Rifle Scopes Smaller, cheaper, sharper lenses should be possible as Mexican scientist solves aberration problem

[B4Maz]

Very interesting article about reducing spherical aberration in lenses

"Camera lenses are insanely complex and extraordinarily precise devices, and one of the reasons for this is spherical aberration. This is distinct from chromatic aberration, or color fringing, which you get when a lens is unable to focus light from all parts of the visual color spectrum together. Spherical aberration is what causes some lenses to be sharp in the middle, but blurrier toward the outside edges.
Lens manufacturers have for years been building aspherical lenses to try to counteract this effect, modifying the sphere shape slightly to try to sharpen up the whole image. By and large, many have done a great job, as evidenced by the general optical sharpness of today's lenses. But rather than working to a precise mathematical formula that works to correct all spherical lens aberration, lens companies have had to work on each lens as a separate problem, finding solutions that worked, more or less, but forcing them to start over each time.

What does it all mean? Well, Gonzalez's formula should vastly reduce trial and error in the lens making business. It could result in simpler, smaller, cheaper and sharper lenses with fewer elements. And optics, of course, isn't restricted to the camera game. There could be even more interesting effects at the tiniest end of the scale, with sharper microscope imaging, and at the biggest end of the scale with deep-space telescopy."

 

[THEIS]

Hi,

I wish I could read this formula from the article link
Also, maybe @koshkin will translate the article science into laymen terms.

Also, here is the real article and not a link from 3rd person news source.

https://www.osapublishing.org/DirectPDFAccess/7170CEBC-FBE8-6AAD-855437FE2836CB30_404342/ao-58-4-1010.pdf?da=1&id=404342&seq=0&mobile=no

Sincerely,
Theis

 

[spife7980]

 

[Mike Casselton]

Yep
All those math symbols look like a mixture of Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic and ancient Chinese.

It's probably what cursive looks like to millennials.

 

[koshkin]

I've seen that.

Hi,

I wish I could read this formula from the article link
Also, maybe @koshkin will translate the article science into laymen terms.
View attachment 7126086

Also, here is the real article and not a link from 3rd person news source.

https://www.osapublishing.org/DirectPDFAccess/7170CEBC-FBE8-6AAD-855437FE2836CB30_404342/ao-58-4-1010.pdf?da=1&id=404342&seq=0&mobile=no

Sincerely,
Theis

I read the article. This is some rather exciting news from a general optical design standpoint, but it will take time to make a difference in most fields, I think.

Lens design, to be honest, has always been more art than science, in my opinion. From a scientific standpoint, this branch of optics is very uninteresting, but from a practical standpoint, it is quite complicated.

The complication in designing lens systems is that no single lens is perfect, so the image you get from one lens has significant flaws (different types of geometric and chromatic aberrations). To correct those flaws, a second lens element is introduced which corrects some of the flaws of the first lens element. However, some flaws remain uncorrected and some new flaws are introduced by the second lens element itself. The next element is introduced to correct some more flaws and, naturally introduce some new ones. At some point, enough problems are rectified and a lens designer stops adding lenses.

The best known and one of the most egregious aberrations is a spherical aberration and what this paper does is define a way to make a lens element with no spherical aberration. It will potentially make for well corrected lens systems with fewer elements than before which should be especially useful for wide angle optics. However, all other aberrations are not addressed by this paper, so practical ramifications of how this works with real world optical systems are not clear, but it is a step in the right direction.

Final word of caution is that this paper defines some really weird surface shapes that will be pretty tricky to make in many cases.

ILya

 

[Steel head]

^^^^^^
Spife.

^^^^^
<<<<

 

[Glassaholic]

I've seen that.


I read the article. This is some rather exciting news from a general optical design standpoint, but it will take time to make a difference in most fields, I think.

Lens design, to be honest, has always been more art than science, in my opinion. From a scientific standpoint, this branch of optics is very uninteresting, but from a practical standpoint, it is quite complicated.

The complication in designing lens systems is that no single lens is perfect, so the image you get from one lens has significant flaws (different types of geometric and chromatic aberrations). To correct those flaws, a second lens element is introduced which corrects some of the flaws of the first lens element. However, some flaws remain uncorrected and some new flaws are introduced by the second lens element itself. The next element is introduced to correct some more flaws and, naturally introduce some new ones. At some point, enough problems are rectified and a lens designer stops adding lenses.

The best known and one of the most egregious aberrations is a spherical aberration and what this paper does is define a way to make a lens element with no spherical aberration. It will potentially make for well corrected lens systems with fewer elements than before which should be especially useful for wide angle optics. However, all other aberrations are not addressed by this paper, so practical ramifications of how this works with real world optical systems are not clear, but it is a step in the right direction.

Final word of caution is that this paper defines some really weird surface shapes that will be pretty tricky to make in many cases.

