Preface

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 the lens design, with only the specification sheet?

Overview
This is an Ultimate Guide of lens design forms, the optical systems that are used in our
world.
The basic lens design forms are in here, and we can take a deep look into the devel-
opment of lens design. But the not all the lens designs are simple lenses, we will look at
newer and important lens design forms as well.
You’d be surprised to see what lenses are related to one another, and how we can break
down seemingly complex lens design into parts from different lens forms.
I can’t catch all of the design forms, but let me know at kats@pencilofrays.com, if you
want to know more about a subject, or if you feel there is a lens form missing.

N.B. A few primers before you read on:

I may repeat the same explanations from time to time. This is because of the web and ebook
format, where I feel it isn’t quite as easy to go back a few pages and re-read the material
and immediately come back to the place you left off. I’ll provide links within the Guide, but
I’ll also try to make it an easier read without saying ”I said this already lookie over here”
There is a lot in here, so feel free to navigate around with the table of contents on the
next page.

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Contents

1 Motivation and introduction to the General Theme 4

1.1 About this guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 What you will learn in this guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Who this guide is for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Who this guide is NOT for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.5 Who am I? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.6 Background of the Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.7 Pattern recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 Imaging lenses: Classic imaging lenses and the dawn of lens design 9
2.1 The singlet lens: The first lens that deserves your attention . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1.1 Bonus: Two types of singlets, the telescope objective and landscape
lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 The doublet lens: More to it than meets the eye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 Petzval lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4 Cooke triplet and anastigmat lenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.5 The Tessar lens: A commercial success that started an era . . . . . . . . . 34
2.6 Coffee break: Higher order aberrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

3 Imaging lenses: The evolution of lens design that leads to diversification 42

3.1 The Ernostar lens: Evolution from the triplet still used today . . . . . . . . . 42
3.2 The Sonnar lens: Bertele’s genius in lens design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.3 The Double Gauss lens: The winner of the standard lens on a photographic
camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4 The symmetric wide angle lens: The quest for Field of View . . . . . . . . . 62
3.5 The telephoto lens: The term that is confusing for photographers(but not lens
designers) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.6 The Retrofocus / Reverse telephoto lens: The practical solution to wide angle
lenses on SLRs and digital sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

4 Imaging lenses: Specific use lens systems 74

4.1 The Fisheye lens: Testing the limits of Field of View . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.2 Zoom lenses: How we can get many focal lengths in one lens system . . . 79
4.3 Afocal lens systems: manipulating rays to get them to behave the way we want 90
4.3.1 Comment on conversion lenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.4 Telecentric lens systems: when and where we need straight rays . . . . . . 96
4.5 Reflective optic lenses: Changing the direction of light . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.6 Coffee break: Some cool lens names from yesteryear . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

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 CONTENTS

5 Imaging lenses: The lens forms that helps us see more than the naked eye 103
5.1 The eyepiece: imaging the world on our retinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.2 The telescope lens: The first steps to the dream of space travel . . . . . . . 111
5.3 The microscope lens: The quest to enlarge the microscopic world . . . . . 116

6 Imaging lenses: Modern use cases based on new lens design forms 121
6.1 Stepper lenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.2 Laser beam printers and laser scanners: f-theta lenses and their seagull like
shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.3 The Aspherical lens: an addition to the spherical shape that opens up pos-
sibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.4 The freeform lens: Thinking of optical lens design in three dimensions . . . 135
6.5 The mobile phone lens: Taking aspherical lenses to the extreme . . . . . . . 139
6.6 Laser applications: The new age of optical lens design . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6.7 Diffractive optics: Harnessing the phase and wavelength properties of light . 145

7 Illumination lenses: A totally different approach to optical lens design 153

7.1 The two things you need to absolutely be familiar with to design an illumina-
tion system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.1.1 Photometry and radiometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.1.2 Étendue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
7.2 Köhler Illumination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
7.3 Where illumination optical lens design is useful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
7.4 Plastic lenses for illumination applications: lighting, LEDs, and a host of ap-
plications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
7.5 Other illumination methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
7.6 Bonus: Real world calculation of luminance, illuminance, and luminous intensity160

8 Bonus: A list of interesting applications of lens designs not mentioned thusfar163

9 Lens design forms and the principles of optical lens design 164

10 References 166

11 Software used 167

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Chapter 1

Motivation and introduction to the

General Theme

As an optical lens designer, there were times I used to think that ”I can get the performance
that I need for this system with the software, but I want to understand what I am doing”.
Nowadays, we are required to deliver high performance (not necessarily high quality)
lens designs in a short amount of time. Non-intuitive lens design systems like aspherical
lenses and off-axis lenses too. Lens design with computational software like Zemax and
CodeV are the norm now.
Sometimes, I see myself punching in the parameters that are needed for a lens design,
and I can press a button to get the desired performance of the system. In an extreme
sense, I can turn my brain off and use the software to get the desired outcome. I try to catch
myself every time I do so. I’m a scientist, researcher, engineer, and genuinely interested in
the process of lens design. From my own experience, the time I realized that I was merely
punching out lens designs like a machine, I realized that I had a hard time designing different
systems when I needed to.
This did not make me a well-rounded lens designer, and frankly, it was a lot less fun!
So I hit the books. Thankfully, there are a multitude of books on lens design, starting with
the optics theory, optical system design, manufacturing technology, and yes, lens design
methods too.
I got mentors in different fields to help me with lens designs that I wasn’t familiar with.
I quickly found that knowledge from books is applicable in many situations, but to use the
information in a meaningful way, I had to figure out how to apply them to different situations
on my own.
In order to truly understand the material, I needed to connect the dots of the knowledge
I gained from reading all of those books, and create a web of lens design knowledge to be
able to catch everything that is thrown at me.
What I’ve done over the years is distilled the text book material from my favourite books
into the usable concepts, in a logical format that shows each piece of the lens design puzzle
and process.
This logically lead to writing this Guide, and it’s what I would have wanted at my fingertips
when doing a lens design early in my career or when I was learning lens design. But make
no mistake, I myself will be looking back at this Guide often as a reference for designing
different lens designs as I go forward in my lens design career.

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 CHAPTER 1. MOTIVATION AND INTRODUCTION TO THE GENERAL THEME

1.1 About this guide

This Guide provides the lens design forms of various lens designs from simple lenses to
complex lenses, and is intended to provide many examples of the lens designs that we use
today. By becoming familiar with the essential lens design forms, we can use them to our
advantage during lens design.
The examples in this Guide provide a birds-eye view of the various lens design forms
and why certain lens combinations are used, to help visualize typical lens designs and even
complex lens designs.
This helps us become more efficient in our lens design process. I call this training your
Pattern Recognition skills for lens design.

1.2 What you will learn in this guide

We will look into lens design forms and see when and where to use specific lens designs,
techniques of lens designs, with plenty of examples.

1.3 Who this guide is for

• People who want an overview of the essential lens design forms
• People who want applicable lens design forms for reference for their lens designs
• People who are starting out in lens design as a reference for lens design forms
• People who are self-taught in optics to a certain degree, and want to get more familiar
with lens design forms

1.4 Who this guide is NOT for

• People who want a quick fix to a specific optics and lens design problems
• People that don’t need to be well-rounded as a lens designer
• People that are happy with letting the computer software do the work for them
• People that are okay with becoming a lens design zombie

1.5 Who am I?
Hi, I’m Kats Ikeda, Ph. D, and my expertise is optical lens design, non-imaging / illumination
lens design. I have enjoyed a lot of product development based on optics and lens design.
I love nerding out on optics and lens design talk.

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 CHAPTER 1. MOTIVATION AND INTRODUCTION TO THE GENERAL THEME

1.6 Background of the Guide

Optical lens design is made up of many disciplines, one of which is imaging lenses. Depend-
ing on the desired outcome, which are the specifications of the lens, there are similarities
and differences for each lens design. The similarities can be grouped up as a Lens Design
Form.
A lens design form can be a combination of positive optical power and negative optical
power lens elements that share characteristics with each other.
Part of the lens design form is from the configuration, as it is important to be able to
see the configuration of the lens and decipher what it means. That includes what lenses to
use where, the spacing of the lenses, the number of lenses, the material of the lenses, the
optical power of the lenses, and so on.
Another part of lens design form is from the history of lens design, as there are different
needs in different eras, and the technology associated with each era is different. The needs
are fulfilled by different lens designers of the day, with the technology available to them at
the time. New lens design forms are therefore approved by other lens designers if they use
them in their lens designs.
Each topic will have the following format:

1. History and background of each topic: For example, in the Tessar chapter, I talk about
how the lens design can be viewed as a Protar and Unar or that optically we can think
of the Tessar as an evolution of the triplet.
2. Essentials for lens design, what you need to know: to proceed with the lens design.
For example, for the Cooke Triplet, we need to know how the aberrations are con-
trolled.
3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs: For example, there is a
link between Double Gauss lenses and stepper lenses. Also, there is a relationship
with Zoom lenses and Retrofocus lenses and Telephoto lenses.
4. Tips and tricks: We look into useful techniques we can use to facilitate the lens design
process.
5. Master the specsheet: Clues in the specification sheet (or specsheet) to figure out
when to use a lens design form.
6. Real-world examples: Actual lens design specs designed by me or from patents. Lots
of images and ray diagrams of the lens design form. (The patented examples belong
to the inventor and assignee of the patent, and my design is for educational purposes
only. I can’t be responsible for any legal ramifications if you use any of these designs
in a product you’re going to sell)

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 CHAPTER 1. MOTIVATION AND INTRODUCTION TO THE GENERAL THEME

1.7 Pattern recognition

On a basic level, when we can understand the lens design form of a lens design, we can
look at the various properties of the lens and we can figure out the if the performance is
good or not, or if the rays are behaving the way that we want.
Some of the lens design properties I’m talking about are the lens diagram, the type of
glass used, and the rays passing through the lens system.

For the lens diagram, we can get an idea of the shape of the lens, even without the
hard numbers for the curvature of the thickness of the lenses and the spacing between the
lenses. We can see if a lens is a strong convex and causing unneeded problems, or if a
combination of lenses is needlessly either too close or too far away to be meaningful in the
lens design.
For the type of glass used, we can get an idea if the combination of glass types are
beneficial to decreasing the aberrations if they are cancelling out to give an overall good
performance.
For each surface, we can see if the rays passing through the surface is bending back and
forth in a needless way, or if there are strong refractive surfaces that hinder the performance
of the lens.
With a good eye for lens design, we can think ”Hmmm, this lens is so-and-so, that sur-
face is so-and-so” and really get a feel for the lens design simply by looking at the lens
diagram and the rays, and with an idea of the refractive indices and dispersion of the glass.
No complex calculations, no expensive software, no building and testing the lens perfor-
mance.
With this ”lens design pattern recognition”, it is possible to decipher more complex lens
surfaces, even with aspherical lenses! It’s like a secret weapon.
With a good eye for evaluation of the aberration correction of any lens design form, we
can use that knowledge to improve the lens design by further improving the aberrations or
decreasing the aberrations and achieve a better lens design.
Looking at the above statements, you can see that I really value the ability to be able to
”look” at a lens and figure out its good parts and bad parts. The lens diagram and ray paths
are necessary to do this. Before computer-aided lens design, the lens design giants would
rely on their intuition and eye for lens design. For some historic lens designer, sometimes
pattern recognition trumps even aberration theory.

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 CHAPTER 1. MOTIVATION AND INTRODUCTION TO THE GENERAL THEME

For example, lens design genius and lens design hero of mine, Ludwig Bertele knew
about aberration theory, but supposedly never used the theory for his lens designs. Bertele
relied on ray tracing the lens system, looking at the performance, and changing the shape,
index, or thickness of the lens design to get better performance. The fact that Bertele
invented many innovative lens designs during his time (in the 1930s) with this method is
nothing short of extraordinary and speaks to his lens design intuition and lens design ability.
This is called the ray tracing method or the change table method, the latter because the
performance of the lens after raytracing would be displayed in a table, and the lens designer
would look at how the little changes to the lens design affect this performance table.
Another lens design hero of mine, Nikon’s Zenji Wakimoto, also used ray tracing and
pattern recognition for his many lens designs. In his Nikon days, he designed the Nikkor
50mm F1.4 lens and other lenses like the Nikkor-N Auto 24mm F2.8, Nikkor-SC 8.5cm F1.5,
and Nikkor-PC 10.5 cm f/2.5. Wakimoto eventually designed the Ultra Micro Nikkor, while
at Nikon. The Ultra Micro Nikkor had extremely high resolution and was the start of stepper
lens design. Zenji Wakimoto also invented many innovative lens designs without computer-
aided automatic lens design optimization and used ray tracing and the change table. Much
like Bertele, he would change the lens design slightly, raytrace the optical lens system, look
at the results of raytracing and change the lens again.
As an aside, both Bertele and Wakimoto didn’t write any books or academic papers and
document their findings. They seemed to be more interested in actually doing lens design
than writing about it. Shame for lens design nerds like me.
In any case, these lens design geniuses don’t use software optimization and produced
many many innovative lens designs. That’s not to say we shouldn’t use computers for our
lens design, that would be ridiculous. But I do think that we can incorporate their philosophy
of pattern recognition and ”looking” at a lens design to make the process easier for us.
Maybe we can’t get to the level of Bertele or Wakimoto as far as intuitive lens design, but we
have the history of their lens designs and lens designs inspired by the many lens designers
since then, on our side.
It seems as though pattern recognition, an ability that humans and not machines pos-
sess, is a good way to pursue lens design, as demonstrated by my lens design heroes.
In spite of that, a lot of lens design books and textbooks that I have read rely heavily on
the derivations of mathematical equations, without actual lens design data and figures and
graphs, especially lens design diagrams. A schematic diagram is not good enough in my
opinion, I want to see the rays passing through the system.
It’s a lot of work to put data together, and I’ve tried to do that in this guide. I list many
lens design forms, illustrate the lenses and show the rays passing through the lenses.
Let’s get to the meat of the Guide!

8
Chapter 2

Imaging lenses: Classic imaging

lenses and the dawn of lens design

To start off, we look at classic lens design forms in the dawn of lens design. These classic
lenses may look simple given the more complex lens designs we have today.
Lens design was more conceptual in the early days of lens design since computational
lens design had not been developed. Ray tracing and aberration theory was invented during
this period. By examining the examples of relatively simple lens designs, it is actually easier
to dissect why the lens designs are the way they are.
The history of lens design is an evolution of new lens designs given the concepts and
advancements in technology, and it’s great to start where it all began.

2.1 The singlet lens: The first lens that deserves your attention

1. History and background In all honesty, a singlet lens looks really simple.
You may be thinking,
”What? Designing a singlet lens? A piece of cake!”
which is true, of course, but I want to dig a bit deeper since everything is simplified in
a singlet lens. So much so that the merits and demerits of the lens are clear, and we can
use this knowledge to our advantage in the bigger picture of lens design, and by proxy more
complex systems. After all, a multi-lens system is a string of singlets when you think about
it.
”Lens”, named from lentils, can be traced back to the 7th century, may or may not have
been used as a burning lens, may or may not have been used as a reading lens, but by

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 CHAPTER 2. IMAGING LENSES: CLASSIC IMAGING LENSES AND THE DAWN OF
LENS DESIGN

the 13th century spectacles were made, and in the 16th century optical microscopes and
telescopes used lenses.
Truthfully, a singlet it the simplest lens form there can be, and it doesn’t need any expla-
nation for even a novice lens designer. But to truly understand the singlet, and its limitations
is the first step to understanding lens design.
Let’s take a look at the concepts.

2. Essentials for lens design You might have seen the lensmaker’s equation early as
high school, and this is the essence of the performance of the lens.
For a thin lens,
[ ]
1 1 1
= (n − 1) − .
f R1 R2
Where f is the focal length, n is the index of refraction, R is the radius of curvature of
the lens (enumerated by surface).
For a thick lens with some thickness d,
[ ]
1 1 1 (n − 1)d
= (n − 1) − + .
f R1 R2 nR1 R2
Where f is the focal length, n is the index of refraction, R is the radius of curvature of
the lens (enumerated by surface).
For imaging properties, we can use an even simpler equation like the following:

1 1 1
= +
f d1 d2
Where f is the focal length, d1 is the distance from the object to the lens, and d2 is the
distance from the lens to the image.
As simple as the singlet is, there are multiple lens forms associated with the singlet.

From left to right: Positive rear meniscus lens, positive plano-convex lens, bi-convex lens,
positive convex-plano lens, positive front meniscus lens.

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 CHAPTER 2. IMAGING LENSES: CLASSIC IMAGING LENSES AND THE DAWN OF
LENS DESIGN

From left to right: Negative front meniscus lens, negative plano-concave lens, bi-concave
lens, negative concave-plano lens, negative rear meniscus lens.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs Since every other lens
design form is a combination of multiple singlets, there isn’t too much to say here. What
you know about the singlet applies everywhere. For example, you may see any number of
combinations of the positive or negative lenses in a lens system.
It’s good to know the limits of a singlet, because we can then know when a singlet isn’t
enough in a lens design.

4. Tips and tricks The singlet is a lens system with a single positive lens, and the stop is
on the surface of the lens. As simple as this lens is, it has characteristics that teach us the
advantages and disadvantages of a single lens.

Figure 2.1: singlet

• Although the spherical aberration cannot be fully corrected to zero, the smallest pos-
sible spherical If the radius of curvature ratio of the front radius to the rear radius is
1:-6. This means that any other configuration that you are thinking of is at the expense
of the spherical aberration.
• The coma is also close to zero.
• The longitudinal chromatic aberration cannot be corrected. The positive lens only
has positive power, which causes the chromatic aberration depending on the index of
refraction of the material.

• Astigmatism can only be controlled by changing the size of the aperture stop. Thus
the speed of the lens is determined by how much Astigmatism we can allow.

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 CHAPTER 2. IMAGING LENSES: CLASSIC IMAGING LENSES AND THE DAWN OF
LENS DESIGN

• The Petzval sum, i.e. the field curvature, cannot be fully corrected. The Petzval sum
is dependent on the sum of the lens power divided by the index of refraction. A singlet
lens has only one lens power and one index of refraction, so the Petzval sum is always
non zero.
• The distortion can’t be corrected because there is no way to achieve symmetry about
the stop in the design with one lens.
• The transverse chromatic aberration can’t be corrected because there is no correction
with one material.

5. Master the specsheet Again, there isn’t too much to say here.
R1 , R2 , t.
If you want to go a level deeper, I recommend trying to draw the lens by hand. Don’t
underestimate this step, you can learn so much from the application, even if it is as simple
as a hand-drawing.

6. Real-world examples Camera Obscura The Camera Obscura literally means ”dark
room”, and is said to be named by Johannes Kepler.
I made one during summer vacation one time, and I used a pinhole instead of a lens
made of glass.
Kodak Hawkeye The famous lens for a camera that I know is the Kodak Hawkeye, and
it was riddled with aberrations.
FujiFilm Quicksnap A more modern example, is Fujifilm’s QuickSnap(写ルンです).

(via Fujifilm)
The QuickSnap is interesting because if we look at the innards of this camera, the film
is curved a bit on the image plane (far left). This accounts for the field curvature, since it
cannot be corrected with a landscape lens, we curve the image instead.

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 CHAPTER 2. IMAGING LENSES: CLASSIC IMAGING LENSES AND THE DAWN OF
LENS DESIGN

(via Fujifilm)

2.1.1 Bonus: Two types of singlets, the telescope objective and landscape
lens
There are basically two types of singlet lenses.
One, the telescope type objective, that I explain in detail in my Ultimate Guide to Spread-
sheet Lens Design.

(Look at 4. Tips and tricks above for the rundown on the advantages and disadvan-
tages)
Two, there is the landscape lens, used for photography. For a landscape lens, things are
a bit different.
Probably the first real camera lens, used in the Camera Obscura, which is basically a
box with a lens that formed an image. It was first used for sketching and painting.
There are two different lens forms for the landscape lens. The rear meniscus form in the
image above, and a front meniscus form is shown below.
Landscape lenses are solved by determining the minimum field curvature while the
coma is zero.
What we can expect is:

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 CHAPTER 2. IMAGING LENSES: CLASSIC IMAGING LENSES AND THE DAWN OF
LENS DESIGN

Figure 2.2: landscape-rear

Figure 2.3: landscape-front

• The positive lens and the stop are separated, and the meniscus lens corrects astig-
matism and coma.
• However, the spherical aberration is completely out of whack, and the only way to
minimize it is to make the aperture smaller.
• The distortion can’t be corrected because of the asymmetry about the stop.

The landscape lens is an excellent example to illustrate that there are multiple solutions
to a lens design. Even a lens as simple as the landscape lens has two solutions, called
the rear meniscus form and the front meniscus form. If you optimize with a plano-convex
lens with the stop in front of the lens Zemax will give you the rear meniscus form. If you
optimize with a plano-convex lens with the stop in behind the lens, Zemax will give you the
front meniscus form. Optimization from a flat surface, and it can fall to either lens form,
depending on the optimization parameters we set in the form of a merit function.
The basic lens design method for a landscape lens is as follows: 1. Make a rough

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 CHAPTER 2. IMAGING LENSES: CLASSIC IMAGING LENSES AND THE DAWN OF
LENS DESIGN

meniscus lens and choose the position of the aperture stop 2. Take an F-number about
twice the speed than needed (set F8 if we’re designing an F16 lens) 3. Raytrace the FOV
at about 70%, use bending to make minimize the aberrations 4. Set the optical systems to
the desired F-number 5. Move the stop position to find the best location that minimizes the
aberrations 6. Finish the design off with a few more points in the FOV, and we’re done
Although the design method is straightforward, it covers the basics and a good rule of
thumb to follow, and will be useful when we look at more complex systems.
A few things to note in the design:

• To minimize astigmatism and coma, the stop and the lens are separated.
• The spherical aberration is impossible to correct given this situation. Since the spher-
ical aberration is dependent to the F-number of the system, the only way to correct
the spherical aberration is to make the aperture smaller and decrease the spherical
aberration.
• In both the front or rear meniscus case, since there is only one lens on either side of
the stop, the distortion and transverse chromatic aberration cannot be corrected.

Let’s take a qualitative look at the performance of the lens design for the two meniscus
forms.

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 CHAPTER 2. IMAGING LENSES: CLASSIC IMAGING LENSES AND THE DAWN OF
LENS DESIGN

As far as optical performance, the rear meniscus is a bit better.

• The MTF is better since the spherical aberration is smaller

• The surface curvature is weaker
• The distortion is barrel distortion, perhaps more unobtrusive to the human eye

But the front meniscus form is dominant in the single-lens camera for ages.
So what gives? Why are we choosing an optically inferior lens?

1. The overall length of the lens is shorter, due to the higher curvature of the lenses. In
our example, it is about 20% shorter. Remember, this is the balance of the smallest
field curvature at zero coma.
2. With the lens on the outside, the stop (and therefore the shutter mechanism) is pro-
tected from any outside dirt from the lens itself.
3. Aesthetically, the camera has a lens in front, which is more appealing than the peculiar
shutter and aperture stop sticking out. We see an aperture stop, normal people see
a hole.
4. Since plastic lenses were invented, the stronger meniscus curvature for the front
meniscus form is no more expensive to manufacture than a weaker curvature of the
rear meniscus form, unlike with glass lenses.

The dominance of the front meniscus lens form for inexpensive cameras is a lesson that
good optical performance is not always the be all end all of lens design.
Once you can design a singlet telescope objective and a singlet meniscus landscape
lens, you’ve entered the gate as a lens designer, in my opinion.
If you want more information on landscape lenses, I have more information with a blog-
post I wrote about the history of the landscape lens.

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LENS DESIGN

Do you want to design this lens? I have more information with my Ultimate Guide to Lens
Design Using Spreadsheets with complete calculations on how to calculate the performance
of a lens without complex software, but spreadsheet programs such as Excel.
So much to write about for a simple singlet lens system. To me, this is why lens design
is fascinating :)

2.2 The doublet lens: More to it than meets the eye

Figure 2.4: cemented doublet

1. History and background There are many types of doublet lenses, but the predominant
doublets are achromatic doublets, and they correct the chromatic aberration.
From early design of spectacles and magnifiers, the lenses soon change to telescope
objectives.
When we change from magnifiers, which are close-range, and manageable focal mag-
nification, to telescopes, that have long focal lengths, there was a new problem to be solved.
The chromatic aberration.
Sir Isaac Newton famously stated that chromatic aberration correction was impossible
for a refractive lens, so much so that the reflective type of telescope, which does not have
chromatic aberration, is now called the Newtonian telescope.
Newton is right of course, if we only think of single lenses.
We can think of changing a singlet into a compounded doublet in two different ways:

1. as a substitute for non-existing glass type

2. as a method to introduce a surface with a smaller refractive index change to control
the ray paths

In the 18th century, the achromatic doublet saw a lot of development from George Bass,
John Dolland, and his son Peter Dolland as well.

2. Essentials for lens design For achromatic doublets, we need to choose lens material
wisely.
A good place to start is K1 and F1.

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LENS DESIGN

Depending on the system, we may need a more thorough examination of the lens
choices.
Hans Harting studied the different combinations for achromatic lenses and even has a
table of his studies.
Summarized below.

