Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/03/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Relatively to Leica, they do. If you have some space (ie, allowable lens size) you can afford to do your optical corrections with more and larger elements of less expensive glass and still achieve decent quality. It's a trade off. Nikon and Canon as well as all others do use various higher cost glass, and sometimes that's unavoidable, as with the anomalous dispersion elements that were initially used mainly for longer telephotos to avoid the use of crystalline flourite. As more of this glass was produced and costs went down, it found its way into many other lenses as well. Still, the frontiers of glass manufacturing were usually not of interest to Canon or Nikon for lenses they intended to sell in the tens of thousands or more. It's more cost effective to simulate the effect of one lens of exotic glass with 3 elements of more ordinary performance (and cost). Still, some lenses and their performance characteristics are still out of reach of the volume manufacturers. Witness the 50/1.4's of Canon, Nikon and Leica. No contest, either in price nor performance. On the other hand, neither Canon nor Nikon has challenged the performance of the Panasonic 25/1.4 or 20/1.7 with their 'standard' focal length lenses. :-) Henning On 2012-03-28, at 8:51 PM, Jayanand Govindaraj wrote: > More than cheap glass, I thing it is volume that keep prices down. I doubt > whether Canon or Nikon use cheap glass in their top of the line offerings. > (-: > Cheers > Jayanand > > On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 7:41 AM, Kay Yang <liangjiyang at gmail.com> wrote: > >> Exactly. >> >> If you use cheaper glass like in the canon/nikon ones, you can manufacture >> them at reasonable costs, but that's not how Leica does things. >> >> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Doug Herr <wildlightphoto at >> earthlink.net >>> wrote: >> >>> Frank Filippone wrote: >>> >>>> Nikon and Canon both sell them....at reasonable prices.... They must be >>>> retrofocus lenses to work on an SLR. >>>> >>>> Maybe the problem is ... reasonable prices.... >>>> >>> >>> Maybe the problem is not only making them sharp but also making them >> small >>> enough that they don't obstruct the RF. >>> >>> Doug Herr >>> Birdman of Sacramento >>> http://www.wildlightphoto.com >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Leica Users Group. >>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >> > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > Henning Wulff henningw at archiphoto.com