After taking a closer look at my camera, I think the lenses are made out of glass, which has the best visual acuity anyway. Thus, abbe values are irrelavent. Some of the abberations may be caused by the design of the sensor in the camera.

Abbe value and high refraction index aren't contradictory. There are some new materials out there that have both. A material called trilogy is now out which has a material index of 1.53 and an abbe of 45. It is an excellent material, and can be cut down to 1mm center thinkness. Another is Trivex, which has the same properties. We can make those thinner due to the high material index - they bend light more.

Spectralite is another proprietary lens material developed by sola. It has a abbe value of 47 and a material index of 1.537. A great choice for (most) people with rx's of over 7 or 8 diopters.

No one uses the multi lens approach. One of the reasons is thickness expectations. Any solution using 2 lenses would be too thick and heavy for people to wear. We used to use a multi lens approach to make AR lenses on the spot for customers instead of them having to wait for 2 weeks. A wafer would be placed on a machine, glue put on the wafer, and another wafer on top of that. Then we cured the glue using uv light. If a speck of dust got on the lens while you were gluing it, you had to start over. We could only use plastic lenses. The end result was a lens that was thicker than it could have been. Often, people would come back months later with delaminated lenses. Our company bought all the machines with the understanding that a process would be developed to use poly lenses, which was an interesting concept since poly blocks 99% of uv light. Thus, there was no way to cure the glue. After 2 years of little use, over 700 15g+ machines were chunked into the trash.

When you get glasses, ask your eye doctor for a lens material reccommendation - not the salesman - especially if you aren't living in a licenced state.

Sean