Photographic Lens Design

Photographic Lens Design is a complete different science. The design of photographic lenses is made to yield the most acceptable form of the subject. We are mostly talking about the DSLR or SLR Lenses, obviously the basics of Photographic Lens Design is applicable to Point and Shoot, Mobile Camera and other consumer grade cameras as well.

Photographic Lens Design : Basics

A lens is a converging optical system which produces a real optical image of an object. It is the main component of imaging optical devices, for example, cameras, binoculars, microscopes, projectors or astronomical telescopes.

Photographic Lens Design may vary by components, both lenses by lenses, as well as mirrors, or by diffraction; depending on the purpose in one or more body or tube of the lens, which is internally blackened and ribbed to reduce the scattered light. The main characteristics of a lens is the focal length, which for a given object distance the image scale is determined and the aperture (or opening in of the front lens). Other important features are : the image quality (low aberrations desirable); a suitable combination of several lenses of different refractive indices, thicknesses and radii are used to reduce optical aberrations. Other properties are the photographic light intensity (= focal ratio) and the minimum focus distance, which determines how close you can “approach” to the subject.

The size of the image is the size of the image angle and the sensor size. As an approximation, the object that is visually “at infinity” is (as a rule of thumb distances greater than 20 times the focal length) directly in the focal plane of the lens. Nearer objects form only slightly behind the focal point.

Photographic Lens Design : Types

Photography lens can be classified in many types, but broadly we consider these types :

• Prime lens
• Zoom Lens
• Wide-angle lens
• Fisheye lens
• Macro Lens
• Telephoto Lens
• Tilt-Shift Lens

These is not very scientific classification, rather user-based classification.

Photographic Lens Design : Factors Those Counts

• Hyperfocal Distance
• Focus and Focal Length
• Diaphragm
• Aperture
• f-number

I have noticed, some Wikipedia “writers” are copying my taken Photographs of camera components. Please use your proper full name and contact emails in profile pages to prove that you are not thieves and although it is very shameful in the way Wikipedia scraps the whole Internet still; at least ask me before converting it to your own photography.