Tom wrote: > So how images from a particular lens can have a "pre-computer" look versus > an 'absence of computer look' is simply beyond me. An how that can be > blanketly stated, considering all the variables that will go into producing > an image, is even more beyond me.
Computers are used in order to eliminate various aberations in optical design among other things. Unfortunately, aberrations are giving lenses certain desireable (for some that is) characteristics. Some of these characteristics are related to bokeh (thats why some of the best corrected lenses, macro lenses, often show nasty bokeh characteristics). In the good old days the look produced from various lenses were very much in the hands of the lens designer (not the computer), in many ways a kind of art. With the 43 Limited Mr. Harakara (Pentax chief lens designer; the one who design all(?) the classic * lenses) and a famous japanese photographer (who's name I've forgotten but he was 77 years old when the 77 Limited was presented as a gift to him), set out to try to reproduce the pleasant image quality characteristics produced by pre-computer designed lenses (the good ones I assume); particularly the three dimensional feel of the images. In order to achieve this, they "turned off" the computer. Fine tuned various aberations and judged the results from the images themselves produced by the lens; not curves produced by test equipment. Hence the 43 Limited, and also the 77 Limited (to some extent at least), are designed very differently from "normal" lenses. Incidentally, the 31 Limited is not designed by Harakawa and is perhaps a more "traditional" lens. Pål
