A camera lens (also known as photographic lens or photographic objective) is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or .
There is no major difference in principle between a lens used for a still camera, a video camera, a telescope, a microscope, or other apparatus, but the details of design and construction are different. A lens might be permanently fixed to a camera, or it might be interchangeable with lenses of different focal lengths, apertures, and other properties.
While in principle a simple convex lens will suffice, in practice a compound lens made up of a number of optical lens elements is required to correct (as much as possible) the many optical aberrations that arise. Some aberrations will be present in any lens system. It is the job of the lens designer to balance these and produce a design that is suitable for photographic use and possibly mass production.
Typical rectilinear lenses can be thought of as "improved" pinhole "lenses". As shown, a pinhole "lens" is simply a small aperture that blocks most rays of light, ideally selecting one ray to the object for each point on the image sensor. Pinhole lenses have a few severe limitations:
A pinhole camera with a large aperture is blurry because each pixel is essentially the shadow of the aperture stop, so its size is no smaller than the size of the aperture (third image). Here a pixel is the area of the detector exposed to light from a point on the object.
Making the pinhole smaller improves resolution (up to a limit), but reduces the amount of light captured.
At a certain point, shrinking the hole does not improve the resolution because of the diffraction limit. Beyond this limit, making the hole smaller makes the image blurrier as well as darker.
Practical lenses can be thought of as an answer to the question: "how can a pinhole lens be modified to admit more light and give a smaller spot size?".
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related concepts (57)
A camera lens (also known as photographic lens or photographic objective) is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or . There is no major difference in principle between a lens used for a still camera, a video camera, a telescope, a microscope, or other apparatus, but the details of design and construction are different.
In photography, angle of view (AOV) describes the angular extent of a given scene that is imaged by a camera. It is used interchangeably with the more general term field of view. It is important to distinguish the angle of view from the angle of coverage, which describes the angle range that a lens can image. Typically the produced by a lens is large enough to cover the film or sensor completely, possibly including some vignetting toward the edge.
In photography and cinematography, a normal lens is a lens that reproduces a field of view that appears "natural" to a human observer. In contrast, depth compression and expansion with shorter or longer focal lengths introduces noticeable, and sometimes disturbing, distortion. Photographic technology employs different physical methods from the human eye in order to capture images. Thus, manufacturing optics which produce images that appear natural to human vision is problematic.
Ce cours d'introduction à la microscopie a pour but de donner un apperçu des différentes techniques d'analyse de la microstructure et de la composition des matériaux, en particulier celles liées aux m
Introduction to geometrical and wave optics for understanding the principles of optical microscopes, their advantages and limitations. Describing the basic microscopy components and the commonly used
Cosmology is the study of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole. This course describes the principal themes of cosmology, as seen
from the point of view of observations.
Understanding the brain requires an integrated understanding of different scales of organisation of the brain. This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) will take the you through the latest data, models
Understanding the brain requires an integrated understanding of different scales of organisation of the brain. This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) will take the you through the latest data, models
Learn about the fundamentals of transmission electron microscopy in materials sciences: you will be able to understand papers where TEM has been used and have the necessary theoretical basis for takin