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by Mike in O on Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:48 am
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Here is a picture of the new Sony curved sensor; this is pretty exciting for lens designing.
http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/first-im ... r-the-rx2/
 

by Royce Howland on Fri Jun 13, 2014 9:03 am
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I've been wondering who would do this first. It should have a lot of benefits in lens size, weight & cost, and in resulting image quality (cleaner edges & corners). Good on Sony for innovating and testing out these things...
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by E.J. Peiker on Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:25 am
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The challenge will be manufacturing it repeatably with near zero variation in the curvature.
 

by Glenn NK on Mon Jun 16, 2014 12:09 am
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Could finding lenses for it be challenging?

I've read complaints that Sony doesn't have a great lineup of lenses.
Economics:  the study of achieving infinite growth with finite resources.
 

by Neilyb on Mon Jun 16, 2014 2:45 am
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Would this make lenses simpler to design with less elements? Therefore making them lighter and smaller? I never really understood the need for curved TVs or phones but this looks interesting.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Jun 16, 2014 7:11 am
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Glenn NK wrote:Could finding lenses for it be challenging?

I've read complaints that Sony doesn't have a great lineup of lenses.
No, just the opposite.  this allows the light-path t be equal to every pixel and hit the sensor at 90 degrees rather than varying angles, thereby resulting in lower CA, less vignetting, less color shift, etc in the corners.  This is a very good thing for almost all lenses.

Sony has some really great lenses, in several cases the best lenses in a certain genre, just not as big of a selection as C and N.
 

by rnclark on Mon Jun 16, 2014 8:52 am
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E.J. Peiker wrote:
Glenn NK wrote:Could finding lenses for it be challenging?
No, just the opposite.  this allows the light-path t be equal to every pixel and hit the sensor at 90 degrees rather than varying angles, thereby resulting in lower CA, less vignetting, less color shift, etc in the corners.  This is a very good thing for almost all lenses.

Well, it is not that simple.  Yes, one could design a curved sensor with one focal length that makes the central ray normal to the sensor, but on still has asymmetry off the main optical axis which will result in many aberrations, including astigmatism, high order chromatic, coma, and other aberrations.  One also still has light fall off.  And the off axis rays from a fast lens would be greater than any design advantage in many cases.  And this will not work with zoom lenses (unless perhaps one adds many more elements to keep the same curvature--thus negating the possibility for simple lens design).

The angles coming into a flat sensor on a full frame 35 mm camera in a DSLR are already pretty close to normal incidence, even wide angle lenses.  This is because of the use of telecentric designs.

We will not likely see a curved sensor in a DSLR because, 1) telecentric designs already work well, 2) the angles coming in to the sensor on a fast lens are greater from the edge of the lens whether curved or flat sensor, 3) having curved focal plane for all lenses, from wide to telephoto, poses other design compromises.  One area where a curved sensor might help is a small camera with a fixed focal length lens, but not interchangable lens cameras, nor DSLRs.
Could be a good marketing gimmick.

Roger
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Jun 18, 2014 10:11 am
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Here is an article on the curved sensor:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2014/06/18 ... =title_0_0
 

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