Camera Objective Lens Wavefront Manipulator for Selective Damping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Modern cameras with high-resolution image sensors face issues with unwanted sharpness, particularly in scenes like portraits, where full image resolution can be bothersome, and existing soft focus lenses suffer from field-dependent image aberrations and difficulty in achieving maximum image sharpness due to adjustable air gaps.
Innovation Solution
A lens design incorporating a first and second lens-element arrangement with a wavefront manipulator, featuring displaceable optical components with free-form surfaces, allowing for targeted manipulation of spherical aberration without affecting coma or astigmatism, enabling adjustable soft focus effects and modulation transfer function damping.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If adjustable air gaps are used in soft focus lenses to achieve soft focus effects, then soft focus capability is improved, but field-dependent image aberrations (coma, astigmatism) and defocusing occur
Solution Approach 1:
The invention separates the control of spherical aberration from other monochromatic image aberrations by using a wavefront manipulator that independently adjusts spherical aberration coefficients (Z9, Z16, Z25) without affecting coma and astigmatism. This segmentation allows soft focus effects to be achieved while maintaining correction of other aberrations.
Solution Approach 2:
A wavefront manipulator is introduced as an intermediary device between the lens elements to selectively manipulate the wavefront and induce spherical aberration. This intermediary component enables precise control over spherical aberration coefficients without directly modifying the lens structure or introducing additional aberrations.
2Adaptability or versatility
If electronic blurring is used to reduce image sharpness, then soft focus effect is achieved, but three-dimensional effect and depth perception are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The invention replaces electronic image processing with an optical wavefront manipulation system that physically alters the light paths before they reach the sensor. By using a wavefront manipulator to induce spherical aberration, the system achieves soft focus effects optically rather than computationally, preserving depth information and three-dimensional perception.
3Manufacturing precision
If additional lens elements are added to compensate defocusing in soft focus lenses, then image sharpness is maintained, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The invention extracts and isolates the spherical aberration control function from the overall lens system by using a dedicated wavefront manipulator. This allows spherical aberration to be adjusted independently without requiring additional lens elements for defocusing compensation, thereby maintaining image sharpness while avoiding increased complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention changes the optical parameters of the system by dynamically adjusting spherical aberration coefficients through the wavefront manipulator rather than physically adding or removing lens elements. This parameter-based control achieves the desired optical effects while maintaining a simpler lens structure.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The lens achieves a large adjustment range with homogeneous imaging characteristics, allowing for flexible soft focus effects and maintaining ideal imaging sharpness, while also enabling bokeh and anti-aliasing without the need for additional filters.
Implementation Method 1
the wavefront manipulator has effective positions, in which the optical components are displaced from the zero position counter to one another, perpendicular to the optical axis of the lens, and in which the optical components cause at least a spherical aberration in the imaging properties of the lens
Data Source
AI summary
An objective lens for a still or film camera includes a first and second lens-element arrangement, and a wavefront manipulator. The first and second lens-element arrangement are spaced mutually apart along an optical axis of the lens such that an interstice is present therebetween. The wavefront manipulator is in the interstice and includes two optical components displaceable counter to one another, perpendicular to the optical axis, and which each include a free-form surface. The wavefront manipulator has a zero position, wherein the optical components do not cause any image aberrations in the imaging properties of the objective lens, and effective positions, wherein the optical components are displaced counter to one another, out of the zero position perpendicular to the optical axis, and wherein the optical components cause a spherical aberration in the imaging properties of the objective lens.