3 ms·

Fluorite lenses are incredible, but not a critical win until you get to high mag or up against the speed limits of your system. When it really becomes apparent

Fluorite lenses are incredible, but not a critical win until you get to high mag or up against the speed limits of your system. When it really becomes apparent is when coupled with VR stabilization, which can get you 4+ EV stops of speed. When the subject is that crisp, the chromatic aberration is significant, or, with fluorite, not. Interestingly, modern photography suites offer both correction of effects of lenses (e.g vignetting and pincushion) and chromatic aberration in silicon. Compared to where I started with a circa 1989 Nikkor 70-210 f/4 and film, the pictures I can take today are incredible. The real problem, for me, is editing down to a digestible number of eye-poppingly good shots. I imagine kids these days are thoroughly unimpressed, but I'm humbled by the incredible amount of engineering that has gone into photography.

kridsdale1 3y ago
As am I. Starting with film in a similar era and moving along with every 1 or 2 major generational shift in CMOS since then, I’m delighted to be at a point today where my output is bottlenecked by the actual 55000mbps M2 SSD in my MacBookPro for whizzing through hundreds of GB of stills for every shoot to distill down to about 10 best ones.
vardump 3y ago
> ... modern photography suites offer both correction of effects of lenses (e.g vignetting and pincushion) and chromatic aberration... Yeah. I haven't worried about chromatic aberration in lenses for about 15 years now. It's trivial to automatically correct in post processing, as long as you shoot RAW.
ben7799 3y ago
The fluorite lenses also allow them to shrink the lens design and make it easier to carry around. They do this by reducing the # of elements required. It's why you mostly see them in big long focal length lenses since that's where the size & weight gets really obnoxious.

kridsdale1 3y ago

As am I. Starting with film in a similar era and moving along with every 1 or 2 major generational shift in CMOS since then, I’m delighted to be at a point today where my output is bottlenecked by the actual 55000mbps M2 SSD in my MacBookPro for whizzing through hundreds of GB of stills for every shoot to distill down to about 10 best ones.

vardump 3y ago

> ... modern photography suites offer both correction of effects of lenses (e.g vignetting and pincushion) and chromatic aberration... Yeah. I haven't worried about chromatic aberration in lenses for about 15 years now. It's trivial to automatically correct in post processing, as long as you shoot RAW.

ben7799 3y ago

The fluorite lenses also allow them to shrink the lens design and make it easier to carry around. They do this by reducing the # of elements required. It's why you mostly see them in big long focal length lenses since that's where the size & weight gets really obnoxious.