New Miniaturized Wide-Angle Lens Captures Images in High-Definition

A new type of miniature camera system developed by engineers at the University of California, San Diego, promises to give users a big picture view without sacrificing high-resolution. The new imager achieves the optical performance of a full-size wide-angle lens in a device less than one-10th of the volume of a regular lens. It can image anything between half a meter and 500 meters away-a 100x range of focus-and boasts the equivalent of 20/10 human vision-0.2-milliradian resolution. Such a system could enable high-resolution imaging in micro-unmanned aerial vehicles, or smartphone photos more comparable to those from a full size single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, the researchers say. "The major commercial application may be compact wide-angle imagers with so much resolution that they'll provide wide-field pan and 'zoom' imaging with no moving parts," said project leader Joseph Ford, a professor in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. Researchers will describe their novel device at The Optical Society's Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics 2013, taking place Oct. 6 to 10 in Orlando, Fla.