Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 50, No. 5, May 2007, pp. 1243∼1251
Optical Zoom System Design for Compact Digital Camera
Using Lens Modules
Sung-Chan Park,
∗
Yong-Joo Jo, Byoung-Taek You and Sang-Hun Lee
Department of Physics, Dankook University, Cheonan 330-714
(Received 5 February 2007)
By use of lens modules and third-order ab e rration theory, a new design approach can be applied
to the three-group inner-focus zoom system. The optimum initial design satisfying the specific
requirements and its real lens design from the lens modules are presented. An initial design with
a focal length range of 4.3 to 12.9 mm is derived by assigning appropriate first-order quantities
and third-order aberrations to each module along with the constraints required for the optimum
solutions. By using an automatic design method rather than analytic approaches, we separately
designed a real lens for each group at given conjugates and then combined them to establish an
actual zoom system. The combination of the separately designed groups results in a system that
satisfies the basic properties of the zoom system consisting of the original lens modules. When the
ab e rrations are balanced, the finally designed three-group zoom lens is expected to fulfill all the
requirements of a compact digital zoom camera.
PACS numbers: 42.15.Eq, 42.15.Fr
Keywords: Lens module, Aberrations, Digital zoom camera
I. INTRODUCTION
The zoom lens design is usually divided into two tasks.
One is paraxial studies based on thin-lens theory, which
give the first-order parameters, such as the focal length
of each group, the zoom ratio, the focal length range, the
zooming locus, etc. The other is to set up the zoom lens
system from the paraxial studies and balance aberrations
[1–5]. These approaches, however, have several disadvan-
tages. It is difficult to determine if the solutions obtained
from paraxial studies satisfy all the requirements for the
zoom lens, such as packaging constraints, specifications,
overall length, and so on. Since the aberrations of this
starting zoom lens are not corrected, aberration balanc-
ing at all zoom positions requires much more effort in
the design of multi- group zoom systems.
The difficulties due to paraxial analyses can be over-
come by using the lens module design reported by
Stavroudis and Mercado [6], Kuper and Rimmer [7], and
Park and Lee [8]. Lens modules are the mathemati-
cal constructs that can model a complex optical sys-
tem without actually doing the detailed design. The lens
modules disc ussed by Kuper and Rimmer are based on
mock ray tracing, which consists of tracing rays through
a lens specified by one of its eikonal function rather than
its curvature, thickness, and indices. Lens modules can
be used as a starting point for the design of a real lens and
to model an arbitrary lens from measurable quantities
∗
E-mail: scpark@dankook.ac.kr; Fax: +82-41-550-3429
without detailed prescriptions. Zoom lens design using
lens modules has the following advantages: modules can
be used for each of the moving groups, and the param-
eters defining the specifications, the third-order aberra-
tion characteristics, and the positions of the groups for
zooming can be varied to obtain the optimum design sat-
isfying the requirements.
In this paper, lens modules and aberration theory are
used to discuss the optimum initial design of three-group
inner-focus zoom lenses. This initial zoom system is de-
signed to satisfy specific requirements, and the real lens
designs are obtained from the lens modules by using an
automatic design method. In this process, the real lens
for each group is quickly designed to match the first-
and third-order aberrations of the module. Compared to
an analytic design, this approach can dramatically save
time and effort. Thus, the separately designed groups
are then combined to form an actual zoom lens. Finally,
residual aberration balancing results in a zoom lens that
has enough performance over a range of f-number from
3.2 at the wide-field extreme to 4.5 at the narrow-field
extreme positions. This zoom lens is expected to fulfill
all requirements of a compact digital zoom camera.
II. LENS MODULE DESIGN FOR THE
THREE-GROUP INNER-FOCUS ZOOM
SYSTEM
The layout of the three-group inner-focus zoom system
is shown in Figure 1. From the object to the image side,
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