The Harting method of choosing materials for zero chromatic shift We have two
materials a and b, with an index of refraction na and nb , and index difference with wavelength
as ∆a and ∆b .
We make a two-lens optical system with spherical refractive surfaces that are close
together, like a telescope.
This optical system has a focal length of 1 to make things easier to calculate. The
lens should have rays at low angles coming from an infinite conjugate, without spherical
aberration and coma.
In order to have zero chromatic shift, the equations for the four surfaces. Two surfaces
for each lens, where lens a has R1 and R2 , and lens b has R3 and R4 . Note that R2 = R3 for
a cemented doublet.
[ ]
1 na χ1 ψ1
= +
R1 2 ψ1 na − 1
[ ]
1 na χ1 ψ1
= − + ψ1
R2 2 ψ1 na − 1
[ ]
1 nb χ2 ψ2
= + + ψ1
R3 2 ψ2 nb − 1
[ ]
1 nb χ2 ψ2
= − +1
R4 2 ψ2 nb − 1
where
νa
ψ1 =
νa − νb
ψ2 = 1 − ψ1
and

na − 1
νa =
∆na
nb − 1
νb = .
∆nb
ψ2 is a quadratic function

αψ2 2 + βψ2 + γ = 0
and

1 − (nb + 1)ψ2
ψ1 =
na + 1
with

α = (na + 1)2 · C + (nb + 1)2 · A

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LENS DESIGN

β = (na + 1)2 · E − (na + 1)(nb + 1) · D − (nb + 1) · A

γ = (na + 1)2 · F + (na + 1) · D + A
na (na + 2)
A=
ψ1
nb (nb + 2)
C=
ψ2
D = −2na · ψ1
E = −2nb (2 − ψ2 )
[ ]2 [ ]2
na nb
F= · ψ1 +
3
· ψ2 3
(na − 1) (nb − 1)
Since the resulting focal length of the results from R1 to R4 is 1, we just need to scale
the radius of curvature by the desired focal length.
A piece of cake, right?
In practice, it is easier now with a pocket calculator or a spreadsheet.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs This lens is mostly used
in long focal length systems with longitudinal chromatic aberration.
Here are some examples:

• The telescope objective

• Telephoto lenses with longer focal lengths. They are typically placed in the front
• Zoom lenses that cover a wide focal range including a long focal length on the tele
side, or a tele-zoom
• Laser applications where focal length changes due to the wavelength need to be
corrected

4. Tips and tricks Splitting the cemented doublet When you split the cemented doublet
to a separated doublet, be careful of the rays in between the two lenses, as you may see an
abrupt change in the refraction angles.

Figure 2.5: separated doublet

In some cases, the rays may even have total internal reflection (TIR) if we’re not careful.
In this case, we need to decrease the angle of incidence by manually changing the curvature
of the lens.

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The non-achromatic doublet As stated above, we can think of changing a singlet into
a compounded doublet in two different ways:

1. as a substitute for non-existing glass type (which is the achromatic doublet)

2. as a method to introduce a surface with a smaller refractive index change to control
the ray paths

There is a secret doublet besides the achromatic doublet that has nothing to do with
colour. For example, the cemented doublets in a Tessar lens can correct astigmatism, field
curvature, and other field-related aberrations.
The doublet here is far away from the stop, and the rays pass through obliquely far from
the optical axis.

Figure 2.6: tessar f2.8

These oblique rays have different angles of incidence at the cemented surface, depend-
ing on where the rays are. The rays in the upper part of the lens are refracted more than if
it were a single lens, and the effect of the cemented surface is asymmetrical to the oblique
beam.
This doublet for the Tessar:
1. corrects the zonal spherical aberration
2. corrects astigmatism at higher fields of view
3. corrects the field curvature
More information on the Tessar is available at a future part of the Guide.

5. Master the specsheet A simple rule of thumb is when you realize that you need an
unrealistic glass to achieve the desired performance, consider a two-lens system. We can
use this principle for multi-lens systems as well, since we can break down the lens system
into components and look at one lens element and change it to a doublet.
An achromatic doublet for a telescope is used when the focal length is relatively long,
and the longitudinal chromatic aberrations become a problem. A singlet cannot correct the
colour.

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6. Real-world examples

Edmund Optics There are a lot of achromatic doublet examples by Edmund Optics.
Have fun and plug-and-play with my spreadsheet for achromats. They also have tips on why
we use an achromatic lens.

Rear element of Tessar and other objectives

Front element for telescope objectives Here are some examples of some telescope
objectives and their optical performance. All have very good colour correction, and good
spherical aberration correction. The field curvature and distortion are non-existent since the
FOV angle is 1˜2 degrees.
For more information on the telescope, I have a link to it at a future point in this guide.
For more information on the colour-correction process of doublets, I have a complete
blogpost on the topic here.
If you want more information about lens design process of the doublet, I suggest you
check out My Ultimate Guide to Lens Design Using Spreadsheets, where I decode the lens
design process of achromatic doublets and other lenses with Excel/spreadsheets.

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Figure 2.7: telescope-gauss

Figure 2.8: telescope-fraunhofer

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Figure 2.9: telescope-steinheil

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2.3 Petzval lens

Figure 2.10: petzval us2500046

Although the Petzval lens on its own isn’t as used much today, we can find the lens type
inside a more complex lens system like a zoom lens, so knowing the properties of this lens
design form is important, in my opinion.

1. History and background The Petzval lens was invented by Austrian mathematician/physicist
Joseph Petzval, in 1840 for Voigtlnder.
In a conference in Paris in 1839, Vienna University professor Andreas von Ettingshausen
was in attendance. Franois Arago presented photography techniques based on Louis Da-
guerre’s Daguerreotype lens , a lens designed by Charles Chevalier . This is now called
the landscape lens for wide angle photography. In contrast, Petzval lens is used as a fast
portrait lens.
Until the invention of the Petzval lens, people sat in the blistering sun, waited for a song
to finish during the exposure. The exposure time is 30 minutes, enough to make you cry,
although that wouldn’t be caught on the photo.
Ettingshausen went back to Vienna and told Petzval, an associate professor he knew
could design telescope objective lenses, about the need for a fast lens.
Petzval obliged, and with the help of the Austrian army, he made them do calculations
for the lens design.
The calculations involved a very scientific approach, with refractive data from multiple
wavelengths. The previous generation had a trial-by-error approach, making lenses and
then measuring them.
There is a lot of mystery as to how Petzval was able to design such a lens, as the
manuscripts are lost. But the fact is, Petzval was able to design a lens that had an f-number
of F3.5, in an era where F8 was the norm.
Since making a fast F-number lens was of great importance and had a tremendous
military application, Voigtlander and Petzval had the Austrian army at their disposal. Legend
has it that there was an army (pun intended) of military personnel that did calculations on
Petzval’s behalf. This military personnel dealt with calculating the projectiles of missiles and
bombs on the spot in the battlefield, so their prowess was put to good use for ray tracing
calculations.
The aftermath story of this lens is just as intriguing as its birth. Voigtlander and Petzval
had a nasty legal battle over the rights of this lens, and Petzval actually won. But the patents

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Figure 2.11: Petzval Lens, By Szocs Tamas - Lens Photo by Андрей

were only valid in Austria, and when Voigtlander moved their head office to Germany, Pet-
zval’s patents were not valid there. Thus, the majority of Petzval lenses produced didn’t
bring in a cent for Petzval himself. He was largely forgotten later in life, and didn’t end up
extremely wealthy despite the booming sales of his namesake lens.
In 1859, his manuscripts which documented many years of research were destroyed
due to a break-in at his home. This is a shame since the Petzval lens is one of the first pure
”lens designs”, as it was made by precise mathematical calculations. My personal opinion
is that this is a loss of knowledge on how lens design progressed.

2. Essentials for lens design

• The image of a typical Petzval lens is above, which has two positive colour correction
doublet and a large air space between.
• If the front doublet power is ϕ1 , and the rear doublet power is ϕ2 , the total power ϕ is
h2
ϕ = ϕ1 + ϕ2 .
h1
• To keep the total power constant, just having the first doublet group gives ϕ = ϕ1 , but
the second doublet group is a positive number, so ϕ1 can be small to get the same
overall power. To get the same F-number after the addition of the second doublet
group, the beam entering the first doublet group is wider, but the overall focal length
doesn’t change. Since the doublets are far apart, the ray height h2 is small, so ray
height h1 4 , which governs the spherical aberration, doesn’t affect the system much.

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LENS DESIGN

Figure 2.12: petzval us2500046

• The Petzval lens itself is not an anastigmat, but can be designed as one, in order to
compare with say, a triplet lens.
• The Petzval type lens has a large Petzval sum (the irony!), so the disadvantage is that
astigmatism and the field curvature can’t be corrected at the same time.
• However, this disadvantage is directly linked to the fact that the spherical aberration
and the longitudinal chromatic aberration can be corrected very well.
• The lens is relatively symmetrical about the stop, so the distortion can be corrected,
as well as the coma and transverse chromatic aberration.
• The stop is far away enough from the lens so that astigmatism can be corrected,
Therefore, the field curvature can’t be corrected, meaning that the field of view can’t
be increased too much. Thus a narrow field of view and portrait lens usage is recom-
mended.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs I feel that the Petzval
lens is one of the first lenses to incorporate the distance between lenses as a feature to
correct the performance of the lens design. That is why I think that the Petzval lens is
an important lens to study, even though the lens design form itself may be outdated, the
concept can be found in many places, and these concepts can still be used today.

Zoom lenses Some Petzval lens principals, separating lens groups in zoom lens de-
sign or telephoto design.

4. Tips and tricks

• The spherical aberration is corrected with the front lenses, and the longitudinal chro-
matic aberration can be corrected by the rear lenses.
• The coma and distortion can be corrected by having opposite magnitude in the front
and back groups, balancing about the stop.
• The lateral chromatic aberration can be corrected with the front and back groups.
• The Petzval sum, and incidentally the field curvature cannot be corrected since the
positive element and negative element in each of the lens groups are not separated.

5. Master the specsheet A Petzval lens design is an extremely good choice for when
the FOV is manageable. The lens gives low spherical aberration, low coma, low chromatic
aberration, at a very fast speed (large aperture, small F-number).

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Also, make sure that the field curvature does not play a large part in the performance.

6. Real-world examples

Satellite optics Satellite optics still use Petzval types with a field flatten-er lens. The
high manufacturability and relatively low cost along with the high contrast of this lens make
it a preferable lens type.

Microscope lenses Some low magnification microscope lenses use the Petzval type.

Lomography revival of Petzval lens Wow, that is some swirly bokeh.

Lomography has a fun site on the Petzval lens.
I took a look at the US patent 2500046A and plugged it into Zemax for fun. What do you
see?

(Top, from left to right: Lens layout, Ray fan, Spot diagram) (Bottom, from left to right: Field
curvature, Distortion, Longitudinal aberration, Lateral colour)

• The spherical aberration is well corrected

• The coma is well corrected
• The chromatic aberration is well corrected
• The field curvature and distortion are not noticeable because the FOV is relatively
small

If you want to look at photos of this lens, you can find them here.

2.4 Cooke triplet and anastigmat lenses

1. History and background Designed by H. D. Talyor in 1893 (GB 22,607), this lens is
the perfect lens, from a 3rd order aberration theory perspective. Although the spherical
aberration and Coma were corrected with other lens forms, the triplet was the first lens

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Figure 2.13: triplet taylor gb22607

to correct the other monochromatic aberrations like astigmatism, field curvature (Petzval
sum), and distortion. Also, the chromatic aberrations like longitudinal chromatic aberration
and transverse chromatic aberration are also corrected.
The name ”Anastigmat” literally means ”non-astigmatic” lens, since it corrects astigma-
tism and its cousin the field curvature. Which is funny, because astigmatism means ”non-
stigmatic”, where stigmatism is ”an image-formation property of an optical system which
focuses a single point source in object space into a single point in image space”.
I love the word Anastigmat. That means that ”Anastigmat” can be translated as a ”non-
non-stigmatic”. I guess ”Stigmat” didn’t really have a good ring to it. Nowadays, almost
all lenses have the basic aberrations corrected, so we don’t have the need to call them
Anastigmats anymore. Sad.
Back to the triplet, three lenses are the absolute minimum that can correct the 3rd or-
der aberrations, namely the 5 monochromatic 3rd order aberrations and the 2 chromatic
aberrations. Gauss had already shown some interesting solutions with three lenses, but
it was H. D. Talyor that designed a flat field lens design with conventional glass. At the
time, anastigmats (as they were called) were thought to only be correctable with the newer
glass of the time. Petzval showed that spherical aberration and chromatic aberrations can
be well corrected with conventional glass, and the potential was there to make the lens an
anastigmat.
It’s interesting that Taylor was led to this design by thinking about how to make the
Petzval sum zero. We can do this with a positive lens and a negative lens of equal power.
But the asymmetry in this system would lead to lateral chromatic aberration and distortion.
So he split the positive element in two and sandwiched a negative lens in between. It’s fun
to think he also tried other combinations, like negative-positive-negative lens combinations.

2. Essentials for lens design

• The second lens (negative power) and the third lens (positive power) are separated,
so the Petzval sum can be corrected.
• By adding the first lens (positive power), there is sufficient symmetry about the stop,
so distortion and transverse chromatic aberration can be corrected.
• The first lens (positive power) and the second lens (negative power) correct the longi-
tudinal chromatic aberration.

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• Spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism, can all be corrected by changing the
radius of curvature of the 3 lenses and 6 surfaces.

The triplet can balance all 3rd order aberrations, but the balance is tricky. Since we are
using the minimum lens surfaces for aberration correction, a change in any surface affects
every aberration. A pre-design step balancing these aberrations helps quantify the process.
More in-depth information available on my epic piece on The Ultimate Guide to Lens
Design using the Classic Spreadsheet Method. I go into a detailed but simple calculation to
make this happen.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs I think the triplet is the
perfect lens to explore lens design. Although it is not the first photographic lens designed,
almost all modern lenses can be traced back to the triplet. Therefore, studying the triplet
carefully can provide the basis for most modern photographic lens design. By understanding
the shortcomings of the Cooke triplet we can make strategic improvements to out lens
design.
The triplet design was revolutionary and spawned a lot of lens designs afterward. Most
notable is the Tessar lens design form. Historically, the next evolution was the Ernostar lens
design form, and its direct evolution, the Sonnar lens design form. Perhaps most notable,
Double Gauss type can even be traced back to the triplet. Even some retrofocus types can
be looked at as a triplet lens with a wide angle converter in the front.

4. Tips and tricks

1. Choosing glass: Glass choice is the most important part in lens design, and the triplet
is no different. The choice of glass has a direct impact on the optical performance,
and namely, the choice of the crown lenses determines the Petzval sum. We can
have expensive glass for high-performance triplet lenses. Oftentimes we need to
come back to choosing glass after hitting a roadblock in the lens design.
2. Schwarzschild solution: We set a fixed focal length, and correct the longitudinal chro-
matic aberration, and construct three equations for the Petzval sum, and solve for
the three values of power. The three equations are total power, Petzval sum, and
longitudinal chromatic aberration.

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3rd order aberrations can be corrected for thin lenses at first: It is possible to correct the 5
monochromatic 3rd order aberrations and the 2 chromatic aberrations, and then make the
lenses thick.
More detail in my Ultimate Guide to Lens Design using the Classic Spreadsheet Method.

5. Master the specsheet This is the most basic lens that corrects the chromatic aberra-
tion, the spherical aberration, the coma, astigmatism, the field curvature, and the distortion
in a reasonable manner.

• Usual focal lengths are 35mm or to 60mm or so, for full-frame cameras, which is about
a field of view of 60 degrees to 40 degrees.
• The usual F-number is anywhere from F6.3 to F3.5 or so.
• Anything within this range may be perfect for the triplet.

Below is an example of Taylor’s design.

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We can see in the bottom middle graph that the spherical aberration looks very well con-
trolled, and the chromatic aberration is also well controlled. The field curvature (bottom left
most graph) and the distortion (second to the left graph on the bottom) are also reasonable.

6. Real-world examples Triplet lenses were almost the default lenses in old cameras.
Back in the large format days, the triplet was the standard lens for moderately wide to
moderately tele focal length ranges.
In more modern times, compact cameras usually have a Triplet or a Tessar lens.
Even today, some high-performance lenses with extremely good colour correction can
be the form of a triplet, like in the US Patent 3486805.

Figure 2.14: ultra-achromatic triplet

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Figure 2.15: trioplan 75 2.9

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Bonus: A brief story of H. D. Taylor, inventor of the Cooke Triplet Taylor had devel-
oped other optical systems besides the Cooke Triplet, such as telescope objectives, various
eyepieces, and the first lens coatings. In 1906, Taylor’s major written work, A System of
Applied Optics, was published, followed later by a German translation. This is a very dense,
300-page development of the algebraic formulae of Airy and Coddington into a system of
optical design.
Taylor was quite negative on the concept of ray tracing, and even presented a talk at the
Optical Society titled Optical designing as an art.

The chief aim of this paper is to show that the tendency, which has been de-
veloping among optical designers in recent years, to follow in the footsteps of
(mostly) German optical workers and test the performance of optical designs
by exact ray tracings by trigonometrical methods on paper instead of by inspec-
tion of the actual performance of the embodied idea, involves a needless waste
of both time and working costs. While such exact ray tracings may give valu-
able data concerning the optical performance of a lens system, if carried out
thoroughly enough, yet the results so obtained do not and cannot give any indi-
cation of the direction in which changes are required, and only an appeal to the
general algebraic formulae, such as those, for instance, founded upon Codding-
ton’s work, can afford the designer the enlightenment necessary to enable him
to bring the system to the best possible perfection. Therefore, I have fully come
to the conclusion that ray tracing methods are, generally speaking, unnecessary
and superfluous for any designer who cares to master the general implications
of the much more philosophical and illuminating system of optics founded on
Coddington and other workers of the British school. This conclusion I seek to
illustrate and justify by a few illustrative examples from my own experience.

Upon presenting in detail the process of designing the Cooke photographic lens, he
uses an algebraic process to illustrate his philosophy of lens design. At the time, the great
success of German designers with trigonometrical ray tracing triggered widespread use of
these methods. With no computers, this was a very laborious chore for the designer, tracing
rays on paper through various oblique angles and positions over many surfaces. Until then,
the typical lens design method was iterative, design -> assembly of a prototype -> shop
testing -> redesign.
I suppose that Ernst Abbe of Zeiss wanted to save money on prototyping by doing ray
tracing, but I can understand Taylor’s point of view that although ray tracing is more exact, it
reveals nothing more than physical testing. Since the trigonometric ray tracing process took
a huge amount of the designer’s time, Taylor probably felt that conserving the time of the
highly skilled lens designer was more important than saving workshop time.
Further, Taylor stated:

I regard the work of optical designing to be much more analogous to the work
of the sculptor than to that of the mechanical engineer. . . ..the best optical de-
signing as more of the nature of an art than the mere calculation and carrying
out of a mathematically prescribed specification.
I cannot see any strong reason why we should neglect or discard our British
system. . . ..in favour of any continental system.

Other speakers noted that only the most skilled designers could utilize algebraic meth-
ods to good effect, and that most would have to rely on the slow, mechanical process of ray
tracing.

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Fast-forward to today, we have complex lens systems that are hard to manufacture and
test, in combination with the extremely fast computational powers that we have now, the
calculations on software dominate the lens design process.
I agree with Taylor in spirit. We need to be more analytical and use our brains in lens
design. I hope that more lens designers (including myself) can detach from plowing through
the computational nature of optical lens design software and really do some deep thinking,
at least from time to time.

2.5 The Tessar lens: A commercial success that started an era

Figure 2.16: tessar f2.8

1. History and background The Tessar is one of the most used lenses in photography.
If you’ve been photographing in the film days as I have, then you were bound to have come
across the Tessar, even if you didn’t know it.
This lens was developed by Paul Rudolph in 1902, and it is a 3 group 4 element lens.
The last two lenses are cemented together.
Like the image above, we have a positive lens, a negative lens, and then a cemented
doublet that is a negative-positive combo of lenses. In the original Tessar, the aperture stop
is placed between the second lens and the third lens group.
The first Tessars were conservative in their F-number, as it started at about F6.3, which
is a bit slow by modern standards. However, after incremental upgrades and lens design
evolution, the Tessar soon became F4.5, F3.5, and F2.8.
I think that the arrival of the Tessar ushered in the Golden age of Carl Zeiss, and with
it a slew of low-cost cameras that had great imaging quality that could be made cheap and
compact. I would go as far to say that the Tessar documented most of the 20th century. This
is because the patents ran out in 1920, and many many camera makers and lens makers
took this design and made variations of their own.

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Figure 2.17: elmar f2.8

The Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar, Rodenstock Ysar, Voigtlnder Skopar, are just a few
examples of Tessar copies along with minor variations in Kodak Ektar, Agfa Solinar, Leitz
Elmar, and Steinheil Culminar.
It’s been over a century that the Tessar was invented, and we can still see Tessar types
today.

2. Essentials for lens design Contrary to popular belief, the Tessar is not an evolution
of the Cooke triplet, but a combination of two of Paul Rudolph’s previous design works in
the Unar and Protar. Carl Zeiss even says so, that the Tessar has a front group that shares
properties with the front group of the Unar, and the back group of the Protar.
This came at a time where glass manufacturing had a revolution (in 1886), and various
”new” glasses were produced. In the old ages of glass, high index negative lenses and low
index positive lenses were the only choices for a cemented doublet. The new glass made it
possible to have low index negative lenses and high index positive lens combinations in the
cemented doublet.
Rudolph used this ”new” glass at the time to design a newly cemented doublet for the
Protar lens which was eventually used for the Tessar as well. The doublet is a combination
of a high index positive lens and a low index negative lens, that corrected astigmatism and
the Petzval sum, while increasing the spherical aberration somewhat.
Having said that, optically speaking, the triplet -> Tessar evolution makes the aberration
correction an easier to understand. In particular, if we treat the doublet as a single lens that
doesn’t exist as a glass type, it’s essentially a triplet. Looks like I’m going have to ignore
Zeiss’ press release copy above ;-)
Here’s a summary of what the doublet for the Tessar is for:

1. corrects the zonal spherical aberration

2. corrects astigmatism at higher fields of view
3. corrects the field curvature

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LENS DESIGN

Figure 2.18: protar+unar=tessar

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs The Tessar in its purest
form is an anastigmat, so any lens that needs correction of astigmatism and field curvature
lands here. Plus, the Tessar doublet makes it a better performer than a Cooke triplet.
The doublet in the Tessar corrects the field curvature and astigmatism. Strategic use of
this doublet is useful in any lens design, but is particularly useful for and retrofocus lenses,
telephoto lenses, and zoom lenses.

4. Tips and tricks

The doublet of the Tessar is not for colour correction I had this preconceived no-
tion that a cemented doublet, boom, that means colour correction. Wrong. This last doublet
is not for chromatic aberration correction, nor is it for spherical aberration correction, that
we see in the telescope objective.
Let’s take a look at the lens data for the Tessar.
This is the glass for a typical Tessar lens:

• Lens 1 (positive): n=1.59, v=61.3

• Lens 2 (negative): n=1.58, v=46.5
• Lens 3 (negative): n=1.52, v=51.5
• Lens 4 (positive): n=1.61, v=56.7

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LENS DESIGN

The lens data shows that the Abbe number for the doublet is 51.5 and 56.7, which
are too close to effectively correct chromatic aberration. From thin lens design and colour
correction studies of the achromatic doublet, we find that for a typical doublet used for a
telescope objective this won’t give us colour correction.
For spherical aberration correction, the index of refraction of the negative element of the
cemented doublet lens should be larger than the positive element. In fact, the Tessar has
worse correction of the spherical aberration in the center of the lens compared to the Cooke
Triplet.
Generally speaking, there are two solutions for the Tessar lens. High index glass in the
doublet for good zonal field curvature correction, and lower index for a more Cooke triplet
like spherical aberration correction.

The Tessar patent by Paul Rudolph The patent of the Tessar USP721240 has the
stop in between the negative lens and the doublet. Zeiss had a large monopoly on this type
of construction, because Rudolph’s patent was very general. His only claim was:

A spherically, chromatically and astigmatically corrected objective consisting of

4 lenses separated by the diaphragm into two groups, each of two lenses, of
which group one includes a pair of facing surfaces and the other a cemented
surface, the power of the pair of facing surfaces being negative and that of the
cemented surface positive

The Tessar was heralded as a superb lens compared to the triplet, with lower distortion,
beautiful bokeh, and sharp image at the focus. With the marketing copy of ”Das Adlerauge
Ihrer Kamera - The Eagle Eye of your Camera”, many photographers worldwide used this
lens.

5. Master the specsheet Let’s take a look at the Tessar again.

Figure 2.19: tessar f2.8

The doublet is far away from the stop, and the rays pass through obliquely far from the
optical axis.

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LENS DESIGN

These oblique rays have different angles of incidence at the cemented surface, depend-
ing on where the rays are. The rays in the upper part of the lens are refracted more than if
it were a single lens, and the effect of the cemented surface is asymmetrical to the oblique
beam.
Any application that needs this oblique ray correction whether it is the higher angles in
a retrofocus lenses, or the field curvature of a telephoto lenses, or the variator and/or other
lenses in a zoom lenses is up to us to decide, upon close observation of the system.

6. Real-world examples We can see the Tessar for a lot of older cameras, typically
of fixed lenses. These fixed lenses were relatively cheap to make and still offered high
performance. Perfect for the compact camera.
The Zeiss Ikon Contessa - A classic compact film camera. Simple to use, like a point-
and-shoot of the day.
The Rollei 35 - This was an extremely small camera, the film seems so large compared
to the camera, and the lens would collapse down to this compact form. Truly a pocketable
camera. There were the triplet and Sonnar variants for this camera, but the Tessar was the
most popular.

Minox Camera with a Tessar - Similarly a pocket camera, but with a little more luxury.
Looks like the Contax T, but that one has a Sonnar lens.
Kyocera borrowed the Contax brand name, and hence had some lenses with the Carl
Zeiss branding, like the Tessar, Sonnar, Planar, Biogon, and Hologon. This lens for their
compact camera the T-proof, mounts the Tessar.
Tele-tessar 4/85 - A tele lens for Leica M mount cameras. Modern lenses still use the
Tessar form, and Zeiss is really the only one who can use the name. This lens is a tele
lens for rangefinder cameras, and the contrast is said to be superb. It is a wonder that
classic designs can do with the advancements in modern technology like new glass types
and advanced anti-reflective coatings.

