Mark wrote: "Nope, that wasn't anything to do with the redesign of the lenses."
Are you quite certain that the Carl Zeiss lens designers feel (as Olympus lens designers apparently do not) that CCD imaging characteristics need not be considered in the design of lenses meant to be used with a CCD? "Which is exactly why, even if your unsubstantiated hypothesis were true, they wouldn't need to redesign all the lenses for a CCD: They'd just have to come up with wide angles of a more retrofocus design. " Exactly, Mark. That's why I suggested that new lenses could be designed to cope with the specific requirements of digital imaging. I raised the (limited) analogy of the generational change of wide angle lenses to accommodate the mirror boxes in SLRs by means of retrofocus designs, and suggested that some older designs, without analogous changes, would not be very useable on a digital camera with a full-frame CCD. I reread my posts, and--although I really meant to confine my comments to wide angle lenses--I certainly blew it when I tried to edit my first post a bit before I submitted it. I didn't mean to suggest that it would be necessary to, as you say, "redesign all the lenses for a CCD", and I explicitly stated in my second post that such redesign might be unnecessary with lenses with more nearly parallel light rays, but could be crucial to the successful use of wide angle lenses with a full-frame CCD camera. I believe I indicated, and you disagreed, that: (1) full-frame CCDs such as the Phillips CCD in the defunct Pentax digital prototype could have problems with some (wide angle) lenses; (2) since Contax designed a brand new lens line to work with the N series cameras (which, from the outset, included plans for a full-frame digital model), it's likely that Carl Zeiss engineers had the wit to consider the specific characteristics of the Phillips CCD when designing the new lenses; and that (3) the Pentax digital model might not have fared as well with existing (wide angle) Pentax lenses which--quite unlike the new N-mount Carl Zeiss lenses for the Contax-- were of necessity designed without consideration for the particular imaging qualities of the full-frame Phillips CCD; and (4) it's possible that Pentax considered possible deficits in the performance of existing Pentax wide-angle lenses in the process which lead to the decision to cancel production of the Pentax full-frame CCD model which debuted last year. Olympus, which markets cameras with a "designed for digital" theme, may be no more believable than the Pentax marketing sources which you quoted, and which I suggested might be telling only part of the story of the cancellation of the MZ-digital. Nonetheless, Olympus very clearly indicates that light striking the CCD at acute angle angles will produce increased blooming and loss of detail. If this is, as you suggest, a "red herring", I'd be delighted to learn why. - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
