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From: marcus@pyuxt.UUCP (M. G. Hand)
Newsgroups: net.rec.photo
Subject: Re: lenses are sharpest at medium aperture
Message-ID: <132@pyuxt.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Jun-84 14:42:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxt.132
Posted: Sat Jun  9 14:42:06 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Jun-84 01:17:49 EDT
References: <757@hammer.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 13



Optimum sharpness aperture depends entirely on the design of the lens. Since
with most lenses the designers strive towards a fast lens (ie one that has
a large maximum aperture wrt its focal length, in this context), and since
most photographs are taken somewhere in the middle of the f-stop range, the
designers compromise somewhere in the middle, although it is *easier* to
make a lens whose maximum sharpness falls at the small aperture end of the scale
because you don't have to worry so much about spherical aberation, edge effects,
internal reflections and all that bad stuff.....

		marcus hand   (pyuxt!marcus)