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Metalens

Camera lens inspired by eyes of extinct trilobites can focus on near and far objects at the same time

May 13, 2022 by Alex Baker 1 Comment
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Inspiration for new technology is everywhere, even in the fossils of prehistoric creatures it seems. Scientists have developed a nanophotonic light field camera with extreme depth of field capabilities, based on the eye of the extinct trilobite, Dalmanitina socialis.

Ask any palaeontology (or just about any 5 year old) and they will tell you that the trilobite was one of the first animals to develop complex eyes. Very complex it turns out. What made it unique was the fact that it could focus on both near and far objects simultaneously. Most eyes and cameras simply cannot achieve this dual focus feat.

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This new tiny camera overcomes the problems of metalenses by using a whole bunch of them at once

Apr 15, 2022 by John Aldred Add Comment
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Metalenses have been a thing for a while now. We first wrote about them here on DIYP back in 2016 when a team at Harvard first built a lens that’s even thinner than the waves of light being focused. The goal of such lenses is to essentially shrink cameras down as much as possible. They use nanostructures to focus the light instead of the optics we’re used to in more traditional lenses, but they have something of a flaw.

It’s kind of a fatal flaw, too, and that’s image quality. The images aren’t really sharp, nor are they high resolution – especially when it comes to wide angles. They’re “ok” with a little help from AI, but they’re not great. Now, though, a team of researchers at Nanjing University in China believe they’ve solved the issue, by not just using a single metalens, but a whole array of them, with each tuned to a range of different angles.

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Scientists have developed a fully working camera that’s the size of a grain of salt

Dec 2, 2021 by John Aldred Add Comment
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Teeny tiny micro-sized nano-optics cameras are a relatively new development and it’s been very exciting to follow. They just keep getting smaller and better. Now, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have managed to create a fully functional camera that’s as small as a grain of salt. A large grain of salt, but still, that’s mighty impressive.

The “size of a grain of salt” thing has been used before, back in 2016, with respect to the lens, and array of which was placed onto a high resolution CMOS sensor. Now, though, it’s a complete camera at that size.

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Engineers at MIT & UMass Lowell have created a completely flat 1mm thick fisheye lens

Sep 21, 2020 by John Aldred Add Comment
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Love them or hate them (and many people hate them), we all know what fisheye lenses are. They look sort of like regular lenses, except they have a great big round bulbous element on the front that lets your camera’s sensor see in a super-wide field of view – typically around the 180° degree mark.

Well, not anymore. Now a team at MIT and University of Massachusetts Lowell have developed a new fisheye lens that’s completely flat. Its design is a type of “metalens” – a wafer-thin material with microscopic features to manipulate light in a way that traditional optics don’t. And it lets the lens shoot a 180° field of view with perfect sharpness.

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These flat metalenses could revolutionize photography

Jan 8, 2018 by Dunja Djudjic 1 Comment
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Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a revolutionary lens. It’s flat instead of curved, and it focuses the entire visible spectrum and white light in a single point. So far, this was only possible by stacking multiple lenses. But with this new invention, it’s possible to do it with a single lens. This discovery is interesting for us because it could revolutionize photography. If the commercial development starts, metalenses could make the gear far less bulky in the future.

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This new camera lens is as small as a grain of salt

Jun 29, 2016 by John Aldred 1 Comment
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Everything seems to be getting smaller and smaller these days. Cameras and lenses don’t seem to be immune to this phenomenon, despite some cameras pushing for bigger.  Of course, there’s no real right or wrong when it comes to the size of your camera, just whether or not it will do the job.

One of those jobs for cameras is medical, and scientists at the University of Stuttgart are really taking it to the extreme in a new paper published in Nature Photonics, producing lenses that are 120 millionths of a meter in diameter.

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The camera lenses of the future could be thinner than the light they focus

Jun 3, 2016 by John Aldred 5 Comments
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A team at Harvard University have build a lens that’s thinner than the waves of light it focuses.  Based on light-warping metamaterials, this lens may one day replace the heavier glass lenses found in items like microscopes, smartphones, cameras and even telescopes.

Lens technology has come a very long way since those early days, but it’s still difficult to build very compact lenses.  If you’ve ever wondered why your phone’s camera lens sticks slightly proud of the back, this is why.

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Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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