In this contribution it is argued that vision systems urgently require an open camera to lens communication standard. Traditional machine vision systems are built out of components that are manufactured by different vendors. New lens mounts with an open camera to lens communication standard would also allow machine vision systems to incorporate features that are already common in commercial products. This includes the automatic correction of various types of lens aberrations, including geometric distortion, lateral chromatic aberration, and lens shading. The lack of an open camera to lens communication standard is, however, an even more serious obstacle because modern techniques of computational imaging cannot find wide-spread application in machine vision systems. An open camera to lens communication standard opens up wide-range application to all kinds of computational imaging systems and the machine vision industry is well advised to implement such a standard.