Tony Northrup calls the end of Sony A-mount

[Golem]

Zooms need more time to grow. Then nobody needs anymore

a prime. I'm asking myself why there is no hybrid prime zoom.

A 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 70mm, 85mm lens, without the steps

between for optimized Quality on this focal lengths. Funny to

know it is possible or not.

  

My brother uses such a lens as his kit lens. It only has

three steps, 28-50-90, not cuz the optical team was lazy

but cuz those are the existing brite frames in the finder.

  

Instead of "asking myself why there is no hybrid prime

zoom", try asking a search engine. Willy Sutton always

robbed banks cuz, as he told the judge, "That's where

the money is." IOW, always go to the likely source. So if

you don't happen to know, then don't ask yourself. Thaz 

kinda like Willy Sutton robbing himself instead of banks !

 

BTW, zooms do not need "more time to grow". Maybe

you've gotten that impression from "Lab Test Reports" ?

Fifty years is more than time enuf, and it has been time

exceedingly well spent. I think you've been comparing

zooms to primes, which is clearly NOT time well spent.  

  

Zooms are more popular than primes, so there is greater

incentive to build more 2nd rate zooms for cheap. Primes

are generally sought out by IQ-conscious users, making

it kinda pointless to offer a lotta 2nd rate cheap primes. If

you compare only amongst the 1st rate lenses, you'll find

no useful IQ advantage to primes. Primes' advantage can   

be found in size and or speed.

   

Everything is relative and "more time" will not change that.

AAMOF, more time can only continue to prove that :-)

[detlef]

I ask search engines dozens of questions a day

 

I don't know about Lab test reports. But again, what we know from the past xx years is valid today. But there are different things out there, some of them are only theoretical, who can improve several good known technologies. Technology is changing faster and faster today. You can't know what's coming the next 20, 50 or 100 years. If we bet, i say there will be a thing, we will call it a camera today because we have no better name because we don't know how it will work, don't having a sensor or a lens and will be able to get images like a camera today. That's what i describe as a flat time reproduction unit. Let that grow a thousand years or 10 thousands year more and it is possible, if it is not impossible, to take a shot from past things. Our knowledge of physics is not global. Last big change was Heisenberg and his work for quantum mechanics. That was a fundamental change. And that was not the end.

 

So you may be absolutely right if you see the things from a practical standpoint. But if you look more global, more scientifically, you can't say there was enough time for zoom lenses to grow up. They will change a lot with upcoming technology.

 

That's my personal standpoint just looking straight math logical.

[Golem]

@detlef

  

I'll repeat two things:  

 

1. 50 yrs is more than time enuf, and has been well spent.

2. Everything is relative, no matter how many years [which

I will clarify here as also implying "no matter how many

design improvements". 

  

#1 is self evident and no one who recalls the old stuff

would ever think other wise.

 

#2 is the "relativity thing". Acoarst zooms are handicapped

compared to primes. But more developement went into

zooms cuz:

A. They once upon a time needed it reeeeeally badly !

B. The marketplace demands cool zooms with decent IQ. 

  

So primes and zooms have seen 50 years of simultaneous

development, but zoom developement is more ambitious.

 

My bottom line is simply that all of the better class of lenses,

both zoom and prime, are developed beyond real need. So

it matters not whether primes still beat zooms in lab tests. 

  

In real world sensor images, sticking with the better lenses

of both types, the lab test superiority of primes becomes

invisible. OTOH I wouldn't deny that if you compare a cheap

prime to a cheap zoom ... the prime is huuuugely more likely

to have an easily seen edge in IQ. BUT ! comparing cheap

lenses tells us nothing about the progress of over 50 years.

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

People tend to over-estimate the practicel impact of future technologies. 50 years ago, people thought technology would change our physical world. They thought we would live in floating cities, fly to work and take vacations to the moon.

 

Instead, technology just changed the way we interact socially. Rather than fly around people stay home and write messages to each other.

 

Same thing with cameras. There have been any number of technical gimmicks that would revolutionise photography. Most of them are completely forgotten. Instead the basic operation of a camera is virtually unchanged. Cameras do more of the thinking, but if you want full control over the picture, you still have to shoot like previous generations did.

 

Iin my experience, most people who graduate from smartphone photography to ILC are motivated enough and dedicated enough to learn to operate it.

[firemist]

Well Tony?