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LENS DESIGN

(via Zeiss)
The Original Olympus Pen - Although not a Tessar per se, the same design as the Tes-
sar was used in other cameras as well, the Olympus Pen (old version) was a half-camera,
meaning the size of the film was half of full-frame. The Tessar lens variant was perfect
for this camera, there is high performance in a small package that was the concept of this
camera.

(via Olympus)
Below is a camera that I found at my grandfather’s house. It is about the size of a large
format but the film size and proportions aren’t sold today. I’d like to be able to use the lens
for photography some day. I’m thinking maybe stick a roll film adapter to it, or to take the
lens and fix it on a 4x5 large format camera.

Quick note about Paul Rudolph Paul Rudolph was the man behind the Tessar lens. He
was a lens designer for Carl Zeiss, and is also famous for designing the Double Gauss lens.
Later in life, he joined Hugo Meyer and designed the Plasmat variations of cine lenses.

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LENS DESIGN

Figure 2.20: tessar 135mm

2.6 Coffee break: Higher order aberrations

So far, we only had to deal with the third order aberrations. However, past the Aplanatic
lenses and Triplet lenses, we need to think about higher orders of aberration than simply
the 3rd order aberrations.
There are ways we can use the higher order aberrations to balance the overall perfor-
mance of the lens.
What are higher-order aberrations?
The Taylor expression of the sine of an angle is as follows:

sin u = u − u3 /6 + u5 /120...

Taking the first term, or sin u = u, first order or Gaussian optics like focal length, and has
no aberration. Taking the second term, sin u = u − u3 /6, is the basis of 3rd order aberration
theory. Taking the third term, up to u5 , is 5th order aberration theory. 7th order. . . you get
the picture. Take the entire sine function, and you’ve considered the aberration completely.
Take a look at the spherical aberration, for example.
If we consider the 5th order aberration, we can balance it with the 3rd order aberration.
If we consider the 7th order aberration, we can balance it with the 3rd and 5th order
aberrations.
The question becomes, how to generate these higher order aberrations to optimize
performance. Here are some examples:

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LENS DESIGN

Figure 2.21: Schematic graph of spherical aberration and coma

1. Use cemented surfaces

2. Use a concave surface where the marginal rays are closing in on the optical axis
3. Use an “air” lens (LuftLinsen)
4. Place a low curvature surface where the rays enter at a large angle
5. Use aspherical surfaces

Schematically, if we fully correct the spherical aberration with 3rd and 5th order terms,
we get the maximum spherical aberration at 70% of the marginal rays. Likewise, for full
correction using 7th order terms, the maximum is at 90%.

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Chapter 3

Imaging lenses: The evolution of

lens design that leads to
diversification

Next, we look at the evolution of lens design forms. In actuality, there isn’t a real boundary
line between ”classic” lenses mentioned before compared to the lenses to follow, but I’ve
grouped the lens design loosely with pre-anastigmats to post-anastigmats. Anastigmats can
be translated as lenses that correct all of the aberrations. (I realize that the Cooke triplet
and the Tessar are anastigmats, so my groupings fail in that sense)
The following use cases are based on the ”needs” that the lenses need to fulfill.
For example, the mirror-flap of Single lens reflex (SLR) cameras, the chase for bright
F-number lenses, the need for resolution due to better film emulsions, wider field of view
(FOV), compact but long focal length lenses, and even a combination in wide-angle lenses
with the mirror of an SLR.

3.1 The Ernostar lens: Evolution from the triplet still used to-
day
1. History and background The Ernostar is an evolved triplet lens that was designed by
Ludwig Bertele. The name Ernostar is partly taken from the company that Bertele worked
at the time, Ernemann. Ernemann made cameras and lenses until Carl Zeiss formed Zeiss
Ikon by merging Ernemann and other notable camera and lens companies like ICA, Goerz,
and Contessa-Nettel AG in 1926.

2. Essentials for lens design In one of Ernemann’s last photographic lenses, Bertele, in
1925, observed the performance and shortcomings of the triplet lens and tried to increase
the aperture and speed of the lens. Let’s take a look at the Ernostar, break it down piece by
piece, and try to look into Bertele’s mind when he was innovating photographic lenses.
First thing, Bertele took a clever method to make the entrance pupil larger, and thus
making the lens speed faster. Bertele added a positive lens in the front of the triplet. The
resulting lens had an F-number of F2, which for 1920’s standards was a super fast lens.
Although the speed is fast, spherical aberration is well corrected.
What happens when a positive lens is added to the front of the triplet? We see a bit
of imbalance about the stop, as there are now two positive lenses in front of the stop as
opposed to one positive lens behind the stop. This increases the overall optical power of

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Figure 3.1: Ernostar GB237212

the lens system about the stop, and the balance of distortion is broken, making distortion
correction more difficult.
Also, perhaps less obvious, the large asymmetry about the stop, which has more positive
power in the front of the stop compared to the back of stop, caused coma aberration.
So there we have it, this lens is faster than its predecessors, while retaining good spher-
ical aberration correction, but cannot correct for coma distortion quite as easily. This means
that for the field of view for a normal lens, let’s say about 40 to 60 degrees FOV (35mm to
55mm or so focal length for 35mm format), coma and distortion could not be ignored, so it
did not become the defacto standard lens of its time.
However, for longer focal lengths, the coma and distortion subside for a very usable
lens. I have examples of several Ernostar types with moderately long focal lengths below.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs Longer focal length
photographic lenses. Be careful, though, after a certain focal length, maybe 135mm or so
(for 35mm format), the longitudinal chromatic aberration will start to kick in.

4. Tips and tricks The main improvement of the Ernostar compared to the triplet is the
faster speed caused by the addition of a positive front element. By adding the positive
lens to the front element, the second positive lens, the lens behind the first positive lens is
changed from a conventional positive lens to an Aplanatic shape to minimize the spherical
aberration.
In order to correct the distortion as much as possible, the positive lens behind the stop
and last element of the lens system is moved yet further away from the stop so that the
power of the lenses about the stop is balanced a bit. By balancing the power about the
stop, it is possible to correct for distortion.
Without anti-reflective coating technology in the 1920s, the Fresnel loss of the lens sur-
face, namely the glass-to-air and air-to-glass surfaces caused a loss in transmission and
the contrast decreases. Also, the reflections caused more flare as well, further decreasing
the contrast of the image. With today’s technology and superb anti-reflective coatings, the
Ernostar type can be made with very high contrast.

5. Master the specsheet Let’s take a look at the performance of a typical Ernostar lens:

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TO DIVERSIFICATION

(Top, from left to right: Lens layout, Ray fan, Spot diagram) (Bottom, from left to right: Field
curvature, Distortion, Longitudinal aberration, Lateral colour)
Very small distortion, good spherical aberration correction, and a mangeable field cur-
vature since the FOV is not too large.

6. Real-world examples A slightly old lens from Nikon, built in the late 1940s, after World
War 2, in ”occupied” Japan.

(via Nikon)
For aberration correction, the prominent correction of this lens is spherical aberration
and field curvature. The lens under corrects for spherical aberration, resulting in a pleasing
background blur.
In addition, since the field curvature is relatively large, the lens under corrects both the
sagittal image (S image) and the meridional image (M image). In particular, the M image
is greatly under-corrected, resulting in a considerable degree of astigmatism. In addition,
under-correcting the S-image surface serves to suppress sagittal coma flare. Although this
technique sacrifices the flatness of the image plane slightly, it avoids the ”blurry” images
caused by flare.

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TO DIVERSIFICATION

(via Nikon)
Another more recent example of this lens is a lens design by Miyazaki-san, of MS-
Optical, the Aporis 135mm F2.4.

Figure 3.2: Aporis 2.4/135

Miyazaki-san took this classic lens design and souped it up with the highest performing
glass we have now, as evidenced by the selection of fluorite lens (CaF2) in the front element.
This decreases the longitudinal chromatic aberration while still retaining the focusing power,
and is easier to correct with the following elements.

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TO DIVERSIFICATION

Sometimes simple lenses get the job done. You don’t necessarily need your 24 element
lens with extremely low dispersion glass topped with aspherical lenses to enjoy photography.
It’s a word of caution to for what a lens designer thinks is a ”good” lens design.

3.2 The Sonnar lens: Bertele’s genius in lens design

1. History and background Before the Sonnar, the Tessar type lens was the standard
lens of its time. Many minor variations of this lens existed for photography lenses. Typical
F-numbers could be F4.5, F4, F3.5. Very rarely F2.8.
People always wanted more speed in their lenses. This was because film emulsions
at the time required longer shutter times for exposure because the ISO of the film was
low, something like ISO25 or so, sometimes less. Since cameras were evolving from large
format large box cameras on a tripod to hand-held cameras, faster lenses made for shorter
shutter times which helped with hand-held blur.

Figure 3.3: sonnar f2

The Ernostar gave improved spherical aberration for larger apertures, but there was
large asymmetry that caused coma and distortion. To keep the performance high with the
Ernostar, it was used more for longer focal lengths, long enough that the lenses were not
normal lenses.
The Ernostar also had four separate lens elements, which have 8 glass-to-air surfaces,
and caused transmission loss and contrast degradation of the image. Anti-reflective coat-
ings as we know them today were invented in 1935, and weren’t available to the public until
after WWII, since it was largely a military secret then.
Bertele improved upon his Ernostar, and tried to decrease the number of glass-to-air
surfaces by replacing the air between the second positive lens and the negative lens with
glass.
Take a look at the Sonnar on the right. It has 6 lens elements, two more elements
than the Tessar, and two more lens surfaces as well. However, the number of glass-to-air
surfaces are the same. This means the contrast is essentially the same from a transmission
standpoint.

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TO DIVERSIFICATION

Figure 3.4: Replace Ernostar

Figure 3.5: Tessar and Sonnar lens to air surfaces

Bertele later evolved this design into the F1.5 Sonnar, which has a cemented triplet
group after the stop.
Personally, I really like the all-around performance of the F2 Sonnar, and the F1.5 seems
more like a specialty fast lens to me (which I also love, BTW).
After the emergence of SLRs, the Double Gauss made the Sonnar obsolete due to
the short back focal length of the Sonnar, and the advancements in anti-reflective coatings
decreased the advantages of the Sonnar.

2. Essentials for lens design First, the Sonnar generates higher order aberrations to
correct the aberrations at higher field.
For the F2 Sonnar, Bertele added a doublet in the final group, much like the Tessar.
The doublet in the Tessar allows for a better image at larger fields of view, since it corrects
the field curvature and astigmatism. Higher field of view means the focal length is shorter,
which made the Sonnar a more adequate normal lens.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs The Sonnar is actually a
good performing lens with very few expensive glass choices. Sure, the manufacturing of all
the cemented surfaces is difficult, but it provided a lens with an F1.5 aperture in a time when
this was not possible for Double Gauss lenses due to lack of technological advancements
(high index low dispersion glass, anti-reflective coatings, for example).

4. Tips and tricks The Sonnar uses 7th order aberration generation for aberration cor-
rection.
I compare the Double Gauss lens and the Sonnar in a separate blog post. Check it out.

5. Master the specsheet The modern variant of this lens can be found at Cosina, a lens
they designed for their rangefinder series. The lens is designed by the people at Cosina,

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TO DIVERSIFICATION

Figure 3.6: sonnar f1.5

but go under strict Quality Control of Zeiss standards.

(via Zeiss)

6. Real-world examples

Figure 3.7: Nikkor H.C. 5cm F2

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Japanese post-war Sonnar-type Nikkor lenses Three lenses in post-war Japan are
the Nikkor H.C. 5cm F2, Nikkor S.C. 8cm F1.5, and the Nikkor P.C. 10.5cm F2.5. We can
see that the 5cm F2 is the classic Sonnar type, with the doublet as the last group of lenses,
and the 8.5cm F1.5 a triplet lens at the end. Finally, the 10.5cm has a singlet at the end, all
signifying the different needs of the optical system, depending on the specifications. In this
case, most of it comes down to field of view (focal length), and the aperture (F-number).
The 5cm F2 lens was one of the first post-war Nikon lenses, and served important for
the company.

Figure 3.8: Nikkor S.C. 8cm F1.5

Figure 3.9: Nikkor P.C. 10.5cm F2.5

A little historical context. The Nikkor-H.C. 5cm F/2 was made not only for the Nikon S
series, but also for Leica Thread Mount ( LTM or M39). Leica thread mounts not only could
be fit onto Leica cameras, but also to many other cameras like Nicca, Tower, Leotax, etc.
At some point, I want to compare the different Sonnar variations. I want to especially look
at the original F2 Sonnar and compare it to the F2 Nikkor. There were a lot of discussions
at the time (and maybe even now) about how the early Nikkor lenses were German ripoffs.
How did Nikon come to manufacture a copy of a Zeiss design in the first place? Well, at
the end of World War II, German patents were nullified and the Americans ordered the
Japanese to make these lenses. There is a total of 6 lenses that were manufactured in
Nikon (Nippon Kogaku at the time), all based on German designs.
But from what I understand, the post-war Nikon did not have as many glass variations
as the pre-war Zeiss did. That means that the lens designs, although inspired from Bertele,
needed to be redone from scratch. I have stated before that the first step for lens design

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is choosing the glass, so it really is a different starting point, and I’d like to explore that
someday by looking at the aberrations closely.

The Sonnetar by Miyazaki-san One of my favourite lenses is a Sonnar type lens. It is

made by a solo lensmaker, Miyazaki-san. He does the lens design and the manufacturing
of the lenses on his own.

Figure 3.10: sonnetar

The lens is the Sonnetar from MS-Optical. It has a lot of spherical aberration at full
aperture, but decreases as the aperture is closed.
Miyazaki-san, much like myself, contends that the designer Ludwig Bertele was a ge-
nius, and it has been over 80 years since the Sonnar was made in 1932. Miyazaki-san finds
that the current normal lens market is dominated by the Double Gauss lens form, and like
myself, finds this a little dull. Ever the challenger, Miyazaki-san developed this lens after
making an F1.3 version. To make this a faster lens, the first two lenses are high index glass.
The result is the Sonnetar 50mm F1.1, a fast but compact lens.
He also made another feature, the first of its kind: Manual Coma Correction.
This lens was the first to incorporate a ”manual coma correction” feature, where you can
move the rear two elements to correct the coma at various focus distances. For example,
if you like shooting this lens at 4 metres or so, you can make the coma corrected for that
distance. You can hand-correct the coma from 1m to infinity. In addition, this feature can
correct the field curvature of the lens as well.
In my use of this lens, I find that wide open, we get very high resolution and good
contrast. There is a hint of spherical aberration, so you may feel that the lens isn’t sharp,
but that’s the optics playing tricks and the resolution is quite high. Stop it a little bit to
F1.25 to F2 and the performance improves significantly. past F4, the performance is high
throughout.
The way I use this lens is in daylight, at F5.6 or so to get a high-performance lens at
very little size and weight. Indoors or in darker situations, I like to have the F1.1. Portraits
are beautiful with this lens.

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Figure 3.11: Sonnetar 1.1/50

This lens is multi-coated on all surfaces. You may have noticed that there are five lens
elements and four groups, compared to the seven elements in three groups, like the orig-
inal F1.5 Sonnar. This means that the three lenses in front of the stop are all individual
lenses. My guess is that air, with an index of refraction of 1.0, is the best solution. Also, the
cemented three-lens group is a doublet.

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Sonnar example Focal length: f = 100 Aperture ratio: 1:1.5 Back focal length: 59.21
Field angle: ±22.5 deg

no. R t n ν
1 +69.21 9.33 1.6710 47.2
2 +433.84 0.38 1.0 -
3 +35.86 11.81 1.6710 47.2
4 +85.87 7.05 1.4892 70.1
5 -646.31 1.90 1.7394 28.2
6 +23.51 13.00 1.0 -
7(stop) ∞ 2.24 1.0 -
8 ∞ 2.48 1.5232 50.9
9 -51.09 19.81 1.6578 51.2
10 -22.12 4.57 1.5894 61.2
11 -103.13 44.90 1.0 -

(Where no. is the surface number, R is the radius of curvature, n is the index of refraction,
and ν is the Abbe number)

Sonnetar example Focal length: f = 100 Aperture ratio: 1:1.16 Back focal length:
43.0 Field angle: ±22.5 deg

no. R t n ν
1 +95.14 16.00 1.73 54.7
2 +458.91 1.00 1.0 -
3 +51.67 16.00 1.77 49.6
4 +99.72 8.00 1.0 -
5 -453.14 6.00 1.78 25.7
6 +35.90 16.00 1.0 -
7(stop) ∞ 0.20 1.0 -
8 100.09 24.00 1.76 47.8
9 -30.06 6.00 1.72 47.9
10 -127.93 43.04 1.0 -

(Where no. is the surface number, R is the radius of curvature, n is the index of refraction,
and ν is the Abbe number)

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Other Sonnar lenses:

• Nikkor-H.C 5cm F2
• Nikkor- 5cm F1.4
• Nikkor-P.C 8.5cm F2
• Nikkor-S.C 8.5cm F1.5
• Nikkor-P.C 10.5cm F2.5
• AI Nikkor 105mm F2.5
• Cosina Carl Zeiss Sonnar
• Rollei 35 Sonnar
• Contax T2 Sonnar

3.3 The Double Gauss lens: The winner of the standard lens
on a photographic camera

1. History and background Before the Double Gauss lens, there was the Gauss lens,
which got its name from the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.
The original Gauss designed lens is a two meniscus telescope objective lens. It cor-
rected the spherical aberration and the longitudinal chromatic aberration. I suspect that
Gauss would flip out if he saw the Double Gauss lens, and say ”Why is this named after
me?”
A. G. Clark took the Gauss lens in 1888 and flipped it about the stop to correct coma.
Paul Rudolph noticed that making the negative meniscus lenses thicker in this configu-
ration lead to an improvement in field curvature (Petzval sum) but that there was an increase
in chromatic aberration. Rudolph took the negative meniscus lenses and split them into a
cemented doublet that had the same index with different Abbe number in order to correct
the chromatic aberration. Thus the Planar (Carl Zeiss’ name for the Double Gauss) was
born.
The innovations in the Double Gauss lens were made possible due to the innovation in
glass types, in particular, the high index glass, and the increase in the computational power
of computers.

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Figure 3.12: By Paul1513 at en.wikipedia

2. Essentials for lens design Rudolph designed lenses in a time when there was a
surge in glass types. Also, he was able to calculate the chromatic aberrations using first
order optics, making calculations easier without ray tracing. For modern lens design, the
cemented lenses serve more of a purpose than chromatic aberration correction, but it is
useful to keep this concept in mind.
There are a few ways to look at the Double Gauss.

• The Double Gauss as an evolution of the triplet, with a positive lens, negative lens,
positive lens layout

– We can think of the 1st lens and the front of the first doublet as three surfaces for
correction, likewise with the last lens and the second doublet, which has more
degrees of freedom than a single positive lens.
– The middle two surfaces are concentric negative lenses relatively symmetric
about the stop.

• The Double Gauss as a symmetrical lens

– We can think of a positive lens with a thick meniscus lens to correct the Petzval
sum, and by using a similar but opposite configuration opposite of the aperture
stop, we can correct the coma, distortion, and the transverse chromatic aberra-
tion due to symmetry. This is more in line with the history of lens design.

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Figure 3.13: Double Gauss Triplet

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs Double Gauss lenses
are used everywhere. If you look closely, you can find them at the rear elements within some
retrofocus lenses, more complex lens forms like stepper lenses, and zoom lens systems.

4. Tips and tricks

• The Double Gauss uses the cemented surface to generate higher order aberration for
better spherical aberration correction.
• The front cemented surface, the negative lens (lens #4) index of refraction can have
a higher index to generate higher order aberrations.
• The second cemented surface, the positive lens (lens #6) index of refraction can have
a higher index to balance astigmatism and field curvature, much like the Tessar lens.

To summarize, the front half of the Double Gauss is used to correct the aberrations
related to the aperture size, like the F-number. The rear half of the Double Gauss is used
to correct the aberrations related to the field of view. This is similar in concept to the Triplet,
Petzval lens, and most objectives.
The negative lenses of the Double Gauss lens correct the spherical aberration and the
field curvature, but overuse of these corrections cause coma. The development of the
Double Gauss lens design is in lieu with how to take the good part of the design (spherical
aberration correction, field curvature correction), while minimizing the bad part of the design
(coma flare).
Therefore, the Double Gauss lens has its advantages and disadvantages.

• A. Warmischam used strong curvature on the cemented surfaces

• M. Berek strategically broke the symmetry
• H. W. Lee split the last lens
• R. Tomita combined the Double Gauss with a Sonner type lens group but has a rather
large Petzval sum

. . . but none of them succeeded in solving the Double Gauss lens puzzle.

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The second phase innovation of the Double Gauss lens is post-WWII, with the help of
high index low dispersion glass and other new material innovations. Using high index glass
for the positive lenses decreases the Petzval sum, and the higher index glass leads to lower
curvature surfaces which help decrease the spherical aberration and the coma.

Figure 3.14: Mandler designed Summicron 2/50

Interestingly, attempting to make the Double Gauss lens compact and thinner leads to
the same result, the positive lenses need to have a higher index of refraction. Keeping the
power the same and making the negative meniscus lenses thinner will increase the Petzval
sum, so the positive lenses with a higher index will decrease the Petzval sum.
Splitting the cemented group makes the negative surface just left of the stop smaller in
lens curvature leading to less coma.

Figure 3.15: Double Gauss by Wakiyama USP4448497

Finally, I compare the Double Gauss lens and the Sonnar in a blogpost. Check it out.

5. Master the specsheet The Double Gauss is useful for most modern normal focal
length lenses. If you look at older 50mm equivalent normal lenses, you will definitely see

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a recognizable Double Gauss lens form. Even for more modern 50mm high performance
lenses, look closely and you can see the Double Gauss in there.

(Nikon Z lens Product page )

Can you see it in the above lens design diagram? (Hint: in between the blue and yellow
coloured lenses)

6. Real-world examples The next few pages contain various Double Gauss lenses. If we
look at them closely, we can see the evolution of the Double Gauss lens.

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Figure 3.16: Double Gauss 1936-1964 By Paul1513 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

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Figure 3.17: Double Gauss 1964-1977 By Paul1513 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

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Figure 3.18: Double Gauss 1978-2010 By Paul1513 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

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Bonus: Kubrick’s Planar 50mm F0.7 lens Have you heard of the Carl Zeiss Planar
50mm F0.7 lens? It is a stellar optical lens design (in more ways than one).
NASA had Carl Zeiss make 10 lenes for their satellites, and Kubrick got a hold of three
of those lenses.
Since it wasn’t possible to use these lenses as is, he had a lens mount made to put on
his cine camera.

Figure 3.19: Kubrick Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm F0.7 By Gbentinck - Own work, CC BY-SA
4.0

The lens was used in the famous scene in Barry Lyndon, where only natural light was
used to film the candlelight scene.
The biggest problem was the last lens and film separation, this was extremely close
together, something like 2 to 3 mm (the backfocal length was short). It must have been a
hard task to focus the lens throughout the scene as well!
Looking at the lens, we can see that it follows the familiar pattern of a Double Gauss
lens. At least the first 6 lenses (first 4 groups) are a typical Double Gauss type. The Planar
0.7 then adds two more lenses, a large and thick positive lens and a thin negative lens. The
positive lens looks like something a microscope objective would use.
References: OMAGGIO ALL’IMMORTALE KUBRICK ED AL MITICO PLANAR 50mm
f/0,7

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Figure 3.20: Kubrick Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm F0.7

3.4 The symmetric wide angle lens: The quest for Field of View
1. History and background Wide angle lenses were developed to achieve a very wide
field of view across the image plane. The first design was the Hypergon, by Goerz.
Other famous variations of the symmetric wide angle lens are the Topogon, Biogon,
Aviogon, and Hologon, all by Carl Zeiss.
In particular, I find the Hologon very interesting, since usually, the evolution of lens
design makes the lens configurations more complex. More combinations of glass, more
lenses added, etc. But the Hologon is as simplistic as can be, after the 8 element Biogon
it was now a 3 element Hologon. However, this is a good lesson that the evolution of lens
design is the subtraction of unneeded lenses, not only the addition of more complex lenses.

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2. Essentials for lens design For wide angle lenses, the emphasis is obviously placed
on the aberration correction at wider angles, or wider fields of view.
The three largest contributors are astigmatism, field curvature, and distortion.
To correct astigmatism, the lens must be concentric about the stop.
The field curvature depends on the Petzval sum, which based on the lens power and
index of refraction.
As we can see with landscape lenses, high symmetry about the stop improves distortion.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs To be honest, there
aren’t many cases where the symmetric wide angle lens can be used other than wide-
angle imaging. However, imaging is not only excluded to photography, but it can also be
imaging for sensors, scanning, and other uses where a flat field with minimal distortion can
be accepted.
This lens is good for:

• Wide angles
• Deep depth of field
• Low distortion
• High center resolution
• Compact lens size

This lens is NOT good for:

• Relative illumination (it has dark corners)

• Long back focal length (length of the last lens to the image plane or sensor)
• Small CRA or chief ray angle, the angle the light hits the image plane or sensor (image
sensors require a minimum CRA)

4. Tips and tricks Think about the system as a triplet lens, with a positive element fol-
lowed by a negative element, and then a positive element. Group the powers together and
solve the thin lens equation to get a feel for where the each of the lenses elements should
be.
Gradually change the FOV angle in the design because most software can’t handle
extreme jumps in FOV and can cause calculation mistakes.

5. Master the specsheet Wide angles larger than 90 degrees FOV, most often 120 de-
grees or 130 degrees. When you see this specification, you have to decide in your mind if
you need to use the symmetric wide angle (with short back focal length and low distortion),
or the retrofocus lens (long back focal length and large distortion).

6. Real-world examples Below are some wide-angle lenses, in historical order:

Hypergon - 1900

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Designed by Emil von Hegh, Goerz

Orthometar - 1926

Designed by Willy Walter Mert, Carl Zeiss

Topogon - 1933

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Designed by Robert Richter, Carl Zeiss

Biogon - 1951

Designed by Ludwig Bertele, Carl Zeiss

The Super-Angulon was the Leitz version.

