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[OM] Zuiko, industry exclusive stuff..

Subject: [OM] Zuiko, industry exclusive stuff..
From: Albert <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:53:32 +0800
The new Zuikos have dual-sided aspheric elements???  cool!

Also, auto light fall off and barrel distortion compensation IN-CAMERA!!
;-)

Albert

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E1/E1A5.HTM
Actually, Olympus has done a number of things in the design of their lenses for the Four Thirds system to improve image quality. To call attention to the extent of these design improvements, they've branded them as "Zuiko Digital (tm)" lenses. (I'm told that Zuiko means "Light of the Gods," presumably in Japanese.) In addition to the special "digital specific" design described above, Zuiko Digital lenses also incorporate improvements in lens molding and polishing accuracy, multi-coating, centering of the lens elements within the mounting system, increased use of ED glass and aspheric elements, and dual-sided aspheric elements, the latter of which Olympus claims as an industry exclusive. The actual impact of these enhancements remains to be seen (whenever I can test production models of both camera and lens), but the promise is that Zuiko Digital lenses will have better resolution, color rendering, and flare characteristics than even the best conventional designs. (The 14-54mm lens that shipped with my prototype sample of the E1 indeed seemed to show very little distortion or chromatic aberration, particularly for a prototype-model lens.)



As I noted in the overview section of this review, Zuiko Digital lenses also support a greater degree of communication between lens and camera than has heretofore been the case, with some interesting consequences. Olympus claims that part of this increased communication will benefit autofocus speed and exposure determination, although they haven't yet said how this will work. It does appear though, that Zuiko Digital lenses pass information about their optical characteristics to the camera body, including information on geometric distortion. I first thought that the use of this information would be limited to storing it in the file's EXIF headers, facilitating automated correction of barrel and pincushion distortion post-exposure, on a host computer. It appears that the real story is quite a bit more dramatic though: The camera itself can perform these corrections, and apparently does so automatically. (This probably explains why I saw essentially zero barrel or pincushion distortion from the 14-54mm zoom that shipped with my evaluation unit.)


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