At 3:20 AM +0000 10/10/03, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 18:19:49 -1000
>From: "Danrich" <danrich@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: [OM] E-1 lenses resolution vs. conventional lenses - fact or hype?
>
>Because more resolution to the digital world (CMOS/CCD) is what is
>needed according to the comparison to old world principles of the
>mastery and marriage of film and a well made lens.
>XDan
>
>Olympus is claiming their new E-1 lenses have greater resolution and
>this is a necessity for their new system, as well as one of their
>reasons for not offering the OM adapter. I am skeptical about this.
>Why are they all of a sudden able to produce lenses of supposedly
>superior resolution? What new technology in glass or lens design has
>enabled this? Why have no other manufacturers come up with it? For
>years, the various manufacturers have been in hot competition to win
>the best lens resolution test scores, and the Zuikos were always at
>least in the top tier of lenses. If there was a way to make a lens
>with higher resolution, why didn't all the manufacturers jump on it?
It's a tradeoff. What those manufacturers meant was that they produced the
best resolution (for the price). Far better lenses are possible, but not at a
price (or weight) suited to photography.
As for the E-1, we do know something about the 5-mpixel CCD that will be used,
the Kodak KAF-5101CE -- its pixels are square, 6.8 microns on a side. This is
comparable to the resolution of silver-based film of reasonable sensitivity.
So, there is no point in making the E-1 lenses a lot sharper than for film. In
fact, lens resolution exceeding 6.8 microns will only cause aliasing.
What is different is that the KAF-5101CE CCD has a microlens on each pixel,
limiting the allowed angle of incidence of light onto the CCD surface to
something like +/- 5 or 10 degrees from perpendicular. How wide an angular
range is acceptable depends on how much light falloff in the corners is
acceptable. Anyway, film has essentially no angle restriction, so lenses with
short focal lengths can be a problem with such CCDs, in that the corners may be
darker than with film, and Olympus may not wish to attempt to explain the
reason the the mass market.
Even if the marketing types are unclear on the technical rationale and emit
spurious arguments, I don't really think that Olympus Corp is trying to force
OM lens owners to repurchase everything, even if that is the effect. Simply
put, there are not enough of us Zuiks to matter in a photo market where the
least significant digit is 100,000 cameras sold, and the internal debate at
Olympus on production of an OM-E1 adapter probably turns on the likely
profitability of such an adapter were it offered, and not on any possible
effect on the larger market for the E1.
Joe Gwinn
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