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Hologon - 1966

Designed by Erhard Glatzel, Carl Zeiss

3.5 The telephoto lens: The term that is confusing for photog-
raphers(but not lens designers)

Figure 3.21: Telephoto USP4045128

1. History and background The history of the telephoto lens is not clear, although the
concept was developed by Johannes Kepler and Peter Barlow, and later simultaneously
designed by T. Dallmeyer and Adolf Miethe.
Pre- WWII telephoto lenses looked relatively simple, and for a time the distortion correc-
tion was thought to be impossible.
This changed with a lot of research, but the correction of distortion made it a staple for
the SLR era of long focal length lenses.
In the rangefinder era, focal lengths of 135mm were maximum, whereas 200mm, 300mm,
and 500mm were possible with the SLR.

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Figure 3.22: Telephoto Positive Negative Groups

2. Essentials for lens design The essential point of the telephoto design is that its phys-
ical length is shorter than its focal length. A lot of photographers classify a telephoto lens
merely has a long focal length, but you and I know that’s not true.
The lens design form is a positive front group, a large space in between, and a negative
rear group.

Figure 3.23: Telephoto schematic

Depending on powers of the positive lens group and the negative lens group, and how
they are placed with respect to one another, multiple configurations of the telephoto lens
are possible.
The length L of the lens divided by the focal length of the lens f , is usually denoted as
the telephoto ratio, T = L/ f . The telephoto ratio is a measure of the compactness of the
telephoto lens.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs The tele side of wide
range zoom lenses share the same properties as a telephoto lens, as we have to take care
of the longitudinal chromatic aberration and the spherical aberration.
The concept can be used if you are designing a teleconverter.

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Perhaps counter-intuitively, since the telephoto lens form, power placement of the lens
groups, and even distortion, are all the exact opposite of a retrofocus lens, they are comple-
mentary to each other.

4. Tips and tricks

Telephoto ratio tips If we make the telephoto ratio small, the longitudinal chromatic
aberration increases, and the Petzval sum becomes negative. for a full frame 35mm size
film or sensor camera, this means that the longer the focal length, the telephoto ratio can
be made small. Likewise, if the F-number is slow, the telephoto ratio can be made small.
A rule of thumb for the telephoto ratio is 300mm, T = 0.7 ∼ 0.8 (full frame).

Chromatic aberration and extraordinary low dispersion lenses The rear group has
a power that with a large magnification, but unfortunately, this negative rear element magni-
fies the aberrations caused by the front element. Aberrations in the transverse direction are
magnified by the square of the magnification.
In order to decrease the longitudinal chromatic aberration of the entire system, the front
lens group needs to have low chromatic aberration, to begin with.
In order to achieve low chromatic aberration, extra-low dispersion lenses are needed for
the primary positive power lens(es) in the positive front group. This is why we see expensive
lenses that are very large in most telephoto systems and high-end zoom systems.

Distortion in a telephoto lens The telephoto lens has negative distortion, or pincush-
ion distortion. This lens is one of the most popular formats for long focal length photographic
lenses, so there had to be a solution for distortion.
The overall lens configuration is a positive lens group in the front, and a negative lens
group in the back. We split the negative lens in two, as a positive and negative lens group.
The positive lens has relatively low power, but it serves an important purpose.

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The positive lens has a large effect on the rays, while the negative lens does not. Con-
versely, in the center of the lens (FOV = 0), the positive lens doesn’t change the rays too
much while the negative lens does. This positive lens, therefore, causes a change in the
higher angles of the field while having little effect on the center, thus the distortion can be
corrected.
Additionally, the front lens group can also be split into two, for example, we can have a
colour correction cemented doublet and a positive lens followed by a negative lens a little bit
away from the others. This negative lens also contributes to the telephoto ratio, while also
decreasing the spherical aberration and spherochromatism, without affecting the distortion
too much.
The lens can have an additional field flattener at the back, to correct for field curvature
(the last lens in the lens design diagram shown below).

( Nikon imaging )

Inner focusing A popular way to achieve focus for a telephoto lens with long focal
lengths is to use an inner element focusing system. A small inner focus lens makes for fast
focus, especially for autofocus. The conventional method of focus is moving the entire lens,
which is not practical for very large telephoto lenses, in particular for fast systems with a
large (read: heavy) front element.

5. Master the specsheet Simple. Use this lens design for and its principles whenever
you need a focal length that is long, but the specification says that the total length of the
lens must be shorter than the focal length.

6. Real-world examples
• Nikkor-T 10.5cm F4
• Nikkor-P・C 10.5cm F2.5
• AI Nikkor 105mm F2.5
• AI Nikkor 105mm f/1.8S
• Nikkor-Q Auto 200mm f/4
• AI Nikkor ED 180mm F2.8S
• Nikkor-H 300mm F2.8
Further reading:

• Kazamaki, T. and Kondo, F., ”New Series of Distortionless Telephoto Lenses,” J. Opt.
Soc. Am. 46, 22-31 (1956).
• Kingslake, R., ”Telephoto vs. Ordinary Lenses: A Tutorial Paper,” in Journal of the
SMPTE, vol. 75, no. 12, pp. 1165-1168, (1966)

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3.6 The Retrofocus / Reverse telephoto lens: The practical so-

lution to wide angle lenses on SLRs and digital sensors
1. History and background Historically, the retrofocus lens is a relatively new design.
The telephoto lens was made before it.
Produced in the 1950s by French camera company Pierre Angnieux, the name retro-
focus was actually a product name for a lens that we identify as the retrofocus type today.
The optical configuration is similar to what we see in most retrofocus type lenses. Truthfully,
this lens should be called a reverse telephoto lens or an inverted telephoto lens if we were
to respect the trademark of the name by Angnieux, but since many people identify the lens
form with the name retrofocus, that’s what we’ll call it from here on.

Figure 3.24: Angnieux retrofocus US2696458

The basic concept of the lens is to achieve a wide angle lens while having a large
back focal length. It was originally applied to 16mm cine lenses that had a rotating shutter
mechanism and required a large back focal length.

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Remember the telephoto lens? The telephoto lens has a long focal length and its physi-
cal length was shorter by using a positive lens and a negative lens. Reverse telephoto uses
a similar but opposite concept, the lens has a short (therefore wide) effective focal length,
but a longer physical length, usually a longer back focal length. The lens configuration is
also the opposite to the telephoto lens, it has a negative lens and then a positive lens. The
need for longer back focal length is because of the popularity of Single Reflex Lens (SLR)
cameras, which has a mirror in front of the imaging surface to reflect the image through the
viewfinder.
The first retrofocus lenses had about 35mm focal length, but considering the back focal
length had to be larger than 40mm for most cameras, the concept was revolutionary.

2. Essentials for lens design The essential point of the retrofocus design is that its
physical length is longer than its focal length, and more importantly, that its back focal length
is longer than the focal length. This was particularly useful after the single lens reflex camera
became popular around the 1960s.
The lens design form is a negative front group, a large space in between, and a positive
rear group. It can almost look like a normal lens with a wide angle converter attached to it.

Figure 3.25: Retrofocus schematic

We usually use a few lenses for both the negative group and the positive group, but
there are many possible variations depending on how many lenses and what type of glass
we use.
A retrofocus wide angle lens requires a longer back focus, consequently may have some
distortion, and a large front lens with large asymmetry.
The early retro focus lenses look relatively simple and are easy to understand. This one
has a Gauss-like or Tessar-like positive lens group in the back, with a negative lens in the
front to widen the overall FOV and increase the back focus.
This lens is good for:

• Wide angles
• Deep depth of field
• Long back focal length (length of the last lens to the image plane or sensor)
• Relative illumination
• Small CRA or chief ray angle

This lens is NOT good for:

• Compact lens size (the backfocus is large)

• Low distortion (the asymmetry in the system makes it difficult to correct distortion)

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Figure 3.26: Retrofocus JP S52 48315

Figure 3.27: Retrofocus US3731989

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs The basic concepts like
distortion are linked to wide angle zoom systems.
The concept can be used if you are designing a wide angle converter.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, since the retrofocus lens form, power placement of the lens
groups, and even the distortion are all the exact opposite of a telephoto lens, they are
complementary to each other.

4. Tips and tricks

Tips to improve the performance of a retrofocus design

1. With a powerful negative lens in the front, wide angles are possible, and relative illu-
mination can be kept high
2. With a powerful negative lens in the front, pincushion distortion appears easily and is
difficult to correct

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3. Since the positive rear lens group receives diverging rays, it is difficult to make the
lens system a fast speed f-number
4. The field curvature in the corners of the image changes dramatically with close focus

5. Master the specsheet If we need a wide field of view lens, but we need a long back
focal length and/or telecentricity in the image plane.
Be mindful of the amount of space you can have, both in the length of the lenses and
the diameter of the lenses.

6. Real-world examples from Nikkor-S Auto 35mm f/2.8 to ”New” Nikkor 35mm f/2.8

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systems

As lens design forms evolve, the lens use cases get more and more specialized. To meet
these demands, lens designers developed more specific use cases for these systems.
Although the lenses get more specialized, the foundation of these lens designs is built
on previous lens design forms.
For example, the fisheye lens is an evolution of the retrofocus lens. Zoom lenses use
both retrofocus and telephoto lens properties, and afocal lenses are also conceptually a
part of zoom lenses.

4.1 The Fisheye lens: Testing the limits of Field of View

Figure 4.1: Fisheye

1. History and background A typical lens will image a flat surface onto a flat surface, but
a fisheye lens images a spherical surface onto a flat surface.

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The basic form of a fisheye lens is similar to the retrofocus lens, in that it has a negative
front group and a positive rear group of lenses.
Commercial fisheye lenses have complex negative and positive lens groups in order to
maximize the resolution.
As a photographic lens, the fisheye lens is usually used in special circumstances, and
more emphasis is placed on whether a FOV of 180 degrees (or more) is achieved, rather
than what type of projection system (listed below) is used.
A 180-degree field of view lens imaging a circular image is sometimes called a circular
fisheye, and a lens that images the corner FOV to be 180 degrees is sometimes called a
diagonal fisheye lens.
There are people who prefer the fisheye ”look” for artistic purposes.

2. Essentials for lens design There are different ways to image a sphere onto a plane. I
will list some examples below, and y is the image height, f is the focal length, and θ is the
half angle of view.

Equidistant projection Equidistant projection, is the most typical, also called f-theta
imaging.

The definition of an f-theta lens is:

y= f ·θ
Although used for fisheye systems, the f-theta systems are used more in laser scanning
systems like the f-theta lenses for laser beam printers.

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Orthographic projection Orthographic projection, is like taking the cross section of a

sphere, and projecting that cross-section directly on a plane.

The definition for orthographic projection is:

y = f sin θ

One characteristic of the orthogonal projection is that the illuminance of the image is con-
stant across the field of view.
Thinking about this way, we can say that the fisheye lens has a larger distortion than
most traditional imaging systems. In this case, the cosine fourth law does not hold, and the
edges of the image are less prone to a drop in relative illumination.

Stereographic projection In a stereographic projection image, the imaging at the

equator is twice as close than in an orthogonal projection.

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The definition for stereographic projection is:

y = 2 f tan θ/2

Equisolid angle projection The equisolid angle projection is where the area of the
image is proportional to the solid angle of the object. When calculating the area of the
image we can calculate the solid angle of the object, so it is used a lot in metrology.

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The definition for equisolid angle projection is:

y = 2 f sin θ/2

There is a nice summary of the projection systems here.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs Equidistant is used more
in laser scanning systems like the f-theta lenses for laser beam printers.

Bonus: Full Sphere imaging R. Miyamoto, Fish Eye Lens, J. Opt. Soc. Am, Vol. 54, No
8

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4.2 Zoom lenses: How we can get many focal lengths in one
lens system

(One of the first zoom lenses, the Cooke varo 40mm-120mm F3.5-F8 lens)

1. History and background The often referenced documentation is the patent by H.

Gramatzki in 1936, which showed several zoom systems with several equations. He started
with afocal lens attachments, and used this concept for zoom lenses as well.
The name zoom lens comes from one of the early lens companies Zoomar which has
now become the definition of a variable focal length lens. I wonder if varifocal lens would
have caught on?
Systems like Gaussian brackets were introduced to mathematically calculate zoom sys-
tems.
Over the years, K. Yamaji, the to-be president of Canon published a paper on zoom
lenses that I think still stands the test of time today. Ironically, Yamaji later became a propo-
nent of keeping technical information in-house in favour of disclosing them as patents, and
good papers such like his own became scarce to this day.
Optically speaking, zoom lenses can be traced back to the converter. We see the wide
converter and teleconverter lenses that convert the focal length of a system as an attach-
ment. The Fuji X100 series comes to mind, which is a fixed lens digital camera that has
both a wide angle conversion lens and a tele conversion lens to change the focal length of
the lens.

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(via Fujifilm)

Mathematically, this means that the original master focal length fm is converted to the
new focal length ft via the magnification β of the converter.

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ft = β × fm
This is actually a simple way to think about the zoom lens, because the zoom lens has
a number of fixed focal length groups in the lens system that change position to give a
different magnification. Just like if you were to move a magnifying lens from your eye front
to back, you’d see the image get bigger or smaller.

Figure 4.2: Afocal portion of the 4 group zoom

There are two types of zooms, optically compensated zooms and mechanically com-
pensated zooms.
The optical compensation zoom system has one linearly moving part and essentially
does not use a cam system for movement. The focus is within the depth of field by using
clever positioning of the lenses.
The mechanical compensation zoom system has at least two moving parts with a cam
system, usually a variator lens and a compensator lens.
Nowadays, all zoom systems have very complex movements and it’s hard to tell which
lens has what function. Let’s take a look and break the zoom lens system down.

2. Essentials for lens design What defines a zoom lens?

1. It can change magnification

2. The focus point is fixed
3. The performance is above a certain level at any zoom point

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A lens that doesn’t satisfy (2) is called a varifocal lens. That means that a lot of photog-
raphy lenses are not zoom lenses, they are varifocal lenses, because we usually need to
refocus the lens.
For a video system, staying in focus while zooming is critical as the picture would go
out of focus as we zoom in or out. For a still image photography camera, this isn’t a big
deal, we just need to refocus the image. This makes zoom lenses (sorry, varifocal lenses )
for photography have a higher degree of freedom, and more compact and large zoom ratios
can be made.

Figure 4.3: 4 group zoom

The main components of a zoom lens are:

1. Focusing lens - used for focusing from infinity to focusing at a finite distance
2. Variator - the lens that moves over the largest distance and changes the magnification

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of the system
3. Compensator - compensates the focal point of the system from the magnification
change induced by the variator.
4. Master lens - the main imaging lens of the system, and is responsible for the focal
length, F-number, and back focal length of the lens. Most often there is higher order
aberration generated by this group to counteract the aberrations from the preceding
components. Also called the relay lens.

Some zoom systems have a compensator that doubles as a focusing lens, and some
zoom systems have two variators with one variator doubling as a compensator. But even
if a lens group doubles functions, the components are still there. It may be a little tricky to
decode these lenses, but if we know the properties of each component it is easy to find
them in the system.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs A wide-angle zoom lens
shares a lot of properties with the retrofocus lens.
A tele-zoom lens shares a lot of properties with the telephoto lens.
And not coincidentally, wide-range focal length zoom shares the properties of the retro-
focus lens on the wide angle side, and also shares the properties of the telephoto lens on
the tele side.
In most cases, a challenging retrofocus or telephoto lens is more difficult than the single
focal length of a wide angle zoom or a tele zoom. The difficulty of the zoom lens is the
balance between all of the focal lengths, and often the individual focal lengths are not too
difficult on their own.

4. Tips and tricks

Focusing Making the front element the focusing lens, or making the lens an inner
focusing system. Figure out which system you need for the focus system.
The front focus is most straightforward and robust. It is also the optically logistic way to
focus a lens. However, if the front element is large, this can mean moving a large chunk of
glass to focus, which is harder to do mechanically, requires more precision, and can cause
focus backlash (overshooting the focus point).
Also, some focusing systems do not work well when the distance of the object to the
front of the lens cannot change. Some systems require that the total length of the lens from
the first element to the last element not change.
Which brings us to inner focus, which seems like the perfect solution, since the focus is
in the inner location of the lens. The lens can be made small so that movement is smoother
and more precise, and the total length of the lens doesn’t change.
However, inner focus is harder to achieve optically, since the focus must work for all zoom
positions, and the focus is likely on the same pathway as the variator or the compensator.
Choose the focusing mechanism accordingly to the application.

Using Gaussian brackets Gaussian brackets themselves are a mathematical tool,

and when used for lens systems they can be extremely powerful. Gauss came up with the
mathematical algorithm, and it can be used to evaluate the focal length, magnification, and
back focus of a lens system with some given parameters like the thickness or lens power.
The Gaussian brackets were introduced in optics by M. Herzerberger in 1943, and then
expanded upon by K. Tanaka in the 1980s.

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Gaussian brackets are too involved to get into here, but defining a zoom system with
Gaussian brackets and is useful. I might have a lot of fun trying to explain this someday.
(Maybe an epic post on zoom lenses?)

5. Master the specsheet First, we have to see what kind of zoom we need.

• Is it a wide angle only?

• Is it a tele-zoom?
• Does it have a large zoom range in both the wide and the tele?
• What is the F-number requirement across the zoom range?

If we can answer these questions, then we can get a better idea of the requirements of
the system.

Conjugates There are four conjugates of the zoom lens.

1. Finite-finite conjugate system: The object is at a finite location. Examples such as pro-
jector systems, factory inspection systems, and scanner lenses. A projector projects
the LCD (object at a finite distance) to a screen (image) at a finite distance, and can
often zoom to change the size of the projection on the screen.
2. Infinite-finite conjugate system: The object is at infinity, and the image is at a finite
distance. Photographic lenses take a scene (object at infinity) and images onto a
sensor/film plane, which is at a finite distance.
3. Infinite-infinite conjugate system: The object is at infinity, but the image is at infinity as
well, so it is an afocal system. Zoom finders, binoculars, telescopes. A zoom finder is
an optical viewfinder that changes FOV when you zoom. The scene you view (object
at infinity) is imaged to your eye via the exit pupil of the system, making it an infinite
conjugate system.
4. Telecentric conjugate system: The object and image side are both telecentric, and
zooms as well!

6. Real-world examples The zoom systems fall into a few general systems.

• 4-group zoom system

• 2-group zoom system
• 3-group zoom system
• Multi-group zoom

The 4-group zoom The 4 group zoom system is the most basic, and has the four
components - focus, variator, compensator, master lenses clearly defined in the system.
The zoom range is typically a relatively wide angle (FOV 70-80 degrees) to relatively
long focal length (FOV 25-30deg).
Close observation of the lenses shows that the variator covers the most distance, and is
close to the focusing lens for the wide end and moves ever so close to the master lens in the
tele end. The variator is usually a negative lens group, mainly because the zoom system
can be made more compact.
The master lens group usually has an afocal component, and the first-second-third
group is the zooming part.

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The 2-group zoom The 2 group zoom system has two main forms, a negative-positive
group and a positive-negative group form. The picture below is a negative-positive zoom
since the first group has negative power and the second group has positive power. The
concept is much like the retrofocus lens.
For a wide-angle zoom, a 2 group zoom lens form is typical, with a negative focusing
lens, and a positive variator. Therefore, the 2 group zoom is harder to cover a large focal
length range, and the F-number can’t be made too fast either.
The other 2 group zoom, a positive first group and a negative second group is mostly
used for compact zoom lenses.

The 3-group zoom The 3 group zoom system is a variation of the 2 group zoom,
where the first group is split in two for a higher degree of freedom. By using a 3 group
zoom, it is possible to achieve a larger zoom range in a compact form.

Multi-group zooms and modern zoom lenses Multi-group zooms are zooms that
many groups that move for zooming. These multi-group zooms typically are used for a large
zoom range.
As far as modern zoom lenses are concerned, just go to any famous lens maker (Canon,
Nikon, Olympus, Sigma, FujiFilm, Panasonic, Cooke, etc) and you will find plenty of zoom
lenses. Nowadays, there are so many variations that it is hard to keep up. But the essence
of lens design is still there, and the four components in focusing lens, variator, compensator,
and the master lens are used.
I think I have an epic post on zoom lens design in me, waiting to come out. I have too
many ideas bouncing around in my head, so stay tuned while I try to figure things out.

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Figure 4.4: 4 group zoom

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Figure 4.5: Afocal portion of the 4 group zoom

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Figure 4.6: 2 group zoom

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Figure 4.7: 2 group zoom positive negative

Figure 4.8: 3 group zoom

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4.3 Afocal lens systems: manipulating rays to get them to be-

have the way we want
In this subchapter, I thought I would take a deeper look at an often forgotten lens design
technique that can be quite useful, and that’s afocal lenses.
You might be thinking, ”What? How can I use those?” Well, it turns out that they are
within all sorts of lens designs more than we think.
Afocal systems alone may not dazzle us too much, but they are used in many situations,
and making a system afocal or making a portion of the system afocal has many benefits like
making the system simpler to understand, or to simpler to systematically build the optical
system.

1. History and background A lens that has parallel incident rays and has parallel exit
rays is called an afocal system. Simple enough, right? Well, there are a few variations on
how we achieve this.
In an afocal system, the object is at infinity, and the focal length is also infinity. That
makes things interesting because an afocal system doesn’t have a focal length, per se.

Figure 4.9: Afocal schematic

In an afocal system, the object is at infinity, and the focal length is also infinity.
What to do? Well, the most typical way to express an afocal system is by magnitude,
not focal length. We’ll get into the specifics below.

2. Essentials for lens design The most general afocal system is made up of two lenses,
and the focal point of the image of the first lens is placed at the focal point of the object of
the second lens. We can actually have a positive-negative lens combination and a negative-
positive lens combination.
The former, the positive-negative afocal system shrinks the beam width (if it were a
beam expander), while the negative-positive afocal system expands the beam.
Since the focal length of afocal systems is infinity, we use the angular magnification as
a unit of measure. Let’s call it γ.
When the parallel ray enters the system at an angle u1 , and exits the system at an angle
uk ,
uk
γ=
u1
is the angular magnification.
Also, if there are two lenses in the afocal system, and their focal lengths are f1 and f2 ,
the angular magnification is

f1
γ= .
f2

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Figure 4.10: Afocal negative-positive and positive-negative

Figure 4.11: Afocal gamma

And finally, the parallel beam entering the system at a height of h1 and exiting the system
at hk has an angular magnification of

h1
γ= .
hk
When the system is a positive lens and negative lens combination, the magnification
is positive, while for a positive lens and positive lens system the angular magnification is
negative.
We can even have positive - positive combinations to get an afocal system.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs

• Telescopes: Those above images already looked like telescopes, so I think you al-
ready guessed this one. Both Galilean and Keplerian telescopes are afocal systems.

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Figure 4.12: Afocal positive-positive

Even the Newtonian telescope is an afocal system with a reflective lens rather than a
refractive lens.
• Optical viewfinders: Optical viewfinders change the magnification of the field of view
of our eyes. It’s typical to use a wide-ish viewfinder when using a wide-angle lens.
This is before SLR cameras, by the way.
• The zooming component of the 4-group zoom lens: Note that it doesn’t have to be
a 4-group lens, but the 4-group lens is the easiest to understand schematically, and
therefore the best choice here.
• Laser beam expanders

These all are either afocal systems or contain afocal properties within them.
An example of a zooming optical view finder below.

Figure 4.13: Afocal zoom finder

Next, we take the closer look at the zooming portion of the 4 group zoom lens.
For both examples, we can see the parallel rays incoming to the front lens, and it is
parallel going out, for all zoom positions.

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Figure 4.14: Afocal portion of the 4 group zoom

Below is a laser beam expander, and it takes a narrow beam and widens it significantly.
If we look closely, it is the same as the above examples and the parallel rays incoming to
the front lens, and it is parallel going out also.

Figure 4.15: Afocal beam expander

4. Tips and tricks

Afocal systems in finite space When an afocal system is used in a finite system with
an object and is used as an imaging system, the magnification β is

1
β= = constant,
γ
and this relationship does not change with the position of the object whatsoever.
And FYI, this afocal imaging system where the principal ray is parallel to the optical axis
is a telecentric system.

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Afocal systems combined with other lenses If an afocal system is followed by an

imaging lens with a focal length of f0 , the focal point of the combined system is at the same
point as the focal point of the imaging lens.
wide / tele converters and zoom lenses use this property of afocal systems.

5. Master the specsheet Afocal systems are used for a specific purpose, so instead of
figuring out how to spec out an afocal system, it is more important to think about where an
afocal system is useful within the lens design.
One thing to be careful of with an afocal system is the resulting aberration change it
induces.
If the rays on the optical axis to the marginal rays change angles, that means that the
system induces spherical aberration.
The difference to the actual ray tan(uk ) and the ideal ray is γ tan(u1 ) is the distortion.

6. Real-world examples In an actual optical lens design, unless we are using it with our
eye, the simplest way to express an afocal system is with an imaging lens.

Figure 4.16: Afocal portion of the 4 group zoom

Take the zoom lens above for example. We can see the parallel rays incoming to the
front lens, and it is parallel going out, regardless of zoom position. (In actual use, there is
another group of lenses after the exiting parallel beams forming an image to a sensor)

4.3.1 Comment on conversion lenses

• If it is possible to easily mount and dismount an afocal lens on the front of a lens
system to a master lens, it is a conversion lens.
• If the magnification is larger than 1, it is a tele conversion lens

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• If the magnification is smaller than 1, it is a wide conversion lens

• If the magnification is variable, it is a zoom conversion lens.
• The resulting focal length is the product of the focal length of the master lens and the
magnification.

