Photography lenses produced today are superb, crisp from corner to corner, with almost no distortion or weird artifacts.
Those lenses are stabilized, weather sealed, with autofocus, power zoom and incredible values of the aperture.
Those lenses are perfect!
But the real question is different... Perfect lenses are perfect for... What?
Beauty is in the eye of an observer
In the eye, but in the mind as well.
I've heard the same question at least 10 times: "what is the resolution of human vision, in megapixels"?
The answer is about 550 - 600 Mpx but in reality, you see only the fraction of them as your brain has no time to process unnecessary background.
And this leads us to the unexpected problem: if you have an optically superb lens, the photo will look strange.
It will look great for landscape, but when you take the photo of a person, it will have odd, sterile look.
There will be no "story", or in the best case scenario, it would be the movie plot for "Equilibrium".
In order to tell the story with a single shot, you should maybe take some old 20 $ lens, instead of shiny new one, worth 2000 $.
Legacy of Carl Zeiss
I will skip those classcal biographical facts, I will list only some cool anecdotes.
If you wanted to work for Zeiss, you would be invited to an interview, at his house, to talk as the friends with the glass of vine.
You would also have team-building style events, like BBQ in his garden.
Workers also had paid field trips to the mountains.
And the doctor, fully covered, of course. And the full salary during the illness.
Of course, the best imaginable library was available to you.
Surprisingly, this was achieved in the XIX century, before the labor laws we know today.
In such environment and the people like Ernst Abbe, the company flourished and produced more than 10.000 microscopes, leading the company to the new century.
Let's see some of the famous designs by Zeiss.
Tessar
If you are familiar with the Greek, you have the clue as the word "τεσσερα" means four.
There are 4 lenses, organized into 3 groups. In the Part I you could see that the advantage of the merged positive and negative elements was used to eliminate the chromatic aberrations.
The design was incredibly efficient and elegant, thus many lenses today use the same basic design.
There is the high probability that your smartphone camera has Tessar design.
The disadvantages of this design include spherical aberrations, field curvature, and astigmatisms.
If you want to buy some cheap Tessar, take a look at 50, f/2.8 it cost about 50 $ and has very creamy bokeh:
Planar
Planar design is the base of some of the fastest lens ever produced. Among them, Leica Noctilux 50, f/0.95 and the toy for Kubrick, Zeiss 50, f/0.7!
Basically, all the 50's are some kind of Planar, so my vintage proposal would be Hellios 44 with swirly bokeh and the price as low as 20-30 $.
Flektogon
The third and the last design that I will share with you is the Flektogon, 1/2 Planar and 1/2 Topogon that was used in the wide-angle lens.
My favorite cheap example is Mir-1, described in my old post, that cost about 20-30 $.
Perfectly imperfect flares:
Evolution of the Design:
Now you have an idea for your collection
And the pick-up opening line: "May I take the photo of your smile with my Planar"?
Don't open. I told you...
I hope this was interesting.
If it wan't, my very last chance to make it interensting, link for the song "Age of Emotions"