 Dan Kachmer |
APO lenses I'm looking into buying a 400mm APO lens. My question is, what is "APO", and what does it do? I can't find anything on this anywhere. Please help.
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
Think that's sigma's lens and it stands for apochromatic. Just means it's how they signify their higher quality lenses. Sharpness, less abberations and distortions.
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Bob Cammarata |
More specifically, "APO" lenses (and "ED" Nikons), have the ability to focus all three primary colors on the same plane. The result is more accurate color rendition and better overall sharpness. There is an article in the February 2004 issue of Petersen's Photographic on lens design and functions which explains this in detail.
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Wing Wong |
APO or ED on a lens will result in a truer alignment of color on the filmplane/sensor plane. The end result is that you will not get the dreaded "purple fringing" so often noticed by many digital photographers. Examples of this would be comparing the difference between the Canon G5 and the Minolta dimage A1. Both are 5MP cameras, but the A1 has a much better APO lens. Check out the review pages at www.dpreview.com to get a good idea of the difference that APO makes. Note that APO is somewhat less of an issue with film cameras because of the 3d nature of the film medium. Fringing still occurs, but is usually greatly suppressed.
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Dan Kachmer |
Thank you all, for all the input. That clears things up for me.
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