>>4470849While I fucking hate the buzzword bullshit this place has adopted, he's not wrong. Lower element count lenses typically produce images with better definition between colours and shades. Call it whatever the fuck you will but if the best slice of glass has 99% transmittance, and you have a 20 element lens, you've lost 18~% of your light. Colours are light frequencies, and different frequencies are reflected at different rates. That means red might look duller than a blue, and it can be noticable.
In reality your kit lenses tele zooms are not going to use glass with 99% transmittance.
I looked up a quick example and Canon's 50mm f/1.8 is a total transmittance of about 92-93% which is preeeettty good. Getting concrete numbers for any given lens is not always easy but you can bet your ass a consumer-grade telephoto is probably more like 80%.
Anyway, buzzword or not, it's a real thing.