Figure 4.17: Teleconverter

Figure 4.18: Rear converter

A conversion lens that is mounted on the back of the lens system is a rear conversion
lens or alternatively called a rear converter. Rear converters that lengthen the back focal
length are common.
Rear converters that shorten the back focal length did not exist for a long time, because
it was not practical to shorten the back focal length to widen the focal length, we would much
rather use a front converter for that.
For mirrorless camera systems, there are rear converters that take legacy lenses, widen
the focal length, and by proxy shorten the back focal length. (Thanks for the tip, Hans!)
When a rear conversion lens is mounted, the resulting F-number is the product of the
magnification and the F-number of the master lens. Note that the F-number when using a
front conversion lens does not change.
The above image is for an example of a conversion lens for a compact camera lens.
Usually, the Petzval sum of the master lens is small, and this rear converter has a
negative Petzval sum, so the resulting Petzval sum is negative as well. Therefore, the
positive lenses should have as low of an index of refraction as possible, and the negative
lenses should have as high as an index of refraction as possible.
The aberration correction of rear converter lenses is difficult since the rays usually pass
above the optical axis, or most of the ray bundles pass through one side of the optical axis.

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4.4 Telecentric lens systems: when and where we need straight

rays
1. History and background A lens system that has its focal point at either the entrance
pupil or the exit pupil is called a telecentric system.
For the former, a telecentric system with the focal point at the entrance pupil, the princi-
pal ray is parallel on the image side. This is an image side telecentric system.
For the latter, a telecentric system with the focal point at the exit pupil, the principal ray
is parallel on the object side. This is an object side telecentric system.
When both the object side and image side are telecentric, this is an afocal lens system.
Therefore, the magnification is always constant, and the displacement or tilt of the object or
the image does not affect the system.

Figure 4.19: Image side telecentric

Figure 4.20: Object side telecentric

Figure 4.21: Bi-telecentric

2. Essentials for lens design

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs Since the LSI fabrication
process requires extreme precision the image side telecentricity is important.

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Systems that require optical fiber bundles, such as endoscope imaging require image
side telecentricity. The fiber bundle requires that the rays are not oblique, since this will
reduce the transmission. Therefore an image side telecentric optical system with parallel
rays to the fiber bundle works nicely.
Some projection systems have object side telecentricity. This is useful since the object
can move a bit and the resulting image will still be good.
A microscope objective is designed with a very small object, so designing it with object
side telecentricity is useful as well.
Super LSI optics require extremely balanced optics that can withstand some minute
displacements or tilt of the object plane and the image plane, and bi-telecentric lenses are
very useful here.

4. Tips and tricks Image side telecentric systems have zero chief ray angles for all fields.
This means that cos4 u = 1, and the image illumination is constant without a drop in relative
illumination.
The easiest way to achieve object side telecentricity is to flip the image side telecentric
system around. For optical design software settings, it is sometimes easier to design an
image side telecentric system and flip it around.

5. Master the specsheet

• The system requires the angle to the image to be parallel to the optical axis: image
side telecentric system
• The system requires uniform illumination of the image: image side telecentric sys-
tem
• The system requires large magnification, and the object will be magnified a lot: object
side telecentric system
• The system needs to be robust to the movements and tilt of the object: object side
telecentric system
• The system requires two of the properties for image side telecentricity and object side
telecentricity: bi-telecentric system

6. Real-world examples

• Optical measurement techniques with telecentric lenses - A course on Gaussian op-

tics of telecentric systems from Schneider Kreuznach
• Technical description of telecentric effect
• Telecentric lenses tutorial - Opto Engineering

Tandem lens example When two positive lenses groups have parallel rays between
them, it is called a tandem system.

Figure 4.22: Bi-telecentric

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This means that the object is placed at the focal point of the first positive lens group, and
the image is placed at the imaging surface of the second positive lens group.
Usually, the same positive lenses are used, just opposing each other. Also, most tandem
lens systems are the same scale in most cases.
Tandem lenses can work as relay lenses, but relay lenses don’t have to have parallel
rays in between.
Tandem lenses can work as telecentric systems, but tandem lenses don’t necessarily
have to be telecentric. But if a tandem lens is telecentric, it is certainly bi-telecentric.
Since tandem systems have parallel rays in between the two lens groups, there are a
few characteristics:

• Changing the separation of the lenses does not change the system. The object to the
lens distance does not change, and the lens and image distance does not change.
The magnification does not change.
• We can place a prism or beam splitter in between the parallel rays without changing
the magnification or the position of the object and the image.
• Likewise, a parallel plate can be placed in the system without changing anything.
• If we place an afocal system in between the tandem system, we can change the
magnification without changing the object and image position.

To design a tandem system, we first design with the object at infinity, with the aperture
stop in front of the lens, and make an image. We then take this lens to duplicate it and flip it
around the aperture stop.

4.5 Reflective optic lenses: Changing the direction of light

1. History and background

The importance of reflective optics Since ancient times, mirrors were used as re-
flective optics. There is a hypothesis that Archmides used collective mirrors as a heat ray to
burn ships with the sunrise.
Since sir Isaac Newton, reflective telescopes were used to observe the stars.
In Japan, for example, optics made its development via photographic lenses, so it was
mainly refractive optics. If you are more familiar with photographic lenses like me, you’d
know that for photographic lenses, the number of reflective optics are few, like a 500mm F8
lens and beyond.
In Physics, reflection can be explained in a line or two, but from a lens design standpoint,
there are so many angles to look at lens design.
There are plane mirrors, spherical mirrors, aspherical mirrors, ellipsoidal mirrors, parabolic
mirrors, hyperbolic mirrors, and toric mirrors. These mirrors can be further classified into
convex shaped mirrors and concave shaped mirrors.
There are several advantages of a mirror lens compared to a refractive lens.

• The possibility of making large optics compared to refractive lenses. For example, a
refractive lens is difficult to make over 500mm in diameter, but a reflective system can
be made much larger.
• Reflective lenses do not have chromatic aberration.
• The power of lens being equal, a reflective lens has approximately 1/4 the radius of
curvature compared to a refractive lens (if we assume n = 1/5). This means mirror
lenses have a smaller spherical aberration. Perhaps the last point, if the radius of

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curvature is decided with the power of the reflective optic, there is no room for bending
the surface to balance the aberrations.

2. Essentials for lens design The reflective surfaces are lapped and polished for high
surface precision, and coated with reflective materials. Aluminum is common, but some
applications use silver, gold and other materials.
As lens designers, we need to keep in mind the reflective properties of the material and
make sure that it is usable in the wavelength range and the manufacturing.
The focal length of a spherical mirror is half of the radius of curvature, or f = r/2.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs Not only Newtonian tele-
scopes that use mirrors exclusively, but catadioptric systems use reflection and refraction in
the optical system.
Prisms and reflectors are used in laser applications, binocular system, and foldable
optics as well.
TIR properties are used in the prism of an HMD lens, and an HUD uses a reflector to
image a display into our field of view.

4. Tips and tricks

How to proceed with the lens design In a reflective system, there can be one surface
that reflects light twice, or reflects light to a refractive lens for the second time. In the lens
design, we number the surfaces in the order that the ray hits the surface, so some surfaces
will have two numbers associated with it, depending on the number of times the ray hits the
surface.
Keeping all of the sign conventions consistent, a reflected ray will move through the
system negatively, and subsequent surfaces that it hits will reverse in sign.
This way, we can trace the rays in the software with the shape intact.

When there is a hole in the center of the mirror Some reflective systems have a
hole in the center of the mirror. We will still trace the rays near the optical axis for paraxial
calculations. As far as the F-number, it is the ratio of the reflective area with the entire
system.

Protect the reflective surface Also, reflective mirrors deprecate with time, as the re-
flection percentage can change with time, and dirt, fingerprints, dust, scratches all contribute
to the reflection loss of the mirror.
If possible, the best way to solve this problem is to place the reflective surface behind a
sheet of glass, as a means to protect the reflective surface. This is called a Mangin mirror.
Interestingly, the spherical aberration of a Mangin mirror is much smaller than a simple
reflective mirror.

Total internal reflection (TIR) Total internal reflection occurs when a ray passes
through a higher index of refraction material to a lower index of refraction material. There is
a critical angle at which this happens, and any angle larger than the critical angle continues
to have internal reflection.
Since Snell’s law is
n1 sin θ1 = n2 sin θ2

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For a ray that passes through a material to air will have a critical angle of

n1 sin θ1 = 1.0 sin 90o ,

1
θ1 = sin−1 = θc
n1
Below is a table for various materials and their critical angle with respect to air.

material n θc
Water 1.3345 48.5336
BK 1.5 48.5336
SK 1.6 41.8103
LaK 1.7 38.6822
LaSK 1.88 36.0319
Ge 4.0 14.4775
BK7 1.51633 41.2608
BaK4 1.56883 39.5995
SK4 1.61272 38.3213
LaK14 1.6968 36.1105
SF2 1.61769 38.1823
PMMA 1.4918 42.0926
PC 1.5855 39.1030

5. Master the specsheet Pretty straight forward, when we are concerned with the chro-
matic aberration it is good to consider a reflective system. We have to be aware of the
tolerances of the system and see if it makes sense as an overall system.

6. Real-world examples

1. Laser applications: The power density of the laser beam might not be suitable for
some materials, so reflective optics with special coatings are used.
2. Stepper lenses: In order to achieve the resolution needed, the wavelength used for
stepper lenses need to be shorter, and even go to the ultraviolet wavelength range.
Refractive optics can lose transmission at these wavelengths. Also, the chromatic
aberration may become larger with refractive optics. A well coated reflective optic can
solve both of these problems.
3. Astronomical lenses and surveillance: For longer wavelengths in the far infrared
range, likewise there are few materials that can be used for refractive optics.
4. Large telescopes: For extremely large optics, the refractive lenses would be so
heavy that they would not be practical.
5. Projector systems: LCD projection systems, dichroic mirrors
6. Prisms for HMDs as viewfinders: require freeform lenses and reflective optics
7. Illumination systems: by using reflective optics we can fold the optics to a more
compact form.
8. Catadioptric systems: This system is a combination of reflective properties and
refractive properties in one optical system. They are sometimes called reflective-
refractive optical systems and mirror lens systems. Typical catadioptric systems are
astronomical telescopes, and some mirrored long-focal length photographic lenses.
Optical systems with only reflective components have no chromatic aberration, and

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catadioptric lenses have refractive components so there is chromatic aberration. How-

ever, catadioptric lenses can make for compact optics and wide FOV that are difficult
with reflective-only optics.
9. Optical fibers: Although a little off topic, optical fibers are essentially TIR insude of
the fibler core, and can be considered as a reflective system.

4.6 Coffee break: Some cool lens names from yesteryear

Along with names like the Tessar and Sonnar, some of the most creative lens names belong
to the symmetric wide angle lenses.
Carl Zeiss named their lenses after lens forms,

• Tessar = 4 element lens (from tetra)

• Sonnar (either from the Carl Zeiss head plant in Sonthofen, or from the German word
for Sun
• Sonne)
• Planar = Double Gauss (which is named after the mathematician Gauss), Biogon/Hologon
= symmetric wide angle
• Distagon = retrofocus.

Voigtlnder also named their lenses after lens forms but also after the performance. Lens
forms are:

• Skopar (Tessar type)

• Heliar (a Tessar type with a cemented first element as well)
• Apo-Lanthar (a variant of the Heliar but with an opposite front group)
• Ultron (Gauss type).

Voigtlnder also had a lens called the Nokton, which is a high speed lens for dark envi-
ronments.
On the other hand, Leica named their lenses after lens speed.

• Elmar = F3.5
• Elmarit = F2.8
• Summicron = F2
• Summilux = F1.4
• Noctilux = F0.95-1.2

Although they had some early lenses named by lens form like Hektor (Berek’s dog’s
name), Summar, Summitar, Summarit, and Thambar. The modern Leica lenses use Sum-
marit for F2.5 lenses. (oldlens.com )
The Japanese lens makers didn’t do either, they named their lenses as one name alto-
gether, but have interesting historical reasons for each.

• Nikon = Nikkor (shorthand from their company name NIppon-KOgaku and a play on
Sonnar, Hektor, Planar. . . {})
• Pentax = Takumar (named after the sibling of an executive at Pentax named Takuma,
and a play on the Japanese phrase sessatakuma = apply oneself and study hard to
improve oneself)

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• Olympus = Zuiko (named after the optical research facility, and a play on the word
zuiko = auspicious light)
• As an aside, Olypus made a play from their original company name Takachiho Seisakujo,
and the city Takachiho, which is the land where the first Gods landed in Japanese
mythology. A more international version of the land of Gods is Mounnt Olympus,
hence the name change.
• Mamiya = Sekor (named after their optical research center SEtagaya KO-ki)
• FujiFilm = Fujinon
• Minolta = Rokkor (named after the mountains near their headquarters, Mount Rokko)
• Yashika = Yashinon
• Konica = Hexanon (Konika was called Konishiroku, after founder Konishiya Rokube,
and since roku = the number 6 in Japanese, this led to Hexa, the Greek numeral for
6)
• Topcon = Topkor
• Ricoh = Rikenon

Some of these may sound familiar, others less so.

Nikon would name their early lenses with Q, P, H and S, presumably for the Latin/Greek
prefixes numerals like Quadr (4 lens elements), Penta (5 lens elements), Hexa (6 lens ele-
ments), and Septua (7 lens elements).
Also, there are more functional names like Telephoto, Retrofocus, 2-group zoom.
It’s a little sad that lenses aren’t named more creatively today, but with the lens forms
becoming so complex and diverse for performance purposes and IP purposes, I guess
naming lenses is a little pointless now.

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Chapter 5

Imaging lenses: The lens forms that

helps us see more than the naked
eye

Our eyes work a little differently than photographic lenses with sensors, so we have to take
a different approach in thinking about the lens design form.
In particular, optical lenses for the eye are afocal since the eye itself has focus proper-
ties, whereas photographic lenses focus on a plane, either film in the old days or a digital
sensor today.
Let’s take a look into how the lens design forms for the eye are constructed.

5.1 The eyepiece: imaging the world on our retinas

1. History and background Optical systems that are made for direct viewing with our
eyes, such as Loupes (a simple magnifier), viewfinders, telescopes, microscopes, and many
others, all share issues with the characteristics of the eye.

The visual angle: The angle between the center of the entrance pupil of the eye and
the object, in terms of the principal ray. The size of what we see is proportional to the
tangent of the angle u. This angle increases as the object is moved closer to the eye, and
there is a limit to how close we can get this to our eyes, but it depends on person to person,
and their nearpoint.
Note: the entrance pupil of the eye is located about 3.3mm behind the cornea.

Figure 5.1: Eye schematic

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THAN THE NAKED EYE

2. Essentials for lens design

The nearpoint and farpoint: Our eyes focus by moving the muscles around the lens
to change the shape of the lens and increase the optical power. There is contraction that
makes the curvature of the lens larger and nearpoint is achieved. The eye continuously
focuses on the retina so we see things in focus. Although there are some differences from
person to person, in general younger people can accomodate for a larger range between
their nearpoint and farpoint, and this range gets shorter as we get older. For most, it’s the
nearpoint that gets longer and thus the range becomes shorter.
Usually, we use the reciprocal of metre as the unit of measure of how far we can see.
This is called the diopter.
The distance of distinct vision is the closest nearpoint we can get while being able to
see the details of the object. This distance is -4 diopters, which is 1/250mm.
The ”diopter” in an eyepiece is how much the rays from the eyepiece either converge
or diverge, and it is a measure of the distance from the eye to the image. Usually we use
the distance -4 diopters for lens design, but for a camera viewfinder we may use -1 diopters
instead.
The magnification of a loupe or simple magnifier is the ratio between the tangent of the
viewing angle of the object through the magnifier and the tangent of the viewing angle of
the object without the magnifier.

Figure 5.2: Eyepiece schematic

The magnification of the loupe/magnifier is expressed as

250
β=
f
where the magnification is β, and the focal length is f . Your eye has to be at the focal
point of the magnifier, though ;)
In exact optical ray path terms, the focal point of an eyepiece and the entrance pupil of
our eye does not match up perfectly, but this is the equation used to get the numbers for
magnification in general.
I think I have talked about a lot of different types of magnification like transverse magnifi-
cation and longitudianl magnification, and even angular magnification, but this magnification
is a little different.

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THAN THE NAKED EYE

The other three magnifications are all conjugate systems, while the optical system for
the eye is not a conjugate system.
Most eyepiece optics are afocal. The aberrations for an eyepiece and optics using an
eyepiece allow about 3 minutes of arc in general. This means that a perfect eyepiece
designed into the eyes have parallel rays, but we can afford less than 3 minutes of arc from
parallel rays and still be fine, in most cases.
This is because it is said that the human eye has a resolution of one minute of arc, and
for observational optical systems 3 minutes of arc is an acceptable compromise.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs Telescopes use a tele-
scope objective and an eyepiece.
Periscopes are also optically similar to telescopes.
Binoculars are optically similar to telescopes, but use two lens systems together (and a
Porro prism).
Microscopes use a microscope objective and an eyepiece.
Optical view finders and prisms for SLR camera objectives are optically similar to the
microscope. They have the image of the film surface on a ground glass, and the eyepiece
takes the image of the groundglass into our eye.

By Cburnett
1. Lens assembly, 2. Mirror, 3. Focal-plane shutter, 4. Sensor/Film, 5. Focusing screen,
6. Condensing lens, 7. Pentaprism, 8. Eyepiece.
For that matter, electronic view finders are also similar to microscope systems and OVF
systems, since there is an LCD in the digital camera that shows the image on the sensor.
This image on the LCD is then imaged to the eye, which is exactly the same thing.
Riflescopes are a long-range finite to finite conjugates, and there are zooms as well.
Head-up displays (HUD) and Head mount displays (HMD) are glorified loupes, in the op-
tical sense. The shape may be very complex, with freeform surfaces and off-axial surfaces,
but the essence of the lens design is the same as the loupe / magnifier.
And of course, normal eyeglasses whether they be near-sighted or far-sighted, use the
same optical principles for lens design.

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Figure 5.3: Eyepiece for an EVF

Figure 5.4: Riflescope, magnification 6x

4. Tips and tricks When we design an eyepiece, it is often useful to flip the lens design
around and trace the rays from infinity (where our eye will eventually be) to the lens, and the
focal point is where the object will be.
Set the first surface as the entrance pupil of the eye, and build the lenses from there.
The diameter of the entrance pupil is usually about 3˜4mm in diameter, but we can increase
it to a diameter of 7mm (the maximum diameter of a dilated pupil) just in case.
The distance between the eye point and the first lens is the eye relief distance, and this
is usually about 15˜20mm for a normal eye piece. For a riflescope, where the kickback from
the rifle is large after shooting, a longer eye relief of about 90mm might be more suitable.

5. Master the specsheet For an in-depth document of the history of the eyepiece, check
out this report, it’s more than I could write about the subject. Enjoy!

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Figure 5.5: HMD schematic

Figure 5.6: HUD schematic

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6. Real-world examples I have some examples of typical eyepiece lens design forms
below. As a preface, the focal lengths are all 100mm.
Singlet eyepiece

Huygens eyepiece

The Huygens eyepiece is originally two plano-convex lenses with the convex side facing
the objective lens. The first Huygens eyepieces were made of more simpler glass, like BK7.
The objective side lens is called the field lens, and the eye side lens is called the eye lens.
Interestingly, the Huygens eyepiece has a virtual image in between the two lenses, so in
a sense, the field lens can optically be part of the objective lens. It is possible to correct
the transverse chromatic aberration very well. Later, the Huygens eyepiece used meniscus
lenses, which slightly improves the performance. The most important point of the Huygens
eyepiece is its ease in manufacturing, especially with two plano-convex lenses. It is bright
but can’t have a large magnification. Some disadvantages of the Huygens eyepiece is the
longitudinal chromatic aberration and large field curvature.
The Ramsden eyepiece is two plano-convex lenses with the convex surface facing each
other. There is a significant amount of chromatic aberration which does not make it ideal for
telescopes. Compared to the Huygens eyepiece, the focal point of the Ramsden eyepiece
is outside of the two lenses, so placing patterns like a scale of a scope is easier.
Kellner eyepiece

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The Kellner eyepiece tried to solve the chromatic aberration problem by adding a dou-
blet, and can be used for a wider field of view. Although there is significant astigmatism,
field curvature, and distortion, it can still be used for a fairly wide field of view. The Kellner
eyepiece was popular in the old days but we don’t see them much anymore.
Plossl eyepiece

Plossl eyepieces are a low-cost solution because of the symmetrical shape, and we
only have to design one doublet, flip one, and then put them together. The cemented lenses
are used for colour correction, and can be many variations of glass materials. Of the more
classic eyepiece lens design forms, the Plossl is still used in many eyepieces today.
Abbe orthoscopic eyepiece

The Orthoscopic eyepiece, also called the Abbe eyepiece, since Abbe presented this
lens design for a microscope eyepiece. Although expensive to make due to the three-
cemented lenses, it is very well corrected chromatically and has low distortion. Although
the eyepoint is relatively close and the brightness is lower than other lens designs, the
Orthoscopic eyepiece still has more advantages that make it one of choice for even today’s
eyepieces.
Erfle eyepiece

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The Erfle eyepiece is a wide angle eyepiece that was first designed for binoculars but is
also used for astronomical eyepieces.
Bertele eyepiece

Bertele eyepiece (wide)

Astronomical eyepiece

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5.2 The telescope lens: The first steps to the dream of space
travel
1. History and background Telescopes are one of the oldest lens design forms, a lot
earlier than photographic lenses. This is probably because film emulsion technology de-
veloped much later, and the camera obscura only had limited applications compared to a
telescope. The telescope had scientific applications for studying distant objects in astron-
omy, and military applications as well.
There are two major telescope objectives:

• The Keplerian type telescope

• The Galilean type telescope

Figure 5.7: Keplerian Telescope

Johannes Kepler developed the Keplerian telescope, and it is a positive objective lens
and positive eyepiece lens combination. Since it is two positive lenses, the image is flipped
around top-to-bottom and also left-to-right. This is okay as far as astronomical observation,
but not practical for landscape viewing, especially in a military situation.

Figure 5.8: Galilean Telescope

Galileo Galilei developed a different configuration that solved the image flipping issue,
he used a positive objective lens and a negative eyepiece lens. Although the image is up-
right in this configuration, there is no place we can place a physical aperture stop, since
the exit pupil is a virtual image that is inside the lens. The field of view of this configura-
tion diminishes considerably. You can see that the pupil position play a great role in tele-
scopes. Interestingly, the Galilean telescope is not invented by Galilei, but was filed for a
patent a year earlier by Hans Lippershey and Jacob Metius independently from each other.
Zacharias Janssen’s name is also mentioned making it debatable who the actual inventor
is.
Most of the telescope analysis in the rest of this chapter focuses on the Keplerian tele-
scope, which is more complicated with a wide use case, and frankly more interesting than
the Galiean telescope configuration (Sorry Gallileo).

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2. Essentials for lens design Along with the eyepiece, the telescope is also an important
lens form that uses stops and pupils in order to work the way that they do.
The typial telescope is shown below. If you remember, I talked about the achromatic
doublet as a telescope objective. The telescope has two components to it, the objective and
the eyepiece.

Figure 5.9: Telescope schematic diagram

The objective creates an enlarged image of the object at infinity, and the eyepiece takes
that intermediate image and creates a virtual image at infinity that we can see. To illustrate
the system, the image above shows the object and virtual image at a finite distance. I think
this is a better conceptual description.
In order for the eyepiece to function properly, the focal plane of the eyepiece is matched
to the focal plane of the objective lens.
To describe the performance of a telescope, we generally refer to the angular magnifi-
cation γ, which is

hi L tan θ fo
γ= = =− .
ho L tan θo fe
(where ho is the height of the object, hi is the height of the image, for convenience L is the
distance of the object to the lens, θo is the half field of view of the objective lens, θ is the half
field of view of the eyepiece, fo is the focal length of the objective lens, and fe is the focal
length of the eyepiece)
In Gaussian optics, the tan θ and sin θ is the same as θ, but in actual lens design is it a
good idea to use the full trigonometric functions.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs The telescope is an
objective lens combined with an eyepiece. These are two lenses with distinct focal lengths
each.

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A similar configuration with different focal lengths is a microscope system, which en-
larges a close-focus object with an eyepiece. The only optical difference with the telescope
is the focal length of the objective lens.
Some large range zoom systems have an intermediate image to help with the magnifi-
cation. In this case, the second lens is not an eyepiece, but a focus lens, and a similar type
of logic with an intermediate image applies.

Figure 5.10: Intermediate image

Riflescopes, and binoculars are also similar optical systems.

Some projector systems create an intermediate image (of the LCD, for example) with
one lens, and then project the intermediate image onto a screen with a projection lens,
another similar optical system.

4. Tips and tricks

Stops and pupils in telescopes Most telescopes and binoculars have the entrance
pupil on the objective lens, and the exit pupil is after the eyepiece. This distance of the
eyepiece to the entrance pupil is called the eye relief. The aperture stop is usually located
at the intermediate image.

Figure 5.11: Telescope schematic diagram

Take a look at the image above, it’s a schematic diagram but represents the system well.
The blue rays are the on-axis, and the green rays are at an angle.

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The blue rays focus at the intermediate focal plane which is the rear focal plane of the
objective lens. This focal plane is also the front focal plane of the eyepiece, so the blue rays
then become parallel rays after exiting the eyepiece lens.
The green rays also focus at the intermediate focal plane which is the rear focal plane
of the objective lens. Again, this focal plane is also the front focal plane of the eyepiece, but
this time the green rays exit the eyepiece at an angle, but also parallel.
If you have a chance to look at a pair of binoculars or a telescope, try to look at the exit
pupil of the lens. You can see the exit pupil floating in the air if you get the angle right.

