• Skip to main content

A Pencil of Rays

put things in focus

  • Start here
  • BLOG
  • Lens Design
  • About this site

BLOG

I attended the ODF ’18 Lens Design Conference :)

I went to Hiroshima, Japan, to attend an optics conference. It was a great experience, and I learned a lot. I have to say that there was a lot of presentations on Freeform surfaces and Freeform optics, so that may be something that we can investigate further. Want to hear about one of the more […]

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Freeform, ODF

The Ultimate Guide to Lens Design Forms: The types of optical systems in a lens designer’s toolbox

There are so many optical systems that are out there. Why is one lens type used over the other? What lens design for do I need for this system? What lens design alternatives should I consider? Can I use this lens somewhere else? What if we don’t know where to start with the lens design, […]

Filed Under: Lens Design Tagged With: Lens Design, Lens Design Forms, Optical Design

Comparison of the Double Gauss and Sonnar lens designs.

Do you think that lens design is all math, with complex equations and multiple calculations? That’s only partly true. There is another aspect of lens design that requires intuition, experience, and an “eye” for good performance. A more qualitative approach to the lens design that is a bit lost. I want to compare two lens […]

Filed Under: Lens Design Tagged With: Double Gauss, Ernostar, Gauss, Ludwig Bertele, Paul Rudolph, Sonnar, Walter Mandler, Zeiss

The evolution of the landscape lens – from Wollaston to the Protar

The landscape lens is a fascinating look through the history of lens design. We go from a very primitive single lens design that made careful considerations of astigmatism to achieve maximum performance, with incremental improvements, finally to a lens that made strategic use of a new cemented lens configuration that was groundbreaking for its time. […]

Filed Under: Lens Design Tagged With: Chevalier, Dallemeyer, Landscape, Lens Design, Protar, Rudolph, Wollaston

Inside the thin lens design and colour correction of the achromatic doublet

Introduction to the importance of colour correction with an achromatic doublet Colour fills the world. When we image those colours with lenses, we want it to represent what we see. Even in the days of black-and-white photos, the scene is is colour, right? Without colour correction, we can get blurry photographs since each of the […]

Filed Under: Lens Design Tagged With: achromatic doublet, colour correction, Lens Design

I presented at the ODG63 lens design conference.

A little while back, I gave a talk at an optical lens design conference in Tokyo. I had a blast, and I’d like to share my experience here. -Background: (The Optical Society of Japan) There is an organization in Japan called the Optical Design Group (ODG), a government institute that promotes optical lens design. ODG […]

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Conference, Japan, ODG

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Go to Next Page »

Copyright © 2026 · Atmosphere Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in