LENSES: Facts and Fallacies - Part X

Gerald · Joined: 25 Mar 2014 Posts: 1196 Location: Brazil

The zoom lens appeared relatively late in the history of photography. While fixed focal length lenses with excellent performance were designed routinely since the nineteenth century, the zoom lenses had to wait for the appearance of the digital computer, which finally allowed that the zooms became viable from the '60s.

The design of a zoom lens is much more complicated and expensive to produce than a fixed focal length lens. In general, a zoom lens is commercially viable only if is produced on a large scale. The millions of zoom lenses sold as "kit lenses" of DSLR cameras have created in the minds of many people the impression that zoom lenses are inherently cheap, and therefore the primes are expensive. That perception, plus the recent attraction for "primes" has opened a great opportunity for the lens makes to design prime lenses with high-performance and high cost, like Zeiss Otus, Sigma Art, etc.

to be continued...