Figure 5.12: Binocular entrance pupil

The mistake I made with aberration correction of a telescope system I do a lot

of practice lens designs during my work time. It’s not like Google’s policy of having 20% of
your work time to do anything you want, but I am able to take a little bit of time here and
there, in the name of educating myself, to work on lens designs that may not be related to
any of our products. I have a lens design mentor who is an advisor to our company, and
he regularly gives me problems to solve. Doing these exercises has really upped my lens
design game.
The telescope system I was tasked to design was not a immensly difficult design, and I
proceeded to design the system in two parts: The objective lens, and the eyepiece.
I improved the objective the best I could, which is not difficult because it is a long focal
length system and all I had to worry about was the spherical aberration and the chromatic
aberration. And a little bit of coma.
I then proceeded to design the eyepiece, as I tested a few eyepiece design forms that
was the best. I made sure the chromatic aberration, spherical aberration, and field curvature
were as small as possible.
This is typical for commercial eyepices and telescope objectives, because we have to
have multiple objectives that work with multiple eyepieces, mix and match for different mag-
nifications.
All I had to do now was to dock the two systems together, right? I flipped the eyepiece
design around in the software (this is a useful tool when we design lenses in the opposite

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Figure 5.13: Telescope eyepiece and objective

configuration of actual use), and added it to the objective lens. I didn’t forget to change the
system into an afocal system since there is no ”point of focus”, and the evaluation of the
system would now be in diopters, not millimeters.
Since both systems had the minimum error possible, I was convinced that I had a winner
of a design. There was just no way in my mind, because both were maximally optimized!
Right?
My mentor took a look at my lens design and said: ”Did you design these separately?”
He knew exactly what I did by looking at the various parameters in the system.
I replied, ”Yep, they’re both optimized really well!” beaming with pride.
His next question: ”So how do you know that your telescope is good?”
I replied, ”Because I used an achromatic doublet, which cancels out the colour. . . ” and
I stopped as I realized that the same thing could be done with the objective lens and the
eyepiece.
We can leave a little bit of chromatic aberration in the objective lens and then correct it
with the eyepiece. We can intentionally put in a bit of overcorrected field curvature to cancel
the field curvature that can’t be corrected by the eyepiece alone.
Sometimes it’s important to have fully optimized lens components on their own. Some-
times that becomes an unnecessary constraint on our lens design. In commercial systems
with interchangeable lenses, it may make sense to make two perfect lens designs and just
stick them together. But for a custom system, it may be better to balance the performance
as a system. Even for a commercial system, if two or three objectives share the same aber-
ration properties, it would be sensible to make the eyepieces match those aberrations to
counteract the aberrations and make a nice image overall.
And my mentor knew the exact questions to ask that would lead me to the conclusion
ON MY OWN. Another lesson in lens design (all part of the journey).

5. Master the specsheet A few terms to note when designing a telescope:

• The focal length of the objective lens

• The focal length of the eyepiece
• The FOV of the system
• The magnification of the system
• The eye relief

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6. Real-world examples Besides the obvious telescope, binoculars are a worthwhile

example to explore.
Typical binoculars are double Keplerian telescopes in an optical sense.
Binoculars fix the image flipping issue with a porro prism to make the virtual image
upright to the eye.

By Antilived

In modern binoculars there are a lot of innovations to make the prism as small as possi-
ble, for better handling in use.

5.3 The microscope lens: The quest to enlarge the microscopic

world
1. History and background (Just to be clear, I’m going to be talking about optical micro-
scopes, not AFMs and SEMs and other non-optical microscopes)
Photographic objectives are generally reduction optical systems, but in contrast, micro-
scopes are enlargement optical systems. In that sense, it may seem like they are opposites
of each other, but the method to approach lens design is fundamentally the same.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t unique points about the microscope, we have to
think of the system and metrology to get a good lens design. It’s all about specifying the
system.
Historically, people would try to enlarge an object with a single lens, usually a loupe.
The shorter the focal length, the larger the magnification, but at a certain point, the distance
between the object and the lens (working distance) will be extremely close, and therefore
the distance between the lens and your eye (eye relief) will also be small.
This means simple magnifiers like a magnifying lens can’t make the magnification too
large, and it is typically 10x or a few 10x.
In the early 1600s, someone had the bright idea (the inventor is disputed) to place an
objective lens very close to the object, but instead of sticking the eye close to the image,
another magnifier lens was used to look at the image the first magnifier produced.
This other magnifier is called the eyepiece. This entire system is called a compound
microscope.
The invention of the compound microscope is brilliant. The objective lens magnifies the
object to an image, but the eyepiece gives an additional magnification so that the image can
be enlarged with high magnification while the distance from the object to the eye is far away.

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Figure 5.14: Microscope system schematic

2. Essentials for lens design For a microscope, if we think about the back focal point of
the objective lens being the stop, we can place the image where the light source is going to
be.
The chief ray goes through the stop, so the chief ray at the object is parallel to the optical
axis. The entrance pupil is at infinity, and we call this situation telecentric.
Why do we want telecentric rays for a microscope?
If the chief rays are not perpendicular to the image (parallel to the optical axis), the
defocus blur during focusing will be different across the screen, an is a problem for usability.
Here’s an example of a microscope objective.

According to the diffraction limit, the resolution of an optical system is

0.61λ ÷ NA

For optical microscopes, the wavelength λ we use is 546nm, or green.

The NA is the numerical aperture and represents how much light enters the system, and
is usually represented with the equation

NA = n sin α

.
You might recognize this as similar to the F-number, which is F/# = 1/2NA. NA and
F-number are interchangeable, but from my experience, I usually like to define NA as an
object side parameter and F-number as an image side parameter. (Not exclusively, though)

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3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs The microscope is an
objective lens combined with an eyepiece. These are two lenses with distinct focal lengths
each.
A similar configuration with different focal lengths is a telescope system, which reduces
a far object (like a star in the sky) with an eyepiece. The only optical difference with the
microscope is the focal length of the objective lens.
Some projector systems create an intermediate image (of the LCD, for example) with
one lens, and then project the intermediate image onto a screen with a projection lens,
another similar optical system.

4. Tips and tricks

The aberrations of a microscope objective The field of view of a microscope is

small, so the aberrations that we concentrate on are the spherical aberration, the coma,
and the chromatic aberration. Although the focal length is short, since the microscope is an
enlargement optical system the longitudinal aberrations become pronounced.
It is good practice to design the lens as if it is a reduction optical system, in the opposite
direction of actual use.

Figure 5.15: Microscope objective JP S49-106840

Like for the image above, the object to be magnified clearly should be at the right. But
if I were using optical design software, the rays are going left to right, so in fact I have the
setup that has starts opposite of what it should.
Regardless of the configuration, it is important to eliminate the aberration. Also, the final
design should be based on wavefront aberration rather than ray aberration, although ray
aberration is faster and therefore better to use in the early stages of the lens design.
As the magnification increases, the lens power increases, and the magnification affects
the transverse chromatic aberration. In general, the transverse chromatic aberration is diffi-
cult to correct with the objective lens alone, so Abbe took the method of leaving the opposite
transverse chromatic aberration in the eyepiece to cancel out the aberrations as an entire
system. This is called the compensation method.
The compensation method does have a disadvantage in that the objective lens needs to
be paired with the eyepiece if they correct each other. A well-corrected eyepiece used with
a microscope objective that has aberrations will not work well, and conversely, an eyepiece
that has the opposite aberration of a certain microscope objective can’t be used with an
objective with a more modest NA that has well-corrected aberrations.
The obvious thing to do was to make a chromatic aberration free method. (shown below
in ”Real-world examples”)

Index of refraction of the microscope slide If you’re designing a microscope used

in a typical biology lab, we put the sample in a microscope slide. Don’t forget to include the

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thickness of the glass and the index of refraction of the glass. Also, if there are any oils or
other liquids used for immersion, then we have to take into account the index of refraction
of those liquids as well.

5. Master the specsheet

The objective lens There are several microscope objective lens designs, which have
varying performance depending on the use. 1. Achromat objective: the spherical aber-
ration, coma, astigmatism is well corrected, but has residual field curvature. The colour
correction is for two wavelengths, usually the C line (656nm) and the F line (486nm). 2.
Semiachromat objective: The secondary spectrum is smaller than an achromat, but larger
than an apochromat. Since the chromatic aberration correction is better, it is possible to
make the NA larger. 3. Apochromat objective: Has great correction over the entire visual
spectrum, and the NA is large. 4. Plan objective: The image of this objective is flat and
good across the field, ideal for microscopes. In exact terms, most Plan objectives are Plan
achromat objectives, so they have the highest of performances for a microscope objective.

6. Real-world examples

Lens design forms of the microscope objective There are two types of lens design
forms for the typical microscope objective, the Lister objective and the Amici objective. A
microscope that requires a higher NA has an aplanatic lens or a field flattener on top of
either of the two lens types.

Figure 5.16: Amici microscope objective

Chromatic aberration free method The chromatic aberration-free microscope objec-

tive has three components, the front, middle and rear groups.
The front group is used for under-correction, the middle group is used for over-correction,
and the rear group corrects the chromatic aberration.

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Figure 5.17: Chromatic Aberration Free Microscope

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Chapter 6

Imaging lenses: Modern use cases

based on new lens design forms

I classify ”modern” after the invention of lasers in 1960.

After the invention of lasers, it opened up a world of new possibilities in terms of lens
design and optical systems. For example, there are lens designs that can be used with
lasers, and there are fabrication technologies that were made possible with lasers and sim-
ilar technology.

6.1 Stepper lenses

Lens design in Ultraviolet Short wavelengths in Ultraviolet (UV) are the opposite in prop-
erties to the long wavelengths of infrared (IR).
Usually, IR in the 850nm to 1300nm range still has the same difficulties as the visible
spectrum of 450nm to 680nm (or so). But when we get into far IR, with wavelengths of 5
microns, 10 microns, 20 microns, the index of refraction issue is smaller, the roughness of
the lens is less of an issue, and in general, the tolerances are looser and the aberrations
are less of a problem.
Given that UV is the opposite of IR, that means that the tolerances tighter for UV than
the visual spectrum. The aberrations must be better corrected in UV than visual, much
much better than IR.
Another issue with UV is that there are very few optical glass materials that are usable
below 400nm. Some examples are fused quartz (SiO2) for as short as 250nm, and Fluorite
(CaF2) for as short as 150nm.

Stepper lenses for Microlithographic process Stepper lenses are lenses are used to
produce integrated circuits and computer chips with a lithography process and requires ultra
precision lenses. The lenses need to be of very high image quality, high-resolution, and the
image has to be in the order of a few hundred nanometers, which is the size of circuits today.
Since the diffraction limit is proportional to the wavelength (0.61λ÷NA), in order to image
small sizes the wavelength needs to be short, thus UV. Also, we see that the larger the NA,
the smaller the image, so very fast lenses are also needed. A quick calculation shows that
for a wavelength of 250 nm and an NA of 0.5 (or F-number 1.0), the diffraction limit is about
0.31 microns, so we get an idea for what size of circuits are fabricated.
Other issues we need to note are the anti-reflective coating of the material, as the trans-
mission should be 100% for microlithography.

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As far as chromatic aberration, this can be corrected with a combination of SiO2 and
CaF2, but we can also rely on monochromatic illumination so that there is very little chro-
matic aberration, to begin with.
Lens design is nearly afocal and bi-telecentric, and the Petzval sum needs to be small
since any field curvature in the image will degrade the microlithography patterning.
A stepper lens needs to have high resolution so the F-number is fast, and the aberra-
tions must be as close to an ideal lens as possible. Correcting the spherical aberration for
resolution and the field curvature (Petzval sum) for image flatness is done with many lenses
to eliminate the aberrations.
Compound the F-number, the resolution expectation, the correction of aberration, along
with a high field of view, and the optical lens design is extremely difficult. Couple all of that
with a bi-telecentric lens design and we have one the highest level lens designs in a stepper
lens.
Since the resolution is achieved with shorter wavelengths, there are fewer glass types
that become usable due to transmission concerns. Fewer glass choices also make the
lens design process more difficult, as field curvature, which is the sum of the optical power
divided by the index of refraction. With few glass choices, we essentially are giving up a
degree of freedom in the Petzval sum.

Pz = ϕ1 /n1 + ϕ2 /n2 + ...ϕk /nk

ϕt = y1 ϕ1 + y2 ϕ2 + ...yk ϕk

Figure 6.1: Stepper lens

The concept of splitting lenses to decrease the aberration is in full effect in the image
above. Splitting lenses are done to decrease the curvature of each surface while keeping
the overall optical power the same. Having two lenses with less curvature with an equivalent
focal length to one lens with high curvature is better for the decrease of aberrations.
We can see that many lenses in the image above are an aplanatic shape so that the
aberrations are as small as possible during refraction.
Marginal ray paths show the large ray heights at positive elements and small ray heights
at the negative elements correct the Petzval sum. This is because the lens materials are
∑
largely similar, and using the equation for Petzval sum ( mj=0 n j /R j ) is approximately zero.
This basic idea we have seen in photographic lenses, but there are so many more lenses
for the stepper lens because of the level of correction that we need.
For the above example, the meniscus lenses at the end correct field curvature. This can
be seen for microscope objective lens design and the Planar F0.7 lens. These meniscus
lenses near the object/image used to achieve telecentricity.

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Manufacturing stepper lenses Boy, these lenses are large! Large lenses are expensive,
and the level of precision needed to make these lenses only adds to the price. A perfect
lens design needs perfect fabrication, or the lens cannot function as we need it to. The
tolerances is to the order of a wavelength, and even the assembly is done with lithography.
The final cost of a stepper lens for microlithography is in the millions of dollars.
These stepper lens manufacturers have lens polishing experts, who do an extraordinary
job in creating these microlithographic lenses. You can say it is at an artisan-ship level.
Factors affecting the quality of the surface can be the mechanical properties of the ma-
terial like hardness, to temperature affect during polishing, the flow of the abrasive material
on the surface of the glass, and manufacturing issues of that nature.
One important thing to note is that the surface roughness can’t be measured with con-
ventional measuring tools. At the same time that the surface needs to be the designed
shape, the roughness has to be to the order of a few Angstroms. Yes, you read that right,
lower than a nanometer in measure.
The difficulty of manufacturing a microlithography lens is extraordinary. Even more than
huge reflective telescope objectives like the Subaru telescope in Hawaii
All of these issues are not directly related to the lens designer, but knowing about man-
ufacturing properties and effectively transferring them to the lens design is the difference
between an amateur lens designer and a professional lens designer. Professional lens de-
signers know more about the manufacturing process, and take into account how the lenses
are made, and how they are assembled together. I sometimes wonder how many lens
designers truly take into account the manufacturability of their lens designs.
There is a nice paper on the evolution of the stepper lens for microlithography (by Nikon).
For further reading.
The Lithographic Lens: its history and evolution - Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6154 615403-1

6.2 Laser beam printers and laser scanners: f-theta lenses and
their seagull like shape
A laser beam printer or laser scanner has a rotary polygon mirror that rotates to change the
angle of entry into the optical system, and has field property of f-theta (instead of f tangent
theta, as in most imaging systems).
Sometimes MEMS mirrors are also used.
As an optical system, the wavelength of the laser is fixed.
The mirror requires high precision for good reflection, so we don’t want it to be too big.
Also, the mirror is going to spin at very high speeds like 30,000 RPM, so if it’s too big it
can be damaged or break easily.
The aperture of the system needs to be on the mirror. That means that the aperture of
the lens is outside of the lenses. Also, we need space for the rotary polygon mirror, and
space for the laser beam, so the aperture is way out of the lenses.
For a wide angle scan, we can see from the image below that the lens is extremely large
compared to the f-number, which is very slow compared to photographic objectives.
An f-theta lens has an image height y that is proportional to the ray angle θ. Most
systems are f-tangent -theta lenses, but the definition of an f-theta lens is:

y= f ·θ
This is also known as an equidistance projection, and f-theta lenses are commonly used
in laser beam printer and laser scanner systems, and fisheye lenses.

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Figure 6.2: F-theta lens

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For a laser beam printer, a laser beam is collimated onto a rotating polygon mirror, and
then through the f-theta lenses. The angle of the beam rotates at a constant speed, and the
beam reflects from one side of the f-theta lenses to the other, in effect ”scanning” through
the optical system.
Since rotational speed is constant, the change in angle is constant with time, and there-
fore the optics need to be in an f-theta configuration in order for the scanning speed to be
constant across the plane.
The lenses can be spherical, but modern scanner lenses are both aspherical and toric.
This can make the lenses more compact, and a multi-lens system can be simplified to a two
or one lens system. The location of the reflection at the mirror is the entrance pupil. The
fact that the pupil is in front of the lens and the f-theta properties makes the f-number of the
system quite slow compared to other systems. However, a laser beam has enough power
that the slow optics causes no disadvantage.
In order to make the system compact while keeping the same scanning distance y, we
need to shorten the focal length f so that the angle θ increases.
Since the perpendicular direction does not require scanning, the precision of the mirror
is important. Any vertical tilt in the polygon mirror will cause the scanning beam to move in
the vertical direction, causing irregularities in the print. One way to mitigate this is to use
a cylindrical lens and focus the perpendicular side onto the polygon mirror. In this case,
we need to make sure the f-number is consistent with the cylindrical lens compared to the
image.

Figure 6.3: F-theta lens

For these real-world examples, we can tell that the aperture of the image and the en-
trance pupil are important for lens design.

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Figure 6.4: F-theta lens

6.3 The Aspherical lens: an addition to the spherical shape

that opens up possibilities
Who doesn’t love aspherical lenses? Pop one into a lens design and it can do wonders.
Seemingly, all the aberrations go away, and you can make do with one lens instead of
many!
Not so fast. We can’t blindly use aspherical lenses without knowing what they can do
and their limitations. Let’s dive in!

1. History and background Aspherical lenses are popular use cases in compact disc
lenses, reflective astronomical telescopes, Fresnel loupes, autofocus condenser lenses,
compact camera zoom lenses, mobile phone lenses, high-end photographic zoom and
prime lenses, television cine zoom lenses, stepper lenses, and various illumination lenses
just to name a few.
Unlike spherical lenses, aspherical lenses can’t be polished in the traditional way, and
require very precise tooling and metrology. This is bound to pull the industry forward from a
technical perspective.
Today, there are not only injection moulded plastic lenses, but also glass moulded as-
pherical lenses as well, so the selection of lenses for an optical lens designer is abundant.
Let’s take a mathematical look at aspherical lenses for just a second, and get into a
more conceptual analysis of the aspherical lens. I don’t like to say this too often, but math
can help understand the concepts in most situations.
A ray passing through a surface with a spherical shape with a refractive index is ad-
vanced through the system by refraction. The laws of refraction behave as Snell’s law,

nsinu = n′ sinu′
where n is the index of refraction before the refracting surface, u is the ray angle before
the surface, and n′ is the index of refraction after the refracting surface, and u′ is the ray

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angle after the surface.

Figure 6.5: Snell’s Law for a flat surface

Simple enough, right? Okay, if we introduce a surface shape to this equation, we might
express Snell’s law like this:

nsinξ − u = n′ sinξ − u′
where ξ is the normal angle to the surface at some angle.

Figure 6.6: Snell’s Law for a curved surface

From the above equation and diagram, we can see that it is possible to change u′ while
keeping u the same when we change ξ . For a spherical surface, ξ determined by the ray
height of the lens. By using aspherical surfaces, it’s possible to change the incident angle to
the surface without changing the curvature, and therefore the focal length. By controlling the
refraction angle at key points in the pencil of rays, it can be possible to create an aberration-
free lens design.

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Figure 6.7: Aspherical surface correcting spherical aberration

2. Essentials for lens design An aspherical lens, by definition, is a lens with at least two
surfaces, with one or both surfaces are not spherical, including plane surfaces. Cylindrical
and toroidal surfaces, which are not rotationally symmetric and are not spherical but have
spherical cross-sections are not considered aspherical surfaces.
The terms A4 , A6 , so on are called aspherical coefficients, and along with the conic con-
stant k is part of the aspherical surface. We can tell by the equation that as the coefficients
increase in power, the coefficients have a larger effect on the shape. A2 has a smaller effect
than A12 on the surface shape. If you’re crazy you can use as many terms as you like, A20 ,
even.
A surface that is aspherical, in a literal sense, is a surface that is not a simple sphere.
However, when we say that a surface is aspherical in lens design, we usually mean the
following equation:

cr2
z= √ + A2 r2 + A4 r4 + A6 r6 + A8 r8 + · · ·
1+ 1 − (1 + k)c2 r2
where z is the lens sag, c is the curvature of the lens, k is the conic constant, and r is
the radius. An is the aspherical coefficient.
The first term in the equation above is the same as a spherical lens, which we call the
base surface. Any changes to the surface are caused by the aspherical coefficients that
follow. By changing k, A4 , A6 appropriately, we can change ξ and therefore gives us many
extra degrees of freedom. In modern lens designs, we are using these extra degrees of
freedom to not only decrease the aberrations of a given lens surface but to also counteract
aberrations from other lens surfaces. Also, aspherical surfaces for modern lens design are
used to achieve a certain performance or to raise the overall performance not necessarily
linked to aberration correction.
To get the most out of our aspherical surfaces, it is important to understand the effects
of the base shape of the surface or the underlying spherical shape. In general, the spherical
shapes should have a small an aberration as possible, before the addition of the aspherical
terms. This is because in general, if the aberrations of the spherical shape are small to
begin with, and the subsequent adding of the aspherical terms are small as well, and help
the ease of manufacturing.
On the other hand, we may find some lens design concepts that treat the base surface
essentially as a dummy surface and lend the aberration correction to the aspherical terms.
I personally don’t like this method, but for some optical systems it may be the only choice
we have.
One thing you may notice about the equation above is that the aspherical terms are
even powers. There are more sophisticated aspherical surfaces that have the odd terms as
well. I won’t get into it in too much detail here, but these odd terms are useful to correct the

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higher order aberrations.

For the discussion of the aspherical lens going forward, the vertex of the surface is the
point of reference, and it is rotationally symmetric.

3. Where you can use knowledge used in other lens designs Aspherical surfaces are
the basis for more complex surfaces. Biconic surfaces, extended polynomial surfaces, toric
surfaces, odd aspherical surfaces share properties with aspherical surfaces.
Aspherical lenses are useful in many situations, but it is important to know their advan-
tages and disadvantages, and even their limitations, for effective use. For example, there
are things that even aspherical lenses can’t do. Let’s take a look.
If we take a look at the aspherical portion of the 3rd order aberrations, we have some-
thing like this:

1. Spherical aberration = y4 · ψ
2. Coma = y3 · y p · ψ
3. Astigmatism = y2 · y p 2 · ψ
4. Petzval sum = 0
5. Distortion = y · y p 4 · ψ

Where ψ is some constant, y is the marginal ray height, and y p is the principal ray height.
From the equations above, we can observe them individually to deduce the following:
1: Gaussian optics are not affected by the aspherical contributions. Only the spher-
ical surfaces affect the Gaussian parameters, which means that the following cannot be
changed or corrected with aspherical surfaces:

• the focal length

• the back focal length
• Petzval sum (and therefore field curvature)
• chromatic aberrations (we’ll still need our extra-low dispersion glass ;) )

These seemingly fundamental properties are unaffected by the aspherical surface. In a

sense, that’s a huge constraint in our design. It means that if we didn’t understand or stop
to think about the above restrictions, we could mistakenly use an aspherical surface hoping
for the best, when in fact, we do not get the result we want.
Let’s say we wanted to add an aspherical lens in the hopes that we could decrease two
lenses into one, but we could end up with a lens that curves so much that the edge thickness
is less than zero, which is a fictional lens. The only way to fix such a lens is to make it thick
enough to accommodate the thin edge, which again may be an unreasonable thickness for
manufacturing.
A prime example is for certain lens systems, using an aspherical surface doesn’t mean
we can eliminate an expensive extra-low dispersion (ED) glass lens.
2: We cannot correct the coma and astigmatism independently. Since y and y p are
in both aberrations if you fix one, the other changes as well. This means that there is a limit
to the performance in terms of the coma and astigmatism.
3: To control the spherical aberration independently, use an aspherical surface at
y p = 0, or near the entrance pupil. This we can see from the distortion equation.
4: Conversely, to control the distortion independently, use an aspherical surface
near the image plane, or in other words, near y = 0. This acts as a field flattener close
to the image plane.

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Figure 6.8: Aspherics - spherical aberration correction

Figure 6.9: Aspherics - distortion correction

5: The spherical aberration can be corrected to zero with one aspherical surface.
This can be very useful for zoom lenses where the lens that moves can be made compact.
This obviously makes the lens lighter for easier movement, and the thinner lens can move
further within the zooming space. As a side note, it is possible to correct the spherical
aberration to zero with only the conic constant if the rays entering the lens are parallel.
6: The distortion and coma have the opposite sign about the stop. This is because
y is an odd power for both. By using this property, we can:

• Correct the spherical aberration independently with an aspherical surface near the
stop, as we’ve seen above.
• Correct the distortion with an aspherical surface near the image plane, like a field
flattener, as we’ve seen above.
• Correct astigmatism and the coma with two aspherical surfaces on both sides of the
stop.

Note that any chromatic aberration and field curvature (Petzval sum) has to be corrected
with the curvature of the lenses (exceptions later).

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7: For a thin lens, since y is not that different on either surface of the lens, it
doesn’t matter too much which side the aspherical surface is placed. This is useful
for a meniscus lens, we can make the aspherical surface on whichever side is easier to
fabricate or measure.
All in all, aspherical lenses are very useful, and most times essential for modern lens de-
sign, but for maximum effect, it’s good to know their properties so we can take full advantage
of them.

4. Tips and tricks

The conic constant k is the conic constant of the surface. Without any aspherical
coefficients,

• If k = 0, the surface is spherical

• If k = −1, the surface is a paraboloid
• If k < −1, the surface is a hyperboloid
• If 0 > k > −1, the surface is an ellipsoid
• If k > 0, the surface is an oblate ellipsoid This is a useful way to handle the conic
constant, and use it to our advantage in lens design.

For example, if we set k = −1, and if the radius of curvature is zero, the aspherical
equation simply becomes

z = A2 r2 + A4 r4 + A6 r6 + A8 r8 + · · ·
which is a flat surface with aspherical components. That means that the Gaussian optics
of this surface has no power, and the surface can be used to correct aberrations slightly.
For most imaging applications, aspherical coefficients to the r10 term are plenty, but
as optical lenses become more and more complex, r12 , r14 , and r16 are becoming more
common.

