Hi Florent
Interesting, the detailed advancements in technology are moving things forwards, this of course would be a significant advance in the design of DSLR/mirrorless lenses, reducing delicate iris mechanisms that still are difficult to keep round at smaller apertures with less weight and being significantly cheaper, also electronic variable neutral density filters could be achieved!
Optically things would have to be very perfect though!
Well spotted that man!
I like the aperture that's not perfectly round, you get beautiful stars from that. 7 or 9 aperture blades can do magic.
On that principle were some shutter concepts I read about the idea a couple of years ago. Still, only ideas so far and the main problems enough speed and enough opacity are still "in development". Since these ideas in the article are meant for lenses of cellphones, it might be easier to control a small amount of this liquid, but in typical camera lenses the amount has to be much higher and the density, too. Otherwise longtime exposures would blur.
Another aspect is time. Those cellphones usually are not in use much longer than a couple of years, old models get exchanged regularly against new ones. Lenses, on the other side, are a long time investment as some of them are of higher value than any cellphone.
Peronally, I prefer the mechanical version everytime, but in a cellphone those are hard to miniaturise.
Adding two new layers of glass into a lens with a liquid inside is adding two fresh dust magnets.
While phones are carried close to the body, lenses are exposed to harsher temperatures. Each liquid has a freezing point.
Aperture mechanisms these days are very close to an ideal round shape. Maybe not in smaller lenses like mirrorless usually are.
I can see this liquid aperture idea has the potential to become a cheaper element and makes a lot sense for tiny cameras. But on the other side if the range the mechanical apertures are of very high quality and very reliable, too.
