History of photographic lens design is) also popular as a telephoto lens design – the Sonnar is always at least slightly telephoto because of its powerful front positive elements. The Zeiss Olympia Sonnar 180mm f/2.8 for the Contax II (both 1936, Germany) is a classic, if not mythic, example. In 1817 Carl Friedrich Gauss improved the Fraunhofer telescope objective by adding a meniscus lens to its single convex and concave lens design. Alvan Clark further refined the design in 1888 by taking two of these lenses and placing them back to back. The lens was named in honour of Gauss. The current design can be
Parallel projection central or perspective projection, in which the rays pass through a fixed point called the "center" or "viewpoint", as this point is moved towards infinity. Put differently, a parallel projection corresponds to a perspective projection with an infinite focal length (the distance between the lens and the focal point in photography) or "zoom". In parallel projections, lines that are parallel in three-dimensional space remain parallel in the two-dimensional projected image. A perspective projection of an object is often considered more realistic than a parallel projection, since it more closely resembles human vision and photography. However, parallel projections are popular in