Say goodbye to glass lenses.

[enliten]

https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/flat-lens-offers-perfect-image

Perhaps cameras will change drastically in the future... that is assuming they are able to make this in visible light wavelengths.

[Farside]

Interesting. In principle, it's like a series of nano-Fresnels.
Nothing new under the sun, is there?

[enliten]

I didn't bother reading the paper or extract (because I'm a lazy shit). I just thought I'd share.

[Orio]

I'm actually struck by another aspect: two of those scientists are Italian scientists who had to migrate to USA
because the institutions in Italy are not able to finance research and development departments of the universities.
That's very sad for me as Italian.

Regarding the glass-less lenses, it's part of the progress, good or bad, but for us artist photographers the thing is
not of much importance: there is still people who paints with pigments and brushes, even if progress has made
those tools technologically obsolete.

[Aanything]

[Nisseliten]

Amazing stuff, pancake 800mm lenses that are extremely sharp with no abberations at F/1.
Technology sure is wonderful.
That being said, I thought the new stuff today was too close to a microscope to make a picture with "soul". I like the abberations for my photos, it's why I use 40-50 year old gear.. Maybe if I had one of those lenses I'd make photos that don't look like crap all the time?.. Maybe..

[SonicScot]

[enliten]

equate this to music then, there has been a steady progression toward a "perfect" sounding music... the formats get better or more usable, the end results get tweaked (autotune) and we get an end result that is "perfect" but soul-less.

the same can be said for most professional photography, new "perfect" gear, then photoshopped to the nth degree.

I'll keep my older lenses with character thanks

don't even get me started on what the relentless use of photoshop does to the body image of women and the expectations of men...

[SXR_Mark]

From a professional point of view I found this interesting and will have to see if I can get hold of the full paper. It seems to me like an extension of a type of diffractive optic known as a zone plate, which is widely used for focusing x-rays

In any case, I think photographers can rest easy for a while. Firstly, the lens has a silicon substrate so does not transmit in the visible. The article also says scaleable from infrared to THz, so no mention of the visible at all.

Then, it is only 60nm thick and about a millimetre in diameter, so rather a long way from "800mm at f1"! I should think the cost of fabricating such a structure on the scale required for a photographic lens would be quite eye watering even with years of development. And then, can you imagine trying keep something that thin intact. You want a 35mm focal length lens at F1? Easy, that's a 35mm diameter substrate of 60nm thickness!