Saturday, October 13, 2012

The Most Distortion-Ridden Zeiss Lens Ever (and Why You Won’t Notice It)


Also in this issue:
  • London and Malaysia Trip Report
  • Cameracraft Magazine - Early Feedback
  • RX-100 and Spanish NEX-7 ebooks are out!
  • Data Storage that Lasts 1,000 Years

The Most Distortion-Ridden Zeiss Lens Ever (and Why You Won’t Notice It)

Carl Zeiss may be the Rolls Royce of optical brands, but when Sony worked with them to design the Cyber-Shot RX-100 they had to make a LOT of engineering tradeoffs just to make everything fit in such a small package.  (Hey, if designing such an amazing camera were easy, it would have been done before!)  And I have to say they employed some out-of-the-box thinking on this one, which I can appreciate as an engineer but many of you optical purists may have a hard time swallowing.

Case in point: Have a look at this RAW+JPG of a test shot from the RX-100.  Yowza!  Look at all that distortion on the unprocessed RAW file!  Has Uncle Carl thrown their traditional standards for optical perfection out the window??