Can a zoom PF lens be made to get much lighter lenses?
Zoom PF lenses ?
- Thread starter Venkatesh VT
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Best way to zoom a PF lens is with your feet
Sure, a Phase Fresnel element is much lighter than a traditional element but there's no reason they can't be used in zoom lens designs. Canon's DO lenses are very similar in their use of Fresnel elements to Nikon's PF lenses and they make zooms using this technology.
Thx.Which Zoom lens of Canon uses DO techmology?
The newer f11 RF600 and RF 800 do DO or a variation. These are not top tier lenses. The discontinued EF 70-300 f4.5-5.6 DO does, as well as the discontinued EF400 f4 DO. I don't know of current zooms. They used to put a green ring around the DO lenses to make them easy to pick out.
hark
Member
It would be nice if Nikon added some PF zooms to their arsenal for DSLR lenses. But with Nikon's endeavor into mirrorless, my guess is they will spend more time designing mirrorless lenses.
Yeah, I'd love to see a 200-600mm internal focus PF lens in F mount but I suspect if such a lens is designed it will be Z mount.
FB101
Well-known member
i owned the 70-300 DO, it was a nice walk around lens but optically it was disappointing. I sold it quickly.
i also owned the first 400 f:4 DO and it was an amazing technology breakthrough but optically it also had its flaws - it especially didn’t take well to the focal multipliers. And then they released the v2 of that lens and it is one of my all time favorite lenses. Think 500pf but even sharper and less flare-prone - and you can pair it with the multipliers with no loss.
i am guessing zooms are not that easy to optimize with DO/PF optics. There has only been one so far and it wasn’t great. I am sure progress will be made and new ones will eventually be released but if it was easy we would have seen more of them by now, especially the bigger zooms. The fact that canon only did a 70-300 that was an entry level optic says a lot about how they felt about the performance level.
i also owned the first 400 f:4 DO and it was an amazing technology breakthrough but optically it also had its flaws - it especially didn’t take well to the focal multipliers. And then they released the v2 of that lens and it is one of my all time favorite lenses. Think 500pf but even sharper and less flare-prone - and you can pair it with the multipliers with no loss.
i am guessing zooms are not that easy to optimize with DO/PF optics. There has only been one so far and it wasn’t great. I am sure progress will be made and new ones will eventually be released but if it was easy we would have seen more of them by now, especially the bigger zooms. The fact that canon only did a 70-300 that was an entry level optic says a lot about how they felt about the performance level.
Roy
Well-known member
Phase Fresnel lenses slightly compromise image quality to reduce weight.
I dont think I want to see a PF zoom - that would be too much of compromise...