OntheRez Offline Upload & Sell: On
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tuantran wrote:
Computers help but who is actually coming up with the equations and stuff? I can write the program and design some hardware but I still need to figure out the right equation. A lot of these stuff are proprietary which makes it more impressive.
If you can do the math for fast, clean A/D conversion then you got a lot further into higher maths than I did
I think we are seeing (and not only in camera technologies but across most designed/manufactured things) a cycle similar to want happened to power the industrial age. The steam engine had been around since 1600 and Watt built the first rotary powered one about 1780. Lathes have been around since time immeasurable. (You got to wonder at the brilliance of the the first man or woman who came up with the idea of the lathe!!)
Lathes were powered by waterwheels and when the cutter dug in the force of the water couldn't respond to provide more torque. In a similar manner the piston which is fundamental to the steam engine wasn't really round thus not very efficient. So they hooked a steam engine to a lathe to make a tighter piston for a better steam engine to give more power to a better lathe (keep repeating).
We've been using computers to aid in design since fairly early in their history and using computers to design computers for sometime. It has reached a self-reinforcing feedback loop where the computer designs and helps to build a better computer which in turn helps to design a better computer (keep repeating).
The basic physics of light can't be cheated, but the optimal shape, number, composition, coating, etc., for a given lens must be calculated out of what likely approaches an infinite set. This was done in the past by trial and error and working from the current given level. It is now possible to consider extraordinary numbers of solutions in relatively small amounts of time and even prototype them in a fraction of the time it use to take.
So yeah, there is a bump going on and it is hardly limited to photography.
Robert
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