The shape of an aspherical surface For a spherical lens, the shape deviation from
a spherical surface is measured with interference, but an aspherical surface needs a few
more parameters to effectively evaluate the lens design.

• Figure: This is equivalent to the spherical surface measurement, where the overall
shape of the aspherical lens surface is least-square fitted to an equation, and the
differences are compared to the designed aspherical surface.
• Accuracy: This is simply the largest difference of the actual surface compared to the
designed surface. Some terms used are P-V, standing for ”peak-to-valley”.
• Smoothness: We also look at sections of the lens for differences in tilt from the de-
signed surface for small areas.

How to scale an aspherical lens Scaling a spherical surface is rather straightforward.

If we want to make the lens twice as large, we multiply the radius of curvature by 2. If we
want to make the lens half as small, we multiply the radius of curvature by 0.5.
It’s not as simple with an aspherical surface. Let me explain.
The conic constant is simple, it does not change with the scaling of the lens. If a surface
has a conic constant of -1, it is -1 regardless of the surface scaled 2x or 0.5x.

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The even aspherical coefficient is the linear sum of A4 and A6 (and so on. . . ), we can
think in terms of z = A j y j .
Let’s say we scaled the aspherical surface z = A j y j by m, we got a surface in the form
of z = B j y j . The coordinate on the aspherical surface is scaled from (z, y) to (mz, my), so in
exact terms, mz = B j (my) j and z = A j y j are coupled to each other, and we can solve the
two to get

mj
= Aj
Bj
m
Aj
B j = j−1
m
This means that the scaling of the aspherical coefficients are different for each coeffi-
cient, and we can scale them by 1/m j−1 for each.
Here’s an example of an aspherical lens scaling:

1x 3x
Radius, R 10 30
Conic constant, k -1 -1
Coefficient for r8 , A8 0.12 0.12 ÷ 37 = 5.49 × 105

The optimization of an aspherical surface Let’s think about the optimization of an

aspherical surface.
A finished spherical-only lens design is computationally at a valley in terms of the per-
formance. That’s to say that the performance can’t be improved any further by brute force.
In this case, it’s possible that a simple addition of aspherical surfaces won’t improve the
system any further. The rule of thumb is to modify the lens design slightly or to add another
target in the computation.
It’s not advisable to use aspherical surfaces in a system with a ton of aberrations. Since
the effect of the optimization of aspherical surfaces is large to the system, we may get
a surface heavy in the aspherical without optimization in the spherical. In a system with
large amounts of aberration, my suggestion is to use the conic constant only or the lowest
aspherical coefficient r4 only, and slowly add higher order coefficients to the mix.
In general lens design, I usually don’t use more than the r10 coefficient for the optimiza-
tion. Some large NA objectives for collimating systems may need more than the 10th order
aspherical coefficient, and complex shaped mobile phone lenses.
One thing to keep in mind is that although the aberrations can be corrected and the spot
diagram will be smaller using higher aspherical coefficients, the aberration curve and the
aspherical surface shape itself can become undulatory and cause unwanted difficulties in
the lens fabrication process.

5. Master the specsheet Any time there is a confinement of space, aspherical lenses
can be considered. Be careful of the properties of the aspherical lens, as some aberrations
can’t be corrected by simply adding an aspherical surface.

6. Real-world examples Below are some examples of the real-world use of aspherical
lenses.

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Condenser lenses Although the calculations and theory of the usefulness of aspheri-
cal lenses were known for a long time, the precision of aspherical lens tooling had not caught
up to be effective for mass production. The very first use cases of aspherical surfaces were
therefore on systems that did not require a high order of precision tooling, for example, the
condenser lens on a microscope illumination system.

Figure 6.10: Köhler illumination

The Köhler illumination is used for microscope illumination systems, that require a bright
NA matching the NA of the microscope objective. The resulting illumination is uniform and
bright over the illuminated space.
Köhler illumination images the light source onto the entrance pupil of the condenser
lens, and the rays passing through the condenser lens are parallel as a result. On the other
hand, the image of the entrance pupil of the light source lens is imaged to the sample, so
the sample surfaces have the image of the light source entrance pupil. Any uniformity of the
light source, like LEDs or halogen lamps and even incandescent light sources are eliminated
and the sample surface has a uniform illumination as a result.
The Köhler illumination method is a very useful method to achieve uniform distribution.
The best part about the Köhler illumination is that extreme precision is not needed to achieve
the desired result, and the aspherical terms are used to help with achieving a high as NA
as possible in the system, which matches the NA of the microscope objective.

Photographic lenses For illumination systems, in most cases, there isn’t a need for
super precision. But if we were to use an aspherical surface for photographic applications,
we would need high precision to have the desired effect without detrimental effects. One
reason why the theoretical advantages of aspherical surfaces were developed well before
the application of these aspherical surfaces is that it took a long time to be able to make
aspherical surfaces with enough precision to be used in most conventional optical applica-
tions.
Even still, the Noctilux 50mm F1.2 asph. caused the lens community to call them crazy
in the 1960s, and legend has it that this lens was ground one by one by a lapping meister
to achieve the precision needed for Leica quality lenses.
The more wide application use of aspherical lenses in photographic lenses came during
the 1980s when injection moulding of plastic lenses was developed for mass production of
disposable cameras. These cameras had only one lens, but an aspherical lens, which was
small enough to be mass produced easily, unlike SLR camera lenses, for example.
Traditionally, large plastic lenses are difficult to make due to the large change in the
thermal coefficient of expansion (TCE) and its absorbency to water in the air. Both cause

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unwanted problems, so the wide use of aspherical surfaces for photographic lenses hap-
pened when glass moulded lenses were manufacturable on a large scale.
Other methods are the hybrid type of lens, which is a spherical glass lens with a thin
aspherical plastic layer. This has the benefits of a cheaper alternative to plastic aspherical
lenses while retaining the advantages of glass over plastic.

Semiconductor laser collimator lenses For the collimation of semiconductor lasers,

the F-number of the lens has to match the NA of the laser. With the development of the
laser and changes to the NA, the lenses developed along with it. On the other hand, most
semiconductor lasers are essentially single wavelength optics, so chromatic aberration is
not an issue. The size of the illumination point of the laser is small, so the field size is
also very small, and the field curvature is not an issue. These two issues are precisely the
issues that aspherical surfaces can’t solve, so semiconductor lenses are ideal for aspherical
surfaces. Older applications are CD/DVD/Blu-ray collimator lenses.
Other exmaples in bullet point form:

• CD/DVD/Blu-ray lens. A singlet lens that focuses laser light onto the surface of the
CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc.
• Si or Ge extreme high index for far-infrared applications
• Extreme aspherical lenses: Mobile phone lenses, f-theta lenses
• Reflective optics: Telescope lenses like the Ritchey–Chrétien telescope
• Single or multiple lenses within a lens group: video camera zoom lenses, compact
camera zoom lenses, photography lenses, stepper lenses
• Fast-axis collimator for high power diode laser
• Fresnel loupes
• Auto Focus condenser lenses
• Rear-projection TVs
• Schmidt camera
• Digital projectors
• Automotive headlights and other illuminations

(Do you want some more reading? how about a link to the Edmud Optics page on
apherical lenses? Click here)

Bonus: Big mistake I made when using aspherical lenses For one of my early lens
designs, I was designing a lens with aspherical lenses. The lens systems was a surveillance
lens for IR applications, the wavelength was fixed, and there were three lenses, all surfaces
aspherical, at my disposal.
I happily went about using the aspherical lens equation below, which was the equation

cr2
z= √ + A2 r2 + A4 r4 + A6 r6 + A8 r8 + · · ·
1+ 1 − (1 + k)c2 r2
Mistake #1: Since I was a newbie, I thought, ”Gotta use as many aspherical parameters
as I can”, I mean, more is always better right? So I ramped up to the 16th power or so.
I used all the parameters I could. The more variables the more precise my result would
be, right?
WRONG! (I’m yelling at my past self)
Well, that was too many factors for the application. Depending on the specification
goals, we might not need the r14 or r16 parameter, as it is overkill. Had I known a bit more

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about which aspherical parameters affect which property, I may have been able to use my
aspherical parameters more diligently.
More parameters give more degrees of freedom, but for manufacturing purposes, it
gives more room for error. The slightest twitch in the aspherical constants for a higher order
aspherical will likely cause more errors in the lens in production. This is what we refer to as
the tolerance of the system. Also, for the fabrication process of the lens, more parameters
mean that the computer program that tools these lenses will have a harder time accounting
for shrinkage of the (plastic) lens, and accounting for tooling errors.
Mistake #2: In typical novice fashion, I added the A2 parameter, for the r2 component.
This is a big no-no for imaging lenses or lenses that rely on a focal length (and other
Gaussian optics parameters).
As you can see from the first half of the equation above, the spherical shape with the
conic constant is already using r2 . It’s right there in my face, cr2 .
All calculations that use the focal length, like F-number, relative illumination, etc., all use
this number. As I was optimizing for the spherical component (which is proportional to r2 ),
and r2 itself, I was messing up the numbers I was getting. For example, I was getting a focal
length that looks good as a number, but didn’t accurately represent the shape, because it
had an r2 aspherical component. I got the wrong focal length! And all other calculations
based on the focal length were wrong too!
Sigh
Don’t make the mistake I made, look at your aspherical lenses carefully when you’re
implementing them. More is not better, I found out the hard way :)

6.4 The freeform lens: Thinking of optical lens design in three

dimensions
Freeform surfaces Have you designed freeform optics before? Or have you run away
from a freeform before? I’ve actually done a lot of freeform lens design, ranging from HMD
(head mount display) prisms, HUD (head-up display) reflective optics, illumination optics,
laser scanners, and even freeform micro lens arrays.
The main benefit of freeform optics is the fact that they are not limited by having the axis
at its center. Also, if the optical system you are designing is asymmetrical in some way, the
aberrations can arise that can only be corrected by a freeform.

Anamorphic optical system An anamorphic optical system has two different perpendic-
ular surfaces. For example, a surface that has the x-direction flat and the y-direction as a
spherical surface is an anamorphic lens.
Anamorphic optical systems that have afocal properties are called anamorphic afocal
optical systems, and are used in combination with other optics. They can be used in com-
bination with prisms, toric lenses, and other lenses in an optical system.
To design an anamorphic optical system, we take the meridian slice and design a normal
lens system, and then take the perpendicular plane and also design the lens curvature while
keeping the thickness and lens separation distances consistently.

toric lenses, toroidal lenses, cylindrical lenses A Toric surface is a surface that is a
circle rotated about an axis, also called a toroidal surface.

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Figure 6.11: Anamorphic lens

By Dnu72 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

The cross-section of a cylindrical lens is spherical on one side, and flat on the perpen-
dicular cross-section. Therefore, the optical power of the surface is different on one cross
section compared to its perpendicular. One simple way to use the toroidal lens is to correct
the astigmatism.

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A toroidal lens can correct the distortion of an image in top-to-bottom and left-to-right
separately, can correct the beam shape of a semiconductor laser, they can be used for a
laser beam scanner. Toroidal lenses have a lot of unique use cases.
A cylindrical lens has a spherical cross section, and is the most basic of toroidal lenses.
If we use a cylindrical lens on a parallel beam, one side will focus to a point while the
perpendicular side will stay parallel, giving a line-like focus distribution. So the beam is not
focused to a point, but focused to a line.
To design a toroidal lens, we think of two systems, and correct the aberrations in each
direction separately.
A cylindrical surface is a toric surface with a rotational axis radius of infinity.
Here are some examples of cylindrical lenses and toric lenses in action.
Laser beam collimators using cylindrical lenses.

Figure 6.12: Laser beam collimator

Toric lenses are used in combination to form an f-theta lens.

Figure 6.13: Aspherical toric lens

Zemax has a nice webinar on the design of freeform surfaces. Here is the video of the
webinar. If you prefer the transcript version, you can find It here.

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Figure 6.14: HMD schematic

Figure 6.15: HUD schematic

Some examples of freeform surfaces (equations) The lenses used are aspherical sur-
faces in both the X and Y direction, and not just the cross-sections. Let’s take a look at
some useful equations for freeform surfaces.

XY polynomial surface An XY polynomial surface that has an aspherical surface as

its base, and then has terms multiplied by x and y to represent a shape.

cr2 ∑∑ l m
z= √ + Ai j xi y j
1 + 1 − (1 + k)c r
2 2
i j

Zernike polynomial surface A Zernike polynomial surface is an aspherical surface

with Zernike coefficients.

cr2 ∑
8 ∑
N
z= √ + A2i r2i + Ai Zi (ρ, ϕ),
1+ 1 − (1 + k)c2 r2 i=1 i=1
Z1 = 1
√
Z2 = 4ρ cos ϕ

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√
Z3 = 4ρ sin ϕ
√
Z4 = 3(2ρ2 − 1)
√
Z5 = 6(ρ2 sin 2ϕ) · · ·
There are more Zernike terms, but you get the idea.
I don’t like dissecting equations, and I like to give a qualitative view on equations and
how they are used. For the Zernike surface, I like to think of it as a complex freeform surface
that can replicate various freeform surfaces but also little surface irregularities, expressed
in radial terms.

Chebyshev polynomial surface A Chebyshev polynomial surface is a surface de-

fined by Chebyshev polynomials. In the optical design software Zemax Optics Studio, there
is a new surface called the Chebyshev surface, defined below.

c(x2 + y2 ) ∑∑ N M
z= √ + T i (x)T j (y),
1 + 1 − c2 (x2 + y2 ) i=0 j=0

T n (x) = cos(n cos−1 x)

T 0 (x) = 1
T 1 (x) = x
T 2 (x) = 2x2 − 1
T 3 (x) = 4x3 − 3x
T 4 (x) = 8x4 8x2 + 1
T 5 (x) = 16x5 − 203 + 5x · · ·
There are more Chebyshev terms, but we can see that with both x and y terms, the polyno-
mials get complex quickly.
The advantages of the Zernike polynomial and the Chebyshev polynomial are that they
are orthogonal surfaces, and the coefficients are comparable to each other.
A qualitative view on the Chebyshev equation is similar to the Zernike, it is a complex
freeform surface that can replicate various freeform surfaces but also surface irregularities.
Compared to the Zernike surface, the surface is expressed in rectangular terms, as every-
thing is x and y.
A radial-based surface like the Zernike can be useful for some situations, and the
rectangular-based surface like the Chebyshev surface can be useful in other situations.
For further reading, Zemax offers a Knowledge Base article on how to implement the
Chebyshev surface , and a PDF of a paper explaining results between the Chebyshev poly-
nomial compared to other freeform surfaces.

6.5 The mobile phone lens: Taking aspherical lenses to the ex-
treme
I have two examples of mobile phone lenses. One is a relatively simple three lens system,
and the other is a more complex lens systems with more lenses. We can break down the
lens design by looking at the lens the rays, and looking at the material (index of refraction
and Abbe number).

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Decoding the three element mobile phone lens Okay, first the three element mobile
lens. A lot of three piece mobile phone lenses take this shape. It is the easiest to explain
optically.

The front lens has most of the optical power, as you can see from the blue rays in the
center of the field of view (or zero degrees). The material is a relatively low index with a low
dispersion, since most of the optical power is in this lens and we do not have many lenses
for correction, we want to keep the chromatic aberration as small as possible with this first
lens.
The second lens is a high index high dispersion lens, which is there to offset the chro-
matic aberration and the spherical aberration caused by the first lens. The different material
also helps correct the field curvature.
The third and last lens is the largest and has the most complex shape. This lens is close
to the image plane, and corrects the distortion of the image. From the what we know about
aspherical lens, we know that the lens closer to the image plane, which is y = 0, to control
the distortion independently of the other aberrations. As an aside, the distortion near the
entrance pupil is zero due to y p = 0, so to control the spherical aberration independently,
use an aspherical surface on the front lens for maximum effect.
The thrid lens also corrects the field curvature. Now, I said before that the field curvature
cannot be corrected with an aspherical surface, but that was for aspherical surfaces that
were close to a spherical shape. What this third lens does is it changes the ray path of the
lenses so that the field curvature flattens as a result. Really brute-force, in a sense.

Decoding the multi (6) element mobile phone lens, in an iPhone Let’s look at another
mobile lens, more complicated than three lenses. Below is a lens design recreated from
a patent from Apple. This lens is presumably the iPhone camera from a few years ago,
perhaps the iPhone 7, timeline wise. Regardless, the camera is about the same today.

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This is obviously a much more complicated configuration, we have a whopping 6 lens

elements. If we look closely at the patent tables, we get the table in the next page:

Element n(index) ν (Abbe)

Lens 1 1.545 56.0
Lens 2 1.640 23.5
Lens 3 1.545 56.0
Lens 4 1.545 56.0
Lens 5 1.545 56.0
Lens 6 1.545 56.0

First, I see that a lot of the lenses are the same material, and a moderate index of
refraction with a relatively low Abbe number, so not too much dispersion. Similarly to the
three lens mobile phone lens, the front lens has most of the optical power, as we can see
from the blue rays in the center of the field of view (or zero degrees). The material is a
relatively low index with a low dispersion, most of the optical power here.
The second lens, Lens 2, is a high index high dispersion lens, which is there to offset
the chromatic aberration and the spherical aberration caused by the first lens. The different
material also helps correct the field curvature. Lens 2 seems to be the negative lens that
works as the high index high dispersion lens that we see in the Cooke Triplet Anastigmat.
The higher the field of view, the harder it is to correct the distortion. The faster the
F-number, the harder it is to correct the spherical aberration.
Take a look at the last four lenses of this camera. These lenses all have extreme as-
pherical properties and all the same material. These lenses try to correct the distortion and
the field curvature. The dispersion is kept low so that no dramatic increase of chromatic
aberration happens. The residual spherical aberration is corrected with say, Lens 3 and
Lens 4 (maybe even Lens 5).

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Just like for the three lens system, the field curvature is flattened by brute-force change
of the optical ray paths of due to the lens.
Break the lens down, and it becomes a little simpler to the eye. Still, this is a whopping
complex lens and really difficult to design.

The material choices of a mobile phone lens Below is the glass map for glass (and
plastic). Pretty straightforward, and although there are some exotic glass at the extremes of
the graph, it’s a typical glass catalog we can use.

Figure 6.16: All glass

Okay, now I’m going to show you the glass map for plastic only. Care to take a guess
how many we can have from the list above?

It’s okay, I’ll wait. . .

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Figure 6.17: Plastic

Plastics are in two regions, the n = 1.50 and Abbe = 57 region, and the n = 1.59 ∼ 1.65
and Abbe = 22 ∼ 28 region. Although there are many types of plastics in lens design, as
far as refractive index and Abbe number, this is a huge disadvantage compared to glass. To
be perfectly honest, this is fewer choices than glass in the pre-WWII era, some in the 1940s
years ago.
There have got to be a lot of sensor advancements compared to the lens design ad-
vancements, but I still think there are things to consider in lens design and what can make
the lens performance improve. For example, over 150 years of lens design has given us
a lot of knowledge of lens design and how different materials with different refractive index
are used in combination to improve the aberrations. More specifically, the chromatic aber-
rations can only be corrected with two or more lenses with a different abbe number. We
know that there is very little choice of refractive index for plastic materials that are required
to make compact, high-performance lenses. One choice is COP/COC materials which have
a refractive index of about 1.5 and an Abbe number of 50 or so (close to PMMA), and a
variety of polycarbonate with a refractive index of about 1.6 and an Abbe number of 20-30
or so. There really isn’t that many to choose from.
If I could only choose another type of reasonable refractive index and Abbe number it
would probably be an index of 1.55 and Abbe of 45 or so, right in the middle of the current
two. If I were being a little more unreasonable, I would want a refractive index of over 1.75
with an Abbe number of 40 or larger. I know that’s more difficult. Equally difficult is the low
index low dispersion of 1.48 and over 80.
The more the technical specifications push the envelope, the more we have to find the
base technologies that help with our task. Sometimes it’s as simple as investigating new
refractive materials that may work with your system.

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6.6 Laser applications: The new age of optical lens design

How to think about laser applications in this guide The physics of lasers is fascinating.
From the physical properties of a laser to how the pulse lasers are made, all interesting stuff.
However, for this guide I want to concentrate on how to design optical lenses for the laser
as a light source. That means that although the properties of the laser beam are important,
I won’t get into how those beams are created, but more about how to use them in practice,
in terms of lens design. Most of the discussions will be consistent to the discussions above.

The optical lens design of laser applications The spectral width is very narrow com-
pared to photography lenses. The wavelength width can be a few nm. This is convenient
since the wavelength can often be a singular wavelength. Most cases do not need chromatic
aberration correction. Even with multiple light sources, the design can be done individually.
The power of a laser is usually a Gaussian distribution, and can be approximated as
such. However, with laser systems becoming more and more complex and requiring precise
designs, there are some cases where approximating a Gaussian distribution can lead to
errors. In this case, be sure to measure the distribution of the laser or get someone to
measure it for you, so you can put it in the lens design.
Most lasers have polarization, and this has to be taken into account in the lens design.
For some laser applications, the polarization is random, like VCSELs.
Since the coherency of the light is high, any defects in the lens will cause errors in
the distribution. Defects include scratches, dirt/dust on the surface, air bubbles in the lens,
shape irregularities of the optical surface. For example, for high power lasers, any dust
can burn the surface of the lens and cause damage, even as severe as cracking the lens.
Cemented lenses use adhesives, which may be sensitive to some lasers, so most lens
forms will be separated.
The laser light going back to the source is called retroreflection. When retroreflection
occurs, this can damage the source or cause the source to be unstable. In order to ac-
commodate the retroreflection, we can use anti-reflective coatings, isolators, and tilting the
optical system a little bit so that light does not go back.

Gaussian beams The distribution of a laser beam is usually a Gaussian. The intensity of
a laser beam I is the exponential function as a function of x multiplied by the center intensity
I0 . Since the intensity is decreasing the exponential function is negative. The parameter x
in the exponential is squared, and theoretically the beam has intensity to infinity. Also, the
distribution is symmetrical in the positive and negative directions.
e is equal to 2.7182818, and represents a mathematical constant. Since it’s not possible
to calculate a width of an infinitely wide laser beam, the width is measured at 1/e2 of the
maximum power. 1/e2 is about 13.5%, and let’s call the width d. The point at which the
beam is smallest is the beam waist.
1/e2 is used since the standard deviation in 2σ, and the area underneath accounts for
95% of the laser beam, and is deemed sufficient for this case.
Conversely, if we’re thinking of crafting an optical system where more than 95% of the
beam is used, we need to think about how far we want to widen the beam, and use the
appropriate intensity that comes with it. For example, a width of 3σ is 1/e3 and accounts for
more than 99% of the beam power.
There are some cases where the width of the beam is the full width at half maximum
(FWHM), and both 1/e2 are common. As a lens designer, one of our jobs is to figure out
what the data of the laser source gives us in terms of width, and then use what is appropriate

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Figure 6.18: Laser Gaussian distribution

for the system. For example, the laser data sheet may give the width in FWHM, but the client
may want the results in 1/e2 because that is appropriate for the application. It is important
to make these things clear.
The Gaussian beam can be manipulated as rays from a source. The distribution can be
calculated by assigning the power of the rays to each, and re calculating them after the rays
go through the system.
A beam expander is a combination of two lenses, where the image side focal point of
the first lens matches the object side focal point of the second lens. The magnification is
M = f1 / f2 . The beam expander also expands the beam waist by M , and the divergence
of the laser beam is 1/M . A typical semiconductor laser has a 10 degree slow axis and a
30 degrees fast axis, so we can control the beam divergence with cylindrical lenses on one
side.

Figure 6.19: Afocal beam expander

Also, we can design aspherical beam expanders that not only change the beam diver-
gence but can change the distribution from a Gaussian distribution to a uniform distribution.
Of course, the distribution need not be uniform, and it is possible to make different variations
of the distribution.
Lasers are an important part of a lens designer’s toolbox. I plan to get into laser appli-
cations more in-depth laser in the future, I promise!

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Bonus: How the Gaussian distribution was almost not called the ”Gaussian” distribu-
tion New Year’s Day 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres. He quickly
lost it to the glare of the sun, and could not calculate the orbit with the existing methods at
the time. Gauss quickly developed and published a new method for calculating orbit, and
Ceres was soon found again. Gauss also provided the corrections for the orbit as well. The
methods Gauss used were we based on linear regression and least squared analysis, but
didn’t publish his methods. French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre also developed
this method and published it before Gauss could get to it. For a long time this method was
credited to Legendre, an equally superb mathematician, until historical evidence in letters
and notes proved that Gauss was the inventor of the method, thus called the ”Gaussian dis-
tribution” that we call it today. Funny to think that maybe we would be calling the Gaussian
distribution the ”Legendre distribution” had history played out differently.

6.7 Diffractive optics: Harnessing the phase and wavelength

properties of light
Basics, how to use diffractive optics Although a typical lens refers to a refractive lens,
a lens that uses diffractive properties is called a diffractive lens.
Diffractive Optical Elements (abbreviated as DOE), and even the old name, the diffrac-
tive surface, is sometimes wrapped with the term DOE today.
There are more and more terms that identify as diffractive optics, DOE being one of
them, and others like HOE (Holographic optical elements) and BOE (Binary optical ele-
ments). Holography technology is used for HOEs, and lithography technology is used for
BOEs, but in principle, they are all using diffractive properties instead of refractive properties
to change the ray angles of the light.
A binary shape diffractive surface loses efficiency while a blazed-shape diffractive sur-
face has 100% diffractive efficiency, and the technology has evolved a lot since the early
days of DOEs.
The holography technique is used with two laser beams causing an interference and
patterning a sinusoidal shape. Usually, the holography is done on a master lens, and a
replica of the lens is taken to make the mould for mass production. Since the tooling method
is optical, the shapes and periods of the diffractive grating are much more consistent than
machine tooling. The precision and consistent shapes due to the holography method results
in higher diffractive efficiency and less stray light.
Nowadays, computational design of the diffractive element and photolithography is of-
ten used to make diffractive elements. A computer is used to make a mask pattern on
the substrate, and photolithographic etching is performed to make the desired pattern for
diffraction.
The simplest conceptual method for making a diffractive optical element is by mechan-
ical tooling, for example, diamond turning a tooling bit to make precise microscopic blazed
structures.
With the development of DOEs, they are used in diverse applications for many optical
surfaces and optical systems.

