A lens developed for the British military for night vision cameras could produce extremely sharp photos in camera phones, according to an article from BBC News. The lens uses an optical encoder to eliminate information loss from images.
Details about the lens was presented by Dr Harvey, an optics expert from Heriot Watt University and chair of the Optics and Photonics Division of the Institute of Physics (IOP), during the IOP's Photon 04 optics conference, the BBC reports.
"Using wavefront coding, the system encodes the image so it always looks the same without losing any information," (see above left) the BBC says.
Never out of focus
Harvey says, ""Our system means that an image never goes out of focus; so if I want to take a picture of my nose with a tree in the distance, I can get them focused at the same time."
Harvey's technology relies on a microprocessor to do much of the work instead of employing multiple lenses. He says, "The requirements for military use is that the technology is low cost and that is what you need to for mobiles.
"You want to pick up and point and always be in focus without turning knobs. What you need for the system is a computer, which all mobiles have now."
An infinite-focussed camera lens? When I was a child playing unauthorized experiments with my dad's Nikon, I discovered a lens just like this. It's called a pinhole. I took the huge, expensive chunk of glass off, wrapped a sheet of aluminum foil over the opening, and poked a tiny pin-hole into the foil. The camera's exposure controls still worked, and I spent the day taking *very slow* photos of things very close and very distant. I also scared the hell out of my dad when he saw me, which led to the second technical flaw I can see with the pinhole lens.
Nice to see that technology has finally improved the pinhole.
Posted by: Tychocat | Tuesday, September 14, 2004 at 05:48 AM