Miniature Wide-Angle Lens for Small-Pixel Electronic Camera

The figure depicts a proposed wide-angle lens that would be especially well suited for an electronic camera in which the focal plane is occupied by an image sensor that has small pixels. The design of the lens is intended to satisfy requirements for compactness, high image quality, and reasonably low cost, while addressing issues peculiar to the operation of small-pixel image sensors. Hence, this design is expected to enable the development of a new generation of compact, high-performance electronic cameras. The lens example shown has a 60° field of view and a relative aperture (f-number) of 3.2.