[popo]

Thanks for some info there. I think we're talking about the same thing, but from different "perspectives". I even have wondered if there existed something like "a photographer's guide to optical theory and design" but that would be a rather niche book... I have even tried reading various book on optical theory and design, including a telescope design book, but I find my interest levels to be inversely proportional to the number of equations presented

Side note: my "day job" is as an electronic engineer, but I would love to have done physics at university. I knew even then my level of mathematics wasn't good enough to get far in that. So like most I make do with off the shelf optics.