Quoted By:
tl;dr: Why can't companies make cheap AF lenses with old optical designs?
Humanity can produce decent photography optics for over a century now. Many 20th century lenses with 4-6 spherical elements (Tessar, Sonnar, etc.) can produce not exactly perfect, but good enough images when hooked up to modern digital cameras. Attached photo is taken with Industar-61 L/Z (Tessar, 50mm, f/2.8) at f/8 attached to camera through M42 to Nikon F adapter with infinity correction element and an x0.71 speedbooster, even with all this shit it makes ok pictures. Meanwhile it's rough equivalent (if we account for speedbooster), Sigma 30mm f/2.8 Sony E, has 7 elements (2 aspherical) and still has issues that require digital correction.
So I don't get it, why can't someone just shit up an AF system to a century-old design and sell it as a budget option? Surely it'll be much easier and cheaper to produce than modern glass puff-pastries.
Are they somehow fundamentally incompatible with some modern features like IS? Are they somehow more expensive to produce due to some fuckery I'm not aware of? Does Glass Mafia bankrupt, "suicide" and wipe from public knowledge anyone who tries to do this?
