PH 301
ENGINEERING OPTICS
Lectures_7-8
Lens Design
Optical lens design is the process of designing a lens to meet a set of
performance requirements & constraints, including cost & manufacturing
limitations.
Parameters:
Surface profile types (spherical, aspheric, holographic, diffractive, etc.),
Radius of curvature,
Distance to next surface,
Material type, &
Optionally tilt & decenter.
Lens design process is computationally intensive, using ray tracing or
other techniques to model how lens affects light that passes through it.
Performance requirements
Optical performance (image quality): Choice of image quality metric
is application specific.
Encircled energy,
Modulation transfer function,
Strehl ratio,
Ghost reflection control, &
Pupil performance (size, location & aberration control)
Physical requirements: Weight, static volume, dynamic volume,
centre of gravity & overall configuration requirements.
Environmental requirements: ranges for temperature, pressure,
vibration, & electromagnetic shielding.
Design constraints include realistic lens element centre & edge
thicknesses, minimum & maximum air-spaces between lenses,
maximum constraints on entrance & exit angles, physically realizable
glass index of refraction & dispersion properties.
Spherical lenses Aspheric lenses
Achromatic lenses Cylindrical lenses
Objective lenses
Micro lenses
Lens Design
Optics Software for Layout & Optimization (OSLO), Univ. Rochester
Zemax software
WinLens3D Basic, Qioptiq
LightTrans GmbH
Lens Design
Typical lens housing
Typical lens housing
Modulation transfer function (MTF) data are plotted to 50 line pairs/mm.
A 35 mm focal length f/2.8 lens at infinity
A 35 mm focal length f/2.8 lens at 500 mm object distance
A 35 mm focal length f/2.8 lens at 100 mm object distance
A 35 mm focal length f/2.8 lens at unit magnification (32.41 mm object distance)
Multifocal Diffractive Lens
f/# (Lens Iris/Aperture Setting)
f/# setting on a lens controls many of lens’s parameters:
overall light throughput
depth of field
ability to produce contrast at a given resolution
f/# is defined as ratio of effective focal length (EFL) of lens to effective
aperture diameter.
EFL
f /#
DEP
Projection of image space marginal ray angle to edge of exit pupil
Relationship between f/# & effective area for a 25 mm singlet lens
f/# & Numerical Aperture
Numerical aperture (NA) or cone angle of a lens is defined as sine of
the marginal ray angle in image space.
1
NA
2( f /# )
Visual representation of f/#
Numerical Aperture
Relationship between f/# & numerical aperture
Numbers usually increase by multiples of √2. Increasing f/# by a factor of √2 will
halve the area of aperture, effectively decreasing the light throughput of lens by a
factor of 2.
Numerical Aperture
It is the light gathering ability of an objective or condenser.
Numerical Aperture
Modulation Transfer Function
MTF is a measure to compare performance of optical systems.
Components of MTF: Resolution & Contrast
Resolution
Imaging system's ability to distinguish object detail.
Expressed in terms of line-pairs per millimeter (where a line-pair is a
sequence of one black line & one white line).
Measure of line-pairs per millimeter (lp/mm) is also known as
frequency.
Inverse of frequency yields the spacing in millimeters between two
resolved lines.
Bar targets with a series of equally spaced, alternating white & black
bars (i.e. a 1951 USAF target or a Ronchi grating) are ideal for testing
system performance.
For all imaging optics, when imaging such a pattern, perfect line edges
become blurred to a degree. High-resolution images are those which
exhibit a large amount of detail as a result of minimal blurring.
Conversely, low-resolution images lack fine detail.
Perfect line edges before (left) & after (right) passing through a low resolution
imaging lens.
A practical way of understanding line-pairs is to think of them as pixels
on a camera sensor, where a single line-pair corresponds to two
pixels.
Two camera sensor pixels are needed for each line-pair of resolution:
one pixel is dedicated to red line & other to blank space between
pixels.
Image resolution of camera can be specified as equal to twice its pixel
size.
Imaging scenarios where (a) line-pair is NOT resolved & (b) line-pair is resolved
Camera resolution ( m)
Object resolution ( m)
Pr imary magnification ( PMAG)
Object resolution (lp / mm) PMAG Camera resolution (lp / mm)
1951 USAF target Ronchi grating
Contrast/Modulation
Consider normalizing intensity of a bar target by assigning a
maximum value to white bars & zero value to black bars. Plotting
these values results in a square wave, from which the notion of
contrast can be more easily seen.
( I max I min )
% Contrast 100
( I max I min )
Contrast expressed as a square wave
Contrast/Modulation
Contrast means difference.
Photography: most common differences are achieved by changes in
the tones (light) or colors that compose the image.
Contrast is the degree of difference between the elements that forms
an image.
Higher contrast will give your image a different feel than lower
contrast.
Contrast of a bar target & its image
Contrast comparison at object & image planes
Contrast/modulation: How faithfully the minimum & maximum
intensity values are transferred from object plane to image plane.
Spatial frequency of lines increases, contrast of the image decreases.
This effect is always present when working with imaging lenses of the
same resolution. For the image to appear defined, black must be truly
black & white truly white, with a minimal amount of grayscale
between.
In imaging applications, imaging lens, camera sensor, & illumination
play key roles in determining resulting image contrast.
Lens contrast is typically defined in terms of percentage of the object
contrast that is reproduced.
Sensor's ability to reproduce contrast is usually specified in terms of
decibels (dB) in analog cameras & bits in digital cameras.
Modulation Transfer Function
MTF of a lens: Ability to transfer contrast at a particular resolution
from the object to the image.
MTF is a way to incorporate resolution & contrast into a single
specification. It is a function of spatial resolution (ξ), which refers to
smallest line-pair the system can resolve.
As line spacing decreases (i.e. frequency increases) on test target, it
becomes increasingly difficult for the lens to efficiently transfer this
decrease in contrast; as a result, MTF decreases.
MTF for an aberration-free lens with a rectangular aperture
