NickTrop
Veteran
So, I've always rather liked the 28-80 3.3-5.6G plastic Nikon kit lens produced between 2001-2005. Reading up on this thing on the internet to validate my opinion (nodding my head in approval of those who share my opinion that this is an undervalued little gem of a lens, and shaking my fist at the screen when someone disagrees...) I stumbled upon an article on the Nikon site by the actual designer of the lens,Haruo Sato, who gives an interesting (to a lens geek) account of the rationale for his design choices along with a completely honest assessment of his "baby", best aperatures/focal lengths, sample photos etc. (And his samples are using a D800 shot in 2017, so my guess is this article is fairly recent.)
The plastic fantastic 28-80 f3.3-5.6G is only a 6 element, 6 group design. On the internet in photo blogs, Youtube vlogs etc. there has been some debate over opting for older lens designs -- and primes over zooms, because they have fewer elements. Fewer elements giving more pleasing images with a better "3 dimensional quality". So it's interesting to hear an actual lens designer for 30 years "weigh in", albeit likely inadvertantly, on this raging "Coke v Pepsi"-ish debate. Some highlights:
IV. More lens elements are a "necessary evil"
-- As a young designer, a number of outstanding predecessors and mentors shared with me their knowledge of optical design. Among the tidbits passed along, I often remember hearing that "more lens elements are a necessary evil".
-- I have spent my entire career designing lenses to be as simple as possible and to utilize the fewest number of lens elements possible.
-- the less experience a designer has, the more they may think that simply increasing the number of lens elements will improve the design, but they then discover that aberrations are not compensated as well as they expected and find themselves caught in a dilemma.
-- Have you never used a lens, such as one with a six-elements-in-two-groups Dagor (Doppel-Anastigmat Görz) structure or a three-elements-in-three-groups triplet structure, that would seem to offer poor aberration performance, but actually rendered images better than did a seven-elements-in-six-groups Gauss structure?
-- MTF cannot be used to determine whether or not increasing the number of lens elements with this lens would be beneficial or harmful. That is why I often use cemented lens elements and always try to achieve designs that use the fewest number of lens elements possible.
Although Mr Sato-san doesn't tie "3D quality" to fewer elements, it's interesting he does make mention to this phenomenon at the end of the article:
-- These days, I find myself most interested in the optimization of image formation characteristics...I am of the opinion that current evaluation methods for imaging optics are not sufficient to judge the performance of lenses for the video age sure to come. As we all know, the subjects of both photos and video are three dimensional. That means that image formation should also be evaluated in three dimensions. The performance of imaging optics must be evaluated based on their three-dimensional characteristics. As for optical design as well, I had thought that a time when we are able to completely control three-dimensional optical characteristics would naturally come.
https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/0063/index.htm
The plastic fantastic 28-80 f3.3-5.6G is only a 6 element, 6 group design. On the internet in photo blogs, Youtube vlogs etc. there has been some debate over opting for older lens designs -- and primes over zooms, because they have fewer elements. Fewer elements giving more pleasing images with a better "3 dimensional quality". So it's interesting to hear an actual lens designer for 30 years "weigh in", albeit likely inadvertantly, on this raging "Coke v Pepsi"-ish debate. Some highlights:
IV. More lens elements are a "necessary evil"
-- As a young designer, a number of outstanding predecessors and mentors shared with me their knowledge of optical design. Among the tidbits passed along, I often remember hearing that "more lens elements are a necessary evil".
-- I have spent my entire career designing lenses to be as simple as possible and to utilize the fewest number of lens elements possible.
-- the less experience a designer has, the more they may think that simply increasing the number of lens elements will improve the design, but they then discover that aberrations are not compensated as well as they expected and find themselves caught in a dilemma.
-- Have you never used a lens, such as one with a six-elements-in-two-groups Dagor (Doppel-Anastigmat Görz) structure or a three-elements-in-three-groups triplet structure, that would seem to offer poor aberration performance, but actually rendered images better than did a seven-elements-in-six-groups Gauss structure?
-- MTF cannot be used to determine whether or not increasing the number of lens elements with this lens would be beneficial or harmful. That is why I often use cemented lens elements and always try to achieve designs that use the fewest number of lens elements possible.
Although Mr Sato-san doesn't tie "3D quality" to fewer elements, it's interesting he does make mention to this phenomenon at the end of the article:
-- These days, I find myself most interested in the optimization of image formation characteristics...I am of the opinion that current evaluation methods for imaging optics are not sufficient to judge the performance of lenses for the video age sure to come. As we all know, the subjects of both photos and video are three dimensional. That means that image formation should also be evaluated in three dimensions. The performance of imaging optics must be evaluated based on their three-dimensional characteristics. As for optical design as well, I had thought that a time when we are able to completely control three-dimensional optical characteristics would naturally come.
https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/0063/index.htm
