If all this effort is expended only to look at a single object, the whole idea seems kind of pointless. However, we are using the mental model of a camera lens

If all this effort is expended only to look at a single object, the whole idea seems kind of pointless. However, we are using the mental model of a camera lens to reach that conclusion, and I'm not certain it applies: 1) even if we use the mental model of a camera lens, given the distances involved, you can probably consider most of the interesting the targets to be "at infinity" 2) I'm not certain that a gravitational lens works like a camera lens.