Someone mentioned a few days back that there is a new type of lens
available that, in conjuction with computer processing, can produce
significantly extended depth of field.
These lenses are known as "wavefront coding" and, amazingly, can be much
simpler optically than normal, high quality lenses. Science News
Magazine has a good overview article which can be found here:
<http://www.sciencenews.org/20030329/bob9.asp>
By the way, there is some familiar Olympus (and list) content here.
Science News reports in this article that: "Olympus Optical of Tokyo,
also is licensing the Boulder company's technology for use in extended
depth-of-field endoscopes..."
The article also covers another type of lens called a "lenslet". These
are tiny lenses of less than 1 mm focal length that are placed in arrays
and then computer combined to produce an image of double the resolution
of conventional lenses (presumbly, but not stated, covering the same
area as the lens array).
It would appear that digital and digital optics is already taking on
different forms.
Chuck Norcutt
Woburn, Massachusetts, USA
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