I have the bad habit of thinking about the design of camera equipment
when I'm driving. For a mass market system, one would expect that the
engineers would figure out how much resolution is needed, and design the
system around that. Another option is to place the constraint on the
size of the sensor, and try to optimize there.
If we can assume that Moore's law is going to hold on sensors, for at
least a few more iterations, then for long term planning, sensor cost is
not going to be an issue, and it might be best to optimize system design
on the glass. Lens quality has improved over the years, but I'm
guessing that the improvement over time is more linear, or logarithmic
rather than the exponential improvement (2dB/year) of Moore's law.
The sharper a lens (lines per inch) the more expensive it is to produce.
Likewise the larger the sharp area of a lens, (24x36 sensor vs APS) the
more expensive it is to produce. There are also physical limitations to
the resolution, it can't get any better than the wavelength of light.
So, for ultimate system resolution, is there a sweet spot for lens
design where you get the best lines per inch times sensor area for the
least cost? Or is it simply a case that as far as glass is concerned,
it's always cheaper to get the same total resolution with a bigger
target area?
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