@danob - if you refer to what i wrote... i was told the optical quality is better to get a more precise picture over the whole chip - which is not that important if you use normal film! so they're optimized to minimize the distortion at the plane of the chip... which is also important because the chip is bigger as the film. also a digital SLR seems to have a "sharper" image - simply because you always have the same (exactely same) distance between lenses and chip... which may differ some micrometers if a (not flat) film is used... it's the same as if you compare a reflector telescope with a refractor telescope... the refractor is optically more precise and you need better objectives to get out the full precision in the pic... and it's the same with the objectives for cameras... again my 5 cent ;)