MetaChat - The Origami Lens.

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31 January 2007

The Origami Lens. Engineers at UC San Diego have built a powerful yet ultrathin digital camera by folding up the telephoto lens. This technology may yield lightweight, ultrathin, high resolution miniature cameras for unmanned surveillance aircraft, cell phones and infrared night vision applications.

post by: matteo at: 18:22 | 5 comments

That's kind of neat. It's like a mirror version of a fresnel lens. I wonder what kind of weird aberrations it causes.

posted by Popular Ethics 31 January | 23:19

Oh, after reading, it's not like a fresnel at all. The lens only captures light around its outer edge, so its aperture is really small for its size (which would really limit its optical performance). You could compensate by making the disc really big, but at that point you're just trading depth for width (which could have it's uses).

posted by Popular Ethics 31 January | 23:26

OMG even MORE haiku!

Fold it very small
Ultrathin miniature
Technology- Great!

posted by Doohickie 01 February | 00:26

Making the disk big is a pretty good trade off when you consider area increases as a square of diametre.

posted by Mitheral 01 February | 09:45

Making the disk big is a pretty good trade off when you consider area increases as a square of diametre.

Except that this lens only lets in light around the perimeter, which increases only linearly with diameter.

posted by Popular Ethics 02 February | 12:36

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