Comments interspersed below.
At 8:00 PM +0000 12/23/02, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 11:26:59 +0000 (GMT)
>From: julian_davies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: [OM] Re: Dipping our Toe Into Digital (LONG)
>
>Mo(o)re comments interspersed below
>
> > from: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@xxxxxxxxx>
> > date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 23:53:04
> > to: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > subject: Re: [OM] Re: Dipping our Toe Into Digital (LONG)
> >
> > Comments interspersed below.
> > This is exactly backwards. The more capital intensive the industry, the
> > *slower* to switch to a new method: they have to wait until the old
> > equipment has paid for itself and worn out before they can afford to go out
> > and buy new stuff. The classical exception has been where the new
> > technology was literally ten times better than what it replaced, such that
> > the new stuff could be purchased for a few years of the maintenance budget
> > of the old. It is *very* rare that a new technology is this much better,
> > and digital photography does not qualify.
>
>One of the largest post - production costs in movies is printing and
>transporting the many prints required. This currently limits the number
>produced and leads to the first - run, second - run etc. and country - by
>country release. The state of prints received in a second - tier country is on
>average diabolical, and is a limitation to income. Theatres will invest in
>digital technology if they can recover the costs through increased revenue
>because of a step - change in the distribution system, and a reduction in cost
>of transportation. The quality of the projected image is very, very secondary,
>provided it is clean.
I guess you are saying that in second-tier markets the film prints are so awful
that even bad digital would be an improvement. Living in major US cities, I
haven't experienced bad prints very often. The one time it did happen, the
entire theater full of people demaneded their money back, and got it.
> > Lenses will be no cheaper, because optics is a very mature industry, and
> > the mechanics to hold and move the elements is already pretty well
> > optimised. Computer design of lenses does speed the design process, but
> > has no effect on the labor to actually make the lenses. Current digital
> > cameras get away with low-grade and thus cheap lenses, but as the CCD
> > reaches 35mm camera resolution and coverage, the lenses will need to
> > improve to match.
>
>I think lens technology is going into a new phase of development, now that the
>computer power exists to design such things as the diffractor lens that C*N*N
>now have. This will not generate savings in the Moore's law league, however.
Diffraction lenses have their problems. For one, they are very
wavelength-dependent, a property that is sometimes used to counteract the
wavelength dependence of the refractive index of the lens. For another, they
are temperature-dependent. For a third, they suffer from low transmittance for
white light. I would guess that the diffraction lens is used only in the
lightmeter path.
Anyway, diffraction lenses are not cheap to make, if accuracy and temperature
independence are needed. In cheap systems, they can be pressed out of plastic,
just like CD-ROMs. In expensive systems they are made by careful etching of
glass to controlled depths (phase-only lens). In intermediat cost lenses, they
leave resist layers of varying thickness on the glass; the resist is the phase
element.
A more likely development would be a cheap way to mass-produce glass aspheric
lenses with precise surfaces. This would significantly reduce the number of
lens elements needed to make a lens of a given performance. A lot of people
have tried over the years, but nobody has succeeded yet.
The parallel situation is consumer astronomical telescopes, where the Schmidt
Cassegranian system is more or less standard. The key development, upon which
Celestron was founded, was a cheap way to make to Schmidt corrector plate,
which has a cubic curve. If one can make the corrector plate, the main mirror
can be spherical (easy to make) not parabolic (takes much hand fiddling, so
expensive), and one gets a very wide angle of fully-corrected view. If you can
make that damn corrector plate. Anyway, the trick was that if one put a sheet
of flat parallel glass in a fixture and stressed the glass sheet so it bent
just so, and then ground one face flat (easily done), when the stress was
released, the plate would spring back into the correct shape, flat on one face,
cubic on the other. The cubic face is the one that had been ground flat while
the sheet was under stress. The entire consumer Schmidt Cassegranian telescope
industry is based on this trick.
Unfortunately, it's hard to bend a thick lens enough for this trick to work.
> > Camera body cases and their finger-operated controls won't be cheaper,
> > because they need to be dust-tight enough and robust enough to live in the
> > real world, and the size and dexterity of the human hand is not changing.
> > Viewfinder optics will also remain about the same, as the human eye isn't
> > getting any better. In fact, it declines with age.
>
>Actually, it has been noted that people of the younger generation in the UK
>are developing increased dexterity of thumb, due to all the text - messaging
>they do on their phones.
So, they will soon be all thumbs?
> > Compared to Moore's Law, mechanics and optics do not improve at all. These
> > are very mature technologies. A skilled 16th century instrument maker
> > could duplicate a Leica III (except the lightmeter) albeit at great
> > expense, as it would all be done by hand, right down to the making of
> > various optical glasses from sand.
>
>He may have a problem getting the glass good enough, and tools which are hard
>enough to operate at the reduced scale would be a problem also, but the skills
>are broadly similar.
The trick is to melt the glass ingredients in a platinium crucible, heated by
gas. Solid fuels are too dirty. One can use producer gas generated from coal.
How to do all this would have to be in the instructions.
Don't underestimate what a skilled metalworker can do with a jewler's saw and
files, some drills, a clockmakers' lathe, and the like. They made the most
amazing clockwork in the 17th century, all by hand, of brass and steel.
(Aluminium was unknown then.) The naval chronometer was developed back then,
as were very many clocks and watches. A Leica III would be easier, as far less
precision is needed than for a chronometer, and the parts are larger than for a
watch.
>I also expect to use my OM system for a very, very long time. The parts I
>expect to fail are all "new technology", so I may be down to the OM1 by the
>time film ceases to become GENERALLY available, and that will probably see me
>out using film from the minority supliers.
Ditto. Not that I won't someday also get a digital camera.
Joe Gwinn
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