Quote Originally Posted by wickerprints
It will still be crap even if made 50 years from now, simply by virtue of the fact that a lens that small can't admit enough light to fight diffraction and noise.

I agree. Noise is limited by the laws of physics, and to get the "whole picture in focus all the time", as the man said, even if it were desirable, would mean good light or high noise, and would also mean diffraction would limit resolution to not much higher than it is today.


OTOH, I believe our current lenses are far from diffraction limited, and there is possibly a lot of room for improvement there (maybe not, for all I know lenses are limited by more complicated laws than diffraction- this I know nothing about). A 5DII has a DLA of f/10 or so. Thus a diffraction limited f/2 lens should work well on a 500 megapixel full frame sensor, and thus a 135 f/2 could be cropped to give a 20 mp image with about the same angle as a 700mm lens. Such a high quality lens would be so versatile that many people could live without changing lenses (albiet most would want something wider... maybe a diffraction limited 50mm f/1? ).