Basics, how diffractive optics work A simple equation of the diffractive surface is as
follows:

mλ
sin θ′ − sin θ =
d

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where θ is the incident angle, θ′ is the diffracted angle, m is the diffractive order, λ is the
wavelength, and d is the period of the diffractive grating.
Just to recap, the Abbe number of a refractive lens is

nd − 1
νd = ,
nF − nC
and the average glass lens can have an Abbe number of anywhere between 20˜95.
The DOE has an Abbe number that is only dependent on the wavelength, as follows:

λd 587.56nm
νd = = = −3.453.
λF − λC 486.13nm − 656.27nm
We immediately see that the Abbe number for a DOE is negative, and therefore opposite
to the refractive lens. This gives us an interesting property to play with.
Therefore, the refractive lens bends shorter wavelengths like blue light more than longer
wavelengths like red light, while the diffractive lens is the opposite, bending longer wave-
lengths like red light more than shorter wavelengths like blue light.
We can use the two properties together to get a single lens that has very good colour
correction. This is particularly useful when only a single element is possible, for something
compact like a DVD or Blu-ray disc lens.

Figure 6.20: Diffractive optics for colour correction

If we change the period of the diffractive grating at different points in the overall surface,
we can change the angle of diffraction at different points, thus making it similar to the as-
pherical surface in terms of being able to control the angle of diffraction/refraction in any
point along the lens surface.
The problem with a DOE is the efficiency. Theoretically, 100% efficiency can only be
achieved at one wavelength and one angle, and all other wavelengths and incident angles
and lose efficiency.

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How to design diffractive optics The way that I suggest to design a diffractive surface is
to use the phase function method or the high index method.
For the phase function method, we add a phase function to any surface, it can be a
plane or a spherical surface, or even an aspherical surface.

2π
ψ(r) = Ψ(r)
λ
Ψ(r) = α1 r2 + α2 r4 + α3 r6 + α4 r8 + · · ·
where ψ is the phase function and Ψ is the ray path function.
Optical design software such as Zemax and Code V have the phase function built in, and
we can take the phase values and convert them to actual physical shapes for manufacturing.
Just to be thorough, the high index method is like a thin film, and we use a high index
like 500 to 10,000. If the index is too small, there can be errors that become problematic,
and if the index is too large it calculation accuracy can drop depending on the effective digits
we’re using.

n(λ) = mλ × C + 1
where C is some constant.
The index acts as a surface that changes the angle of the rays depending on the diffrac-
tive order and the wavelength.
Either way, we have to change the calculation we get from the phase or the ray path
difference into an actual surface.

Ψ(r) + jλ
L=
n−1
where L is the amount tooled for each orbicular zone i.
The surfaces can be fabricated by electron beam lithography and other etching pro-
cesses.
It is also possible to tool a mould, and for materials like Germanium and Silicon, we may
tool the material directly.

Some real-world examples of DOE lenses

• Canon Zoom lens

• Umicore chalcogenide diffractive lens

Diffractive optics can be used in examples where the diffraction is used in optical com-
ponents other than a replacement lens application.
The following are just a few examples of where diffractive optics can be used:

• Lens application
• Splitting of light beams
• Wavelength filters

Some specific uses case examples:

Holographic scanner: A hologram is either moved or spun to control a laser beam.

Depending on where the laser is hitting the diffractive element, the laser spot will move to a
different location, thus enabling high-speed scanning across a given area.
Holographic scanners at IEEE GlobalSpec

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Head-up display HOE: Using the wavelength filtering properties of an HOE, we can
show different images in the vision. This can be used in wearable displays

Laser beam splitter: For example, these are used in laser scanner applications like
laser beam printers. Also, they are used in laser tooling applications where one parallel
beam of light can converge to several points on the tooling surface.

Laser beam homogenizer: Usually, laser beams have a Gaussian distribution. There
are applications where a uniform distribution or a top-hat type distribution is needed. Uni-
formity is useful in illumination optics, and for laser tooling applications. A common term
is a ”beam shaper”, which shapes the beam into an arbitrary shape. To achieve this, a
non-axially-symmetric DOE is needed, and photolithography is used.

Figure 6.21: Beam shaper, Gauss to tophat

Diffuser: For a long time, diffusers were used with a ground-glass plate or a glass
plate with diffractive material laced inside. With holography, we can make a smoothly dif-
fused surface by using the higher orders of diffraction effectively. Also, unlike ground-glass,
the diffusing pattern can be shaped into oval or linear shapes rather than simply round dif-
fusion. These holographic diffuser plates are compatible with coherent light and incoherent
light, do not have wavelength dependency and polarization dependency and can be used
effectively in many situations.
Diffractive optics have properties that are different from conventional lenses and prisms,
so it is good to acknowledge these differences and keep in mind when they will be useful.

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On the other hand, there are disadvantages to diffractive optics as well, so it is best to
acknowledge those weaknesses as well.
Advantages of diffractive optics:

• We can control the wavefront of the outgoing light from an incoming wavefront
• Diffractive optic lenses can be very thin, as the diffractive grooves are small and shal-
low
• It is possible to combine both converging properties and diverging properties in one
diffractive element
• It is possible to utilize multiple diffractive orders to our advantage
• The shape is replicable in metallic moulds, and therefore it is possible to mass produce
diffractive optics with high accuracy
• The dispersion properties of the wavelength are the opposite to refractive lenses, and
we can use this effectively for chromatic control
• It is possible to make the optical systems more compact using diffractive optics

Disadvantages of diffractive optics:

• Since the dispersion of diffractive optics is dependent on the wavelength, it is not

easily used in white light applications where there is a continuous band of wavelength
for the light
• It is imperative that all of the diffractive orders are taken into account, as some higher
orders can cause stray light or ghosting problems
• The diffractive efficiency, wavelength properties, and angular properties all have to be
taken into account in use

Light Shaping Diffusers by Luminit

Figure 6.22: Computer Generated Hologram

Plastics for diffractive optic applications: submicron structures Diffractive optics are
mostly sub-micron plastic lenses, since the structures need to manipulate light on a wave-
length level. It is definitely different than our imaging lens designs, because we need to
calculate the wavelike properties of the light, and not simply treat them as rays.
Having the ability to design diffractive structures is useful for any lens designer’s toolbox.
You can combine it with a normal lens design for a more complex system, and your range
of techniques will certainly expand.

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I thought I’d take a closer look at our favourite diffractive optic in the iPhone X series,
which makes FaceID possible.

Figure 6.23: Front camera for Face ID

To get a dot-styled projection system we need to do it by using diffractive optical el-

ements. Also, DOEs can be used in applications such as spectroscopy, beam shapers,
athermalization, and correction of chromatic aberrations. Learning how to use diffractive
optics is key as a lens designer.
The difficulty of submicron plastic lenses is the moulding process, which has to be done
for structures that are 10 - 50 microns in size.

The Face ID patent in the iPhone X series smartphone I did some research on the
FaceID technology of the iPhone X. It is basically similar to a motion capture system, and
records depth data from an infrared dot projector. The FaceID algorithm is a bit of machine
learning technology in itself, but lens design wise the technology is in the dot projector.
There is a whole list of patents that can be found on the web, but it’s not that fun to read
the language. I found some interesting images and information, though.

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Embodiments of the present invention provide integrated optical projection de-

vices that may be used particularly in projection of patterned radiation.
There is therefore provided, in accordance with an embodiment of the present
invention, optoelectronic apparatus, including a semiconductor die and a mono-
lithic array of light-emitting elements formed on the semiconductor die in a grid
pattern including multiple columns. Conductors are formed on the die so as to
define a respective common contact for driving each column of the light-emitting
elements.
In disclosed embodiments, the light-emitting elements include vertical-cavity
surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs).
US patent US9740019B2, Integrated structured-light projector

I know, the language is unbearable. But we need this language to make sure there
aren’t any misunderstandings (like Oxford commas). In any case, patents are a wealth of
information and you can use the patents as research for technology in a company or field of
interest. Check out some of the patent documentation for yourself, you can dig into them if
you have the time. If you put the work in to be able to effectively and efficiently read patents,
I guarantee you it will help you develop as a lens designer.

• US9740019B2
• US20170314763A1
• US20150193657A1
• US9554122B2
• US9400177B2

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Keeping on topic of the FaceID technology, my not-so-original-guess to the future of

Face ID is that it is coming to the Mac. Imagine the Macbook unlocking itself with Face ID
as you open the clamshell. There would no longer be that little wait to the login screen and
then the typing of your password. I know the Apple watch already provides this capability,
but to own an Apple Watch you need an iPhone. With Face ID the same handiness is
embedded into the hardware itself.
Also, this patent was filed in 2010, so you get an idea of how far Apple (and other tech
companies) think things through. At the same time, just because something is patented
doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a product behind it.
If you’re interested in diffractive optic design, Zemax Optics Studio has a webinar on
diffractive optics tools.

Wrap-up on diffractive optical elements We can see that diffractive optics are not only
useful for lens type applications but all sorts of optical systems. As a lens designer, we
are not only restricted to refractive and reflective optics, but also more complicated optical
properties like diffraction. Diffractive optics will continue to be used in many optical systems
like optical communication, laser applications, displays, and many many more.
Although understanding diffractive optics and using them effectively can seem more
difficult than our conventional refractive and reflective lenses, it is mostly because of the
concepts like wavefront, phase control, and other properties that don’t come up too often in
conventional lenses. I also feel that there are few textbooks and examples that cover both
the theory and the application in one wide swoop.
However, my feeling is that a more efficient optical element at the smallest size possible
is the highest motivation for the development of diffractive optics.

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Chapter 7

Illumination lenses: A totally

different approach to optical lens
design

Illumination optics is totally different than geometrical lens design, as there is less emphasis
on mathematics and more brute force simulation. Some intuition and experience apply, and
innovative lens configurations can help the optical design.
With optics having so much applications in industry, engineers and companies that used
to have nothing to do with optics now need optical components. Most optics books deal with
the classical ray tracing method mostly used in photographic lenses, and the documentation
is more specialized for certain areas.
Further, since more complex illumination lens design cannot be done exclusively by
geometric ray tracing, as there are large and complex light sources, mirrors, projection
lenses, all in the optical system. Since there is so much that affects the optical system,
there are a few things that I’d like to cover to get a feel for illumination.

7.1 The two things you need to absolutely be familiar with to

design an illumination system
Here they are:

1. The various terms of photometry and radiometery

2. étendue

7.1.1 Photometry and radiometry

Photometry and radiometry are the same terms described for the visual spectrum (photom-
etry) and all wavelengths (radiometry).
We distinguish between the two because there are illumination systems like automobile
headlamp lighting which are visible to the eye, and infrared lighting which is not visible to
the eye.
There are a lot of terms, but I will show the most basic terms.
There are equations and calculations for all of these terms that I won’t get into here,
but if you can familiarize yourself with this table, it will be easy to follow over 90% of all
illumination designs.

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Radiometric Photopic
Flux Power (Watts = W) Luminous flus (lumens = lm)
Flux/area Irradiance (W/m2) Illuminance (lm/m2 or lux)
Flux/solid angle Radiant Intensity (W/sr) Intensity (lm/sr or candela = cd)
Flux/area-solid angle Radiance (W/m2-sr) Luminance (lm/m2-sr or nit)

If you like visual representations of units of measure like I do, below is my schematic
diagram of photometric units.
For more information on how to spec out an illumination system, check out the illumina-
tion section to my specification cheat sheet, and it will give you a good idea on what to look
for in an illumination design.

Figure 7.1: Schematic diagram of photometric units

7.1.2 Étendue
étendue may be the single most basic yet important term when designing an illumination
lens system.
First, étendue explains the flux transfer of the optical system. Second, étendue is a
measure to how we can shape the distribution of the illuminated target.
There are papers, textbooks, equations, and derivations that explain and prove the
mathematical relationship of étendue. I like to simplify étendue to the solid angle times
the area, and this has to be conserved.
Conservation means that beam diameter or area multiplied by the beam solid angle is a
constant value. In simple terms, in an optical system where the étendue is conserved, the
amount of light that can pass through the system is determined by the product of the solid
angle and the area.
I like to use étendue when I’m explaining to a client how their large LED can’t be colli-
mated. The area of the LED is large (finite). They want a perfect collimator. That means,

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Figure 7.2: étendue schematic

from an étendue standpoint, we have the product of the area of the LED A and the angle of
the beams from the LED u. Both are going to be finite numbers. They want the collimator
to have perfect collimation, which means the refracted rays u′ is zero. A × u = A′ × u′ can’t
be conserved if u′ needs to be zero. We’d need an infinitely large lens (essentially, A′ ) to do
that. No go.
I have more examples, but you get the idea. Use the laws of physics to debunk un-
achievable specifications that you may notice. No fault to the client, it’s what they need for
their system. It’s up to us to figure an optical work-around to get them what they want with
minimal compromise.
étendue is a French word which literally means extent.

7.2 Köhler Illumination

Köhler illumination is the illumination method where an objective lens is used to image the
light source onto a plane. If we place the aperture on the object, in this case the source, the
it can be imaged onto a surface.

Figure 7.3: Köhler illumination

Designing a Köhler illumination system we do not raytrace the rays from the light source,
but we use the opposite idea where we pretend as if there is an uniform light distribution
at infinity. If we trace these rays at infinity to the source, we should get uniform light when
using the source as a light source. This method is useful for many illumination applications.

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Figure 7.4: Köhler illumination, field stop

Figure 7.5: Köhler illumination, aperture stop

The field stop is used to limit the area of illumination on the illumination area. Limiting
the amount of light helps eliminate flare and ghosts, and sharper images are possible.
On the other hand, aperture stop limits the projection of the light source, in this case the
filament of our light bulb, which enables adjustment of brightness of the field of view.
There is a handy link where you can roughly calculate the paraxial optics of a Köhler
illumination system at Edmund optics, click here. Note that although the final design needs
some optimization from optical design software like Zemax, This gives us a great starting
point of the design based on the specifications and limitations of the system.
For high end illumination systems like a stepper system, the uniformity must be below
a few percent. In order to make the distribution uniform, there is an integrator in the middle
of the system, usually multiple rods that act as multiple light pipes. Each portion of the
integrator acts as a Köhler illumination system.
Microlens arrays (MLAs) can used as multiple Köhler illumination systems to get a small
NA for each lens but a good brightness and uniformity overall, since the illumination of each
microlens is superimposed on the illuminated image plane.
In the two images below, we can see that each microlens acts like the two images above,
if we break it down.
A term that is useful in illumination optics is the coherence ratio. The coherence ratio is
the NA of the illumination divided by the NA of the objective lens. If this coherence ratio is
zero, the system is coherent and similar to ray optics used in photography. If this coherence
ratio is infinity, the system is incoherent and an illumination system. When the coherence
ratio is somewhere in between, there is a partial coherence to the system, and the smaller

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this ratio is, The contrast is better, but if it is too small the system may not be too bright.

Figure 7.6: MLA Köhler illumination, field stop

Figure 7.7: MLA Köhler illumination, aperture stop

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7.3 Where illumination optical lens design is useful

In general, the light source used for illumination is an ideal light source with a circular or
rectangular shape, with a uniform light source. In this case, the main aberration to be
careful of are the spherical aberration and the coma. This is sufficient in some cases but as
the illumination system becomes more complex or the illumination system requires precise
simulations, a more precise representation of the light source is needed.
Illumination optics are used in the following cases:

• Projection lenses for projectors and/or measurement apparatus

• Microscope systems
• Steppers
• LCD back lights for TV, smartphone screens
• Lightguides
• Solar concentrators
• Lamps such as LED lamps, automotive headlights
• Collimators and beam shapers

There are more and more components that diverge from a simple photograph, and the
lens design need to accommodate for it. Here are a few examples of light sources:

• Lasers
• VCSELs
• LEDs
• Incandescent light sources
• Halide lamps
• Fiber optic sources

7.4 Plastic lenses for illumination applications: lighting, LEDs,

and a host of applications
Like I have stated before, illumination optics is totally different from imaging optics, as the
lens design is done with non-sequential raytraces rather than sequential raytracing. In se-
quential raytracing the ray passes through the surfaces one by one (in sequence), while for
non-sequential analysis the rays can hit any object in any order. Accurate 3D models are
also usually used in non-sequential analysis.
The single most important thing to consider in illumination lens design, in my mind, is
the light source. The more accurate the light source is set in the lens design, the more the
result will represent real life. We can approximate some applications with a point source,
but most of the time we need to either model the light source, or use ray data.
Below is an example of how different an illumination lens can look. It is an LED collimator
lens.
Since the light from an LED is spreading in all directions, the angle is very large. There
are two optical components to this lens, a refractive surface in the center of the lens for the
narrow angles coming from the light source, and a Total Internal Reflection (TIR) surface for
the larger angles.
The way we would go about the optical design is different than a normal photographic
objective. First of all, there are no third-order aberrations that we can calculate to decrease.
Second, the rays that are refracted and the rays that are reflected cover different paths, and
have to be optimized separately.

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Figure 7.8: LED ray data

7.5 Other illumination methods

• Critical illumination: Imaging the light source on the object surface of a projecting lens.
One method of doing critical illumination is using a light source, a elliptcal mirror, and
a projection lens. The advantages are that it is bright and the efficiency is very good.
The disadvantage is that if the light source is not uniform it can be hard to get a
uniform distribution, and light sources like incandescent lamps do not work well. Also,
the projected surface becomes very hot. Finally, it can’t be made too wide.
• Transmitted illumination: method to observe a sample through transmission much like
in a microscope.
• Reflected illumination: A method to observe a sample by shining reflective light onto
the sample.
• Dark field illumination: method of illumination that shines light off-axis so that the light
does not enter the observer directly, and uses diffusion of diffraction to observe the
sample.
• Telecentric illumination: An illumination method where the illuminated light is perpen-
dicular to the surface of the illumination.

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Figure 7.9: LED collimator

7.6 Bonus: Real world calculation of luminance, illuminance,

and luminous intensity
Recently at work, I used the basic equations for intensity, luminance, and illuminance, to
figure out a problem I was having at work.
We were comparing two illumination devices for their performance, and they have similar
functions but have some significant differences as well. They both illuminate a certain area,
so we wanted to know how they perform against each other. One is a recent lens design,
and not a product yet, but we had the design specs on hand. The other device was a module
we took apart and measured. We wanted to compare the performance of the product that
we were going to make, to the one in the market. Oh, the battle is on!
Anyway, the lens design (my lens design, ahem) had a specification in luminance (can-
dela per square metre). Here’s the setup for the system:

Figure 7.10: Luminance drawing

It’s an illumination system that is placed diagonally, hits a surface (presumably the floor

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or ground) and we observe it nearby. The specification sheet said, ”Put a luminance meter
above the illuminated area and make sure to get this luminance [cd/m2 ]”. The product and
prototypes were going to be measured with a luminance meter, so the target was luminance.
On the other hand, this is the existing module:

Figure 7.11: intensity drawing

We didn’t know the configuration, but since we had the existing product on hand, we
dismantled from the module and decided to measure it to see the performance. The con-
figuration above was measured by our metrology team with an intensity meter, so the units
are for luminous intensity or candela.
Now, if you are confused by all the terms sounding the same, you aren’t alone. There are
plenty of people who say illuminance but mean luminance, use the term brightness incor-
rectly, and confuse how luminance is a bitch to calculate in lens design software accurately.
It’s worth it to write the terms schematically to get a feeling for what they mean.
So what did I do? I decided to reverse calculate and convert the specification of lu-
minance in our design into the luminous intensity of the measurement. So I set up the
comparison system on paper:

Figure 7.12: intensity drawing

Our design shines light onto a surface, and the specification is measuring the luminance
(L ). That means that there is some illuminance hitting the surface, denoted Eh . That came
from the module at an angle theta, so we converted the cosine component to get E (illumi-
nance) from the source. The illuminance from the source was emitted as luminous intensity
I, which is calculated by multiplying the illuminance with the square of the distance.
Even though the design required luminance as a measure for performance, it was pos-
sible to estimate the measurements of the existing product to compare. We just needed to

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calculate the perceived intensity of the light source and the lens of our design as if we were
measuring it.
In any case, this is an example of how equations we found in a book directly helped a
product. Exciting day at the office!
There is much much more to illumination lens design. I will dedicate a complete blog
post to it, I promise.

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Bonus: A list of interesting

applications of lens designs not
mentioned thusfar

• Telecommunication lenses and optical fibers

• Optical fibers
• Optical wireless communication
• GRIN (gradient index) lenses
• Selfoc lenses
• IR-corrected lenses
• Lenses for X-Ray imaging
• Lenses for fluorescent imaging
• Endoscopes, other medical applications
• Lens Arrays
• Hyperspectral lenses
• Thermographic lenses (Germanium, ZnSe, . . . )

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Lens design forms and the

principles of optical lens design

The principles and methods of lens design The scientific method states that we take
an assumption or hypothesis and then test that hypothesis. The lens design is a similar
process. To increase the performance of the lens, we sometimes change a section of the
lens design, or we contrive a change in the method of aberration correction, but these are all
testing the hypothesis. The correction of the aberrations and the change in the performance
determines the outcome of our hypothesis.
The hypothesis that we can try is also very diverse. Trying a lens type is a hypothesis
in itself, and changing a section of the lens design or providing targets and goals for the
aberrations, providing the parameter or variables to change within the lens design are all
hypotheses that we try on route to completing the lens design.
Hypotheses are based on thought experiments like experience, knowledge, or hypothe-
ses are based on intuition. If we base our hypotheses on experience and prior knowledge
too much, we can fall into traps like stereotypes, and may not be able to think outside of
the box for some innovative ideas. Sometimes not knowing can be a strength. We can go
for trial-by-error and set up multiple hypotheses one at a time, and end up with the distilled
essence of a final lens design.

The identity of a lens designer The characteristic of optical lens design techniques is
determined by the trial and error process. The trial and error process can give rise to great
diversity in the lens design, and this is common in lens design. The diversity of lens design
shows the difficulty of lens design, but also the potential of lens design, and the fact that
lens designers have been self-reliant of their outcomes. The day may come at some point
where human beings aren’t needed to complete a lens design, but I think that this diversity
tells us that there is hope for a while.
Unfortunately, subjective hopes and wishes of a lens design result must match the ob-
jective reality of the laws and principles of physics. This is a fact. But there are instances
where the qualitative desires of a product can open up new solutions to problems that we
may not have realized before.
For example, if lens designers of the past persisted on continuing to use the triplet
format for all lens designs, if we wanted a faster lens with a larger aperture (qualitative
desire), we would have been blocked by the properties of the triplet (objective reality), and
there would be major compromises. But the desire for faster lenses helped develop a triplet
with an aplanatic lens called the Ernostar, and this was the new objective reality. The
Ernostar produced the Sonnar, which is the next of the objective reality, and so on and so

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on. The geniuses of lens design came up with solutions to unique problems to further the
development of lens design.
The fact that there are many solutions to a single problem means that a hundred lens
designers can come up with a hundred different lens designs. This means that each lens
designer’s choices, ideas, thoughts, and even daily life can affect the outcome of a lens
design. Yikes! For example, if your day by day is dominated by authoritarian thoughts, you
may come up with safe but a lens without individuality. Of course, learning the essence of
past lens designs are equally important, but we have to keep in mind this aspect of lens
design.
Like I’ve stated before, automatic and computational lens design are powerful tools, but
if we have the same specification or target for a lens design with the same starting point,
and the same lens design form, chances are that two different people can arrive at a similar
solution. In these kinds of cases, we can differentiate by making our design more compact,
or our design with a faster F-number. This requires the addition of a different idea in the
starting lens design so that a difference emerges. Automatic optimization in lens design
alleviated the calculations and solutions to linear and non-linear equations, but on the flip
side, made the specifications more complex and forces the output of more and more ideas
to more difficult problems.
If you’ve ever done lens design, you know that there is always the possibility of a better
lens design. In a sense, there is no end to lens design, and I think that this Guide proves
that. As a lens designer, it is our challenge to take these new problems head-on and to find
creative solutions to unique problems to better our knowledge on lens design.

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References

• Lens Design Methods, Yoshiya Matsui, Kyoritsu Press 1972 (Japanese)

• Lens design Fundamentals, Rudolf Kingslake, Academic Press 1978
• Lens Design Engineering, Jihei Nakagawa, Tokai University Press 1986 (Japanese)
• A History of the photographic lens’ R. Kingslake, Academic Press Inc. 1989
• Introduction to Lens Design: With Practical Zemax Examples, Joseph Geary, Willmann-
Bell 2002
• Modern Lens Design, Warren J. Smith, McGraw-Hill Education 2004
• Field Guide to Geometrical Optics, John E. Greivenkamp, SPIE Press 2004
• Optical System Design, Robert Fischer, McGraw-Hill Education 2008
• Applied Optics and Optical Design Part 1 and Part 2, A. E. Conrady, Dover Publica-
tions 2011
• Field Guide to Lens Design, Julie Bentley, Craig Olson, SPIE Press 2012
• Kazamaki, T. and Kondo, F., ”New Series of Distortionless Telephoto Lenses,” J. Opt.
Soc. Am. 46, 22-31 (1956).
• Kingslake, R., ”Telephoto vs. Ordinary Lenses: A Tutorial Paper,” in Journal of the
SMPTE, vol. 75, no. 12, pp. 1165-1168, (1966)

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Software used

• Zemax Optics Studio

• LightTools

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