>>2653818>What's up with the patents?They thought up something new in building it and patented it. Surely long expired by now.
>Can another company produce them?Yeah. Or they could design their own super-mega-fast lens. The reason you don't see anything faster than f/1.2 to 1.4 in SLRs and a few mirrorless lenses that go down to around f/1.0 is....
>How expensive would it be to do so?very, if you want any kind of sharpness, contrast, or resolving power. Aberrations get harder and harder to correct the faster a lens gets, tolerances get tighter, stuff that wouldn't be visible at all at f/4.0 is now a huge problem that needs fancy ED glass and aspherical elements to correct, etc etc.
>I guess today's costs would be less compared to the 60s? It certainly is less expensive. Once upon a time if you wanted aspherical elements, they had to be hand-figured. (this is why the noct-nikkor 58/1.2 was both legendary and legendarily expensive for its day) A lens like this is no longer something that only NASA and a major movie studio can afford to make. It's still something that's too expensive to justify in the consumer market though - from an engineering point of view its simpler and cheaper to improve the sensitivity of the sensor than it is to make something two full stops faster than f/1.4.
>And what would be the terms of renting the one remaining?I don't know, but I bet it falls under the "If you have to ask, you can't afford it" category.
