Just to add on to illustrating the complexity of lens designs, there are actually a ton of papers written describing the reasoning behind the ordering of lenses and their respective purposes. The paper I've linked here (https://bit.ly/2Tna0D0) is a pretty good summary of some of the design challenges and solutions for the lens design of a mobile phone. The authors discuss topics like optical layouts, addressing aberrations/distortions, and sensitivity to light. It gave me a new sense of appreciation :)
kavimehta
Is this image serious? What is the benefit of having so many lenses? Does that benefit really outweigh the cost?
lhagaman
The image is serious and the benefits do outweigh the costs, otherwise companies wouldn't do it. A large part of the benefit in this case is compressing the length needed for the camera since they need to fit it in a phone as thin as possible.
Just to add on to illustrating the complexity of lens designs, there are actually a ton of papers written describing the reasoning behind the ordering of lenses and their respective purposes. The paper I've linked here (https://bit.ly/2Tna0D0) is a pretty good summary of some of the design challenges and solutions for the lens design of a mobile phone. The authors discuss topics like optical layouts, addressing aberrations/distortions, and sensitivity to light. It gave me a new sense of appreciation :)
Is this image serious? What is the benefit of having so many lenses? Does that benefit really outweigh the cost?
The image is serious and the benefits do outweigh the costs, otherwise companies wouldn't do it. A large part of the benefit in this case is compressing the length needed for the camera since they need to fit it in a phone as thin as possible.