Well spoken Dioptrick, well spoken.
Ok, typed, but still...
Whoops, read it again just now and it's rather wordy isn't it, lol! It's been known to happen when I'm elated about something, haha.
I agree mate,The NEX e-mount 18-55mm makes a great lens to keep permanently on your NEX camera, it's not so big and heavy to become burdensome, and just small and light enough to be pocket-able, well, distortion that occurs at and near 18mm but that's normal for an inexpensive kit type lens, you can't have everything.I also use LR to fix my photos, I mean Distortion. You'll notice strong barrel distortion at 18mm, becoming flat around 22mm, Then turning to moderate pincushion distortion at 55mm.
Your in-camera firmware can correct all the distortions out of your kit lenses automatically, btw.
I don't know if Sony actually started the mirror-less format, but who ever did it - just blew the door wide open. It will usher massive mind-shifts in camera construction if it hasn't already.
Take lens design for example. Professional lenses are very expensive and very complex because they are designed to flatten the depth of field, remove CA, remove image distortion, remove vignetting. They also use a lot of glass in order to be fast and saturated, hence their size and weight. This was necessary with film cameras because all the corrections needed to be done optically - before the image hits the film emulsion. Any remaining flaws after that is rendered permanent. Now that we no longer use film and digital technology has come of age, lens designers no longer have to adhere to those old methodologies.
I believe Sony took the new-school approach in lens design when they created the SEL1855 Zoom and the SEL16 Pancake. They made these lenses as simple as possible (optically) and relegated the remaining optical corrections to digital solutions by firmware (the simpler the optical flaws the easier it is to write a software to correct it). Sony didn't have to make these lenses fast either, the new generation NEX sensor took care of that. It's not a super lens on it's own, but the genius comes from the sensor and the firmware it's dedicated to. The results we're seeing proves this.
I believe the gains we're going see in the future won't be from super-lenses. It'll come from faster grain-free sensors and more sophisticated software coupled with simpler lenses with fewer optical elements. (Dang, I'm still elated, lol!)
Must... stop... typing... now ...