the history of photographic lens design starts with simple single element meniscus and bi-convex lenses. Those early lenses were awful at accurately focusing w

the history of photographic lens design starts with simple single element meniscus and bi-convex lenses. Those early lenses were awful at accurately focusing what was in front of it, and over the next 170 years or so, there were hundreds or even thousands of lens designs many of which were trying reduce or eliminate all the different types of aberrations. By the time the 70's hit and software was starting to replace manual ray tracing for lens design, we started getting very accurate lenses, but manufacturing was a limiting factor. Today that is much less of a limitation and you'll find lenses with 20 elements, aspherical elements, and tons of stuff lens designers from the 70's could only dream of. By eliminating aberrations to the extent that they have, some people will call the new lenses "characterless". In some cases that may be an issue, but with modern digital cameras and photoshop, its probably better to start with an accurate lens, and tweak your look in software, something you'd have much less flexibility to do if you started you capture with, for instance, a petzval lens. But there are some of those old designs where their imperfections, are to many people, beautiful. And for me, I shoot only film, and lately only large format film, so I need to capture the image the way I want to see it. Yes, in a darkroom I can burn and dodge, and use other tricks to change how the final print looks, but there is a lot of stuff I can't add back in, so for me, capturing images with those imperfections allows me to create interesting scenes and looks. NOTE: I actually know very little on the technical side about optics and optical design, consider the above more of a historical thumbnail with opinion mixed in. I would love to find an "optical design for dummies" book, because its something I'd love to learn.