How it used to be done: https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/ Super-experienc... | Hacker News

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		formerly_proven on May 10, 2021 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? How it used to be done: https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/ Super-experienced people backed up by a small army of people doing ray-tracing by hand. Wikipedia might give you starting points to find modern answers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_lens_design#Lens_optim... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_d... And if you want to get a general feel for how the modern designs work, Bill Claffs optical bench is a nice starting point: https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/Optical... (tbh it sounds a lot like the EDA space, and CAE in general)

ghaff on May 10, 2021 [–]

Yeah, modern lenses are definitely computer-designed but if there's any ML being used, it's almost certainly very recent.

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