Sony Curved FF Sensor

This discussion finally shook the cobwebs loose and I remembered a lens Minolta made in the 70's. It was a 24mm f2.8 and had adjustable field curvature. They called it a VFC for Variable Field Curvature and the shape could be adjusted to convex to flat to concave. I would think they are quite rare and expensive now.

You can read about it over at 'the rokkor files' website
 
Could Sony fit a swing lens in front of that curved sensor and give us a digital Widelux? Curve the sensor even more if necessary.
 
Monz said:
Could Sony fit a swing lens in front of that curved sensor and give us a digital Widelux? Curve the sensor even more if necessary.
Click to expand...

No, because the sensor is spherical, not cylindrical.

But let's all get real here - like a lot of things Sony has pioneered (like backlit sensors), the real point is to keep performance constant while lowering the manufacturing cost. There is no insurmountable issue with flat sensors; it's just that Sony doesn't want to put the extra 3 or 4 pieces of glass in the lens.

Dante
 
You're taking it a bit too rose-tinted.

Sony is a consumer minded company that looks for easy to produce methods that are cheap and thus raise profits by using less materials, less production time and less testing.

A curved sensor means that lenses can be made simpler with less components, less alignment, less precision and less testing while giving results that are almost as good. All things that are not much visible but cost a lot and are difficult to pass on to the customer. In 99.9% of the cases (consumers) just as good with a nice marketing touch "curved sensor" trown in to make it look even better.

They are not a company of precision made optics, they prefer to spend a bit more on electronics that they do master well instead of messing with optics where the margins are smaller.
 
Spanik said:
You're taking it a bit too rose-tinted.

Sony is a consumer minded company that looks for easy to produce methods that are cheap and thus raise profits by using less materials, less production time and less testing.

A curved sensor means that lenses can be made simpler with less components, less alignment, less precision and less testing while giving results that are almost as good. All things that are not much visible but cost a lot and are difficult to pass on to the customer. In 99.9% of the cases (consumers) just as good with a nice marketing touch "curved sensor" trown in to make it look even better.

They are not a company of precision made optics, they prefer to spend a bit more on electronics that they do master well instead of messing with optics where the margins are smaller.
Click to expand...

C'mon! you'll be trying tell us next these rumours sites are just a cynical marketing device to fool gullible consumers into thinking a massive global corporation actually cares about anything other than their profits
 
Sparrow said:
C'mon! you'll be trying tell us next these rumours sites are just a cynical marketing device to fool gullible consumers into thinking a massive global corporation actually cares about anything other than their profits
Click to expand...

Wait… what?!? I thought those sites were there to help me!
 
Need spherical sensor!

Need spherical sensor!

Otherwise only one dimension is corrected. AND, can you imagine laying a curved image onto a flat plane? Seems like just a new computational problem for raw development algorithm.
 
gustavoAvila said:
A curved sensor will substantially simplify lens design.

This will allow for small, high performance lenses at competitive prices.

However, legacy lenses will NOT work (on a curved sensor body) as they are designed to focus on a flat plane (rather than a spherical surface).
Click to expand...

Maybe someday all our old glass will not work with the new sensors if the curved sensor becomes a standard? It is a good way to raise $ for the cam companies by getting everyone to upgrade.
 
gustavoAvila said:
However, legacy lenses will NOT work (on a curved sensor body) as they are designed to focus on a flat plane (rather than a spherical surface).
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure. Especially wide angle lenses were designed with a flat film plane in mind but it was rarely actually achieved. My bet is on older wide angles actually working better with a curved plane, at least at wide stops. They should see less falloff at the edges and less problems due to curvature of field. Unfortunately that would be very situation specific and once you stop down you'd lose those benefits and the film plane would be all wrong for the design of the lens.
 
To be fair to Sony, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make things simpler and cheaper to manufacture as long as the quality is high at the end. (Disclaimer, I don't own any Sony electonics or cameras, so I'm just talking about the principle).
 
The thing I'd worry about is sony designing lenses specific lenses for the thing and then ONLY being able to use those lenses because of the specific design.
 
I wonder if one could DIY this solution by applying a little heat and bending the sensor in your camera to the proper spec.
 
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