P3D Re: brand new lenses

[Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxx>]

Tom wonders:

>I'm wondering why more people don't just replace the lenses in their
>cameras with brand new ones.  Couldn't an approximate match be found in
>(gasp) Edmund or somewhere?  Is it a problem of matching the optics
>exactly, or are modern lenses just not as good as the old ones.

Edmunds would be a poor choice here. In fact, almost every lens
manufacture would be a poor choice! For stereo photography, which
typically requires great DOF and small apertures, a modern tessar or
tessar-type lens is probably going to be about the best choice, and few
make them. Edmunds doesn't sell them and most camera manufacturers don't
make them; they're either into fast (which means too complex and heavy
without visible improvement at our apertures) lenses, cheap lenses such
as 35-80 f/3.5-5.6 zooms which are inferior to our 50s optics, or still
cheaper lenses such as the ones they put on P&Ss and which from what I
have seen also generally don't represent an improvement from our 50s
lenses. A Realist 2.8 or Belplasca will visibly be as good or better
than fitting these modern lenses!

If our brilliant hacker could put a pair of Zeiss Tessars 35 mm f/3.5
from a Yashica T-4 (or the 45 mm f/2.8 Contax SLR lenses but these may
not be as good!) into a 50s camera, you'd really have something which
would yield an obvious and visible improvement. Twinning T4s won't do
it, because they're programmed to bias toward larger apertures and
higher shutter speeds, which is the opposite of what we are looking for.
They'd also be hyper.

Don't know what T4 lenses cost as parts... the complete cameras are $150
each.


Eric G.


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