I find that some lenses are indicated with the letters "ED", referring to some special type of lens element. What are ED elements, and what advantages do they bring?
Note that this question isn't very clear on ED elements.
Answer
ED means extra-low dispersion, referring to a type of glass that to disperses light less than ordinary glass. Dispersion means breaking up light into its constituent colors due to bending different wavelengths of light to different degrees. Because uncorrected dispersion can cause chromatic aberration, ED glass elements can help reduce purple fringing and other chromatic aberrations, by making it easier to correct for dispersion with the other elements of the lens.
ED elements tend to be limited to higher-end lenses because ED glass can be more expensive to manufacture and work with than ordinary optical glass. Canon goes beyond ED glass in some of its L lenses with fluorite, which has the lowest known level of dispersion, but fluorite elements are fragile and extremely expensive to manufacture and incorporate into a lens (especially if very large, as in the Canon EF 1200mm lens).
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