Reading the full article sometimes helps:
We had this before, it was discussed before, and nobody is forced to buy this lens. Other (more expensive, but also bigger) options are available.
I'm still waiting for someone to demonstrate in the final image the inferiority of digital geometric distortion correction, compared to optical correction that some people claim is superior. I tried and failed, finding that digital correction was just as good. Since you clearly believe that optical correction is better, perhaps you'll be the one to actually show some evidence to support that belief?
Looks like ~17 elements (hard to be sure on my phone screen). That’s the same number as in the RF 70-200/2.8 lenses (Z and non-Z), so I wouldn’t call that a ‘lack of elements’. Also worth noting that the RF 24-105/2.8L Z does not fill the entire image circle on the wide end.
seems like mostly a cake and eat it too thing. i want to buy lenses that create low distortion images. in the film days, without digital lens correction i had to buy big / heavy and live with a lot of aberration (EF 17-40: i am talking about you). EF17-40 was pretty popular before the full frame digitals became available.
That pretty effectively makes the point that 'optical correction' can leave a lot to be desired.
That is not correct. It's not cropping, it's digitally correcting the barrel distortion. Light that would have filled the corners was bent further into the frame, the correction stretches it back to the corners. As an example, when comparing the RF 14-35/4 (black corners at 14mm), with correction in DxO the resulting image gives a FoV equivalent to ~13.5mm on the EF 11-24/4 (which is essentially distortion free at 13-14mm as it transitions from strong barrel distortion to milder pincushion distortion). It helps that the uncorrected RF 14-35/4 has a FoV of a bit wider than 13mm.
I like the have the cake and eat it too design approach. The full frame is not being wasted, as stated above. The advantages of designing with digital corrections in mind are evident. One need only compare the size, weight and optical quality of the EF 11-24/4 to those of the RF 10-20/4, with the latter having similar optical quality (after digital correction of both lenses), but being wider, much smaller and lighter, and cheaper into the bargain. That's a big win, in my opinion (and in my photo bag – I bring the 10-20/4 along a lot more often than I brought the 11-24/4).
That's kind of where I was at (and still am, since this is just a patent rumor, and nothing more) with the first two legs of the budget trinity already complete. Hopefully that's the more likely iteration that we'll see. Maybe this is an APS-focused concept? Hard to say.
The sensor corners are not collecting photons, but i sort of see your point.
You are right that parts of the sensor are not exposed and thus "wasted", so that the image circle from further in has to be stretched outwards but only into the corners, as @neuroanatomist mentioned earlier, leading to a loss of resolution in the corners. Now, this sounds bad on its own, but since most lenses already fair less than optimal in the corners, particularly at lower prices, and as long as the stretching results in an equivalent image quality, we can benefit at "similar" image quality from smaller, lighter, and cheaper lenses.
