Replacing film by a digital sensor increases several parameters so
much that a (small?) decrease in other parameters is not very
noticable.

One data point: to fully exploit the image detail provided by high
quality rangefinder lenses in the highest-resolution f-stop, one would
need to have about 80MP digital sensor. But already a 8MP pixel
provides images which (in most people's eyes) bit the quality of film
images.

This gap (8MP to match film quality, vs. 80MP to match lens quality)
leads to the effect that even not-a-stellar lens provides quite
adequate images.

QUESTION:
How does this sort of compact digital camera lens (or even those from
the slightly better compacts digicams) compare to those old lenses
without going to the extreme:

In the view of the above, I think this question does not make a lot of
sense...

Hope this helps,
Ilya

Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
Of course contrast, color, vignetting, fringing, distortion may not be
100% but they are nevertheless more than adequate for a lot of photos.


Some of these are not a tiny bit important in digital world, since
they can be 100% corrected without any (or, at least, a significant)
image degradation.

The principal reason for the effect you see is that, as it turns out,
lenses has very little effect in 35mm world: the quality of film in
35mm formfactor is so abysmal, that the *principal* damage comes from
film, not from lens.

Replacing film by a digital sensor increases several parameters so
much that a (small?) decrease in other parameters is not very
noticable.

Hmm. Since making good lenses is expensive, and since
(further) some corrections fight other corrections
(colour vs barrel distortion IIRC) has any manufacturer
(yet...) used Mega pixels and CPU power to
perform some of the corrections digitally
so that the lens could be better corrected
in the remaining ways (and/or cheaper to make) ?

BugBear

On Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:31:38 +0000 (UTC), Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
This gap (8MP to match film quality, vs. 80MP to match lens quality)
leads to the effect that even not-a-stellar lens provides quite
adequate images.

One way to assess the quality (or not) of lenses is to photograph
a night sky. To do this you'll need to talk to your astronomy buddies
and borrow a tracking mount.
Typically stars reveal all the limitations of lenese as the subjects
are effectively point sources. Unless you have some top 'o the range
APO lenses, you'll see to your horror things like coma, false colours
and maybe some reflections.
In real-life these effects are totally masked by the continuous
nature of the subject, but it is interesting to how different views
can reveal faults.

Pete

--
.................................................. .........................
.. never trust a man who, when left alone ...... Pete Lynch .
.. in a room with a tea cosy ...... Marlow, England .
.. doesn't try it on (Billy Connolly) .....................................

In message ,
bugbear writes
Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
Of course contrast, color, vignetting, fringing, distortion may not
be 100% but they are nevertheless more than adequate for a lot of
photos.
Some of these are not a tiny bit important in digital world, since
they can be 100% corrected without any (or, at least, a significant)
image degradation.
The principal reason for the effect you see is that, as it turns
out,
lenses has very little effect in 35mm world: the quality of film in
35mm formfactor is so abysmal, that the *principal* damage comes from
film, not from lens.
Replacing film by a digital sensor increases several parameters so
much that a (small?) decrease in other parameters is not very
noticable.

Hmm. Since making good lenses is expensive, and since
(further) some corrections fight other corrections
(colour vs barrel distortion IIRC) has any manufacturer
(yet...) used Mega pixels and CPU power to
perform some of the corrections digitally
so that the lens could be better corrected
in the remaining ways (and/or cheaper to make) ?

It has been suggested but most lens makers AFAIK leave that sort of
processing to the RAW convertors such as DXO that wil correct for lens
distortion.

The trouble is it takes TIME so it is best done on the MAC not the
Camera.


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