ILya

For those of us who are not optical engineers, it is greatly appreciated when you put all the gobbledygook into perspective so the lay person (or riflescope obsessed lay person) can understand these things a little better. I know for a lot of shooters they could care less what physics goes into the construction of the scope, but just care about whether they get a good sight picture and can hit what they're aiming at, but there are also those of us who prefer to understand a little more of the technical without going too far down the rabbit hole.

 

[gunjunkie45]

You had me interested until you said "Mexican Scientist."

 

[endo304]

Yep
All those math symbols look like a mixture of Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic and ancient Chinese.

It's probably what cursive looks like to millennials.

Also what an Atlas looks like to them as well

 

[gunjunkie45]

You had me interested until you said "Mexican Scientist."

Calm your tits @wjm308. It's not against people of Mexican descent, if it were say an American scientist from Mexico, I'd be all fucking excited. Mexico as a nation, and by extension probably their science programs.... I'm not putting any faith in. Unless it's a new meth formula.

 

[koshkin]

Calm your tits @wjm308. It's not against people of Mexican descent, if it were say an American scientist from Mexico, I'd be all fucking excited. Mexico as a nation, and by extension probably their science programs.... I'm not putting any faith in

Mexico has been progressing by leaps and bounds and the Mexicans you see coming across the border are not quite the same people who are pursuing PhD programs at their universities. I think their economy is now the 15th largest in the world, which is a far cry from what it used to be. Like most rapidly growing economies, the economic divide between different parts of the country is significant, but their affluent class is very westernized and well educated.

Either way, it is a good paper.

ILya

 

[308pirate]

You had me interested until you said "Mexican Scientist."

There's always a dumbass in the room

 

[DarinC]

Thanks for the input koshkin!

 

[Fig]

 

[gunjunkie45]

There's always a dumbass in the room

There's always a dumbass in the room

It was an attempt at this thing called sarcasm, maybe you've heard of it? 99% of any news coming out of that shithole is not good. I was joking. Are we going to start having to use non gender specific terms now too?

 

[CBDR]

For those of us who are not optical engineers, it is greatly appreciated when you put all the gobbledygook into perspective so the lay person (or riflescope obsessed lay person) can understand these things a little better. I know for a lot of shooters they could care less what physics goes into the construction of the scope, but just care about whether they get a good sight picture and can hit what they're aiming at, but there are also those of us who prefer to understand a little more of the technical without going too far down the rabbit hole.

Well said wjm308. For some of use knowing / understanding how things work is just as rewarding. In the mid 70's I was intrigued with how my Weaver 10x rifle scope & binoculars worked. I decided to join the Navy and become an Optical Men (0M) however my ASVAP score revealed my math skills were not high enough to qualify for this field. Understanding all the formulas and grasping the whole light spectrum, bending, refraction, focal point etc etc is for those who have a few extra gears topside. I have a strong appreciation for the engineers who keep bringing new products to market.
V/R
American Consumer

 

[Glassaholic]

Well said wjm308. For some of use knowing / understanding how things work is just as rewarding. In the mid 70's I was intrigued with how my Weaver 10x rifle scope & binoculars worked. I decided to join the Navy and become an Optical Men (0M) however my ASVAP score revealed my math skills were not high enough to qualify for this field. Understanding all the formulas and grasping the whole light spectrum, bending, refraction, focal point etc etc is for those who have a few extra gears topside. I have a strong appreciation for the engineers who keep bringing new products to market.
V/R
American Consumer

I think they dumbed down the ASVAB because when I took it in the late 80's I aced it and the Marines were chomping at the bit to scoop me up but my recruiter made the mistake of calling me up to tell me to stop being a mama's boy and get down there to sign up, unfortunately I was not in the mood to get chewed out by an adult (as a cocky teenager) so instead of signing up with the Marine's I called the recruiters' CO and chewed him out and said I would not be joining the Marine's because of this recruiter... the next day I walked past the Marine recruiting office (all branches were in the same building) to the Army office and enlisted. When I was at the MOS office the officer said I qualified for any specialty the Army offered and I looked at him and said "I want 11 Bravo" and he looked at me incredulously and said, "no you don't!" and he did his best to convince me to go into a special field, but I was insistent on 11 Bravo because I foolishly thought I wanted to "backpack and shoot guns", so he reluctantly signed me up 11B. During Basic and MOS training it was actually pretty cool, but when I was stationed at Fort Ord I realized why that MOS Officer was so adamant - I was bored to death and while I did do some training the majority of my day was spent mopping, sweeping, mowing and boy did I have the cleanest M16 A2 because we cleaned them what seemed like 3x a day

 

[308pirate]

I think they dumbed down the ASVAB because when I took it in the late 80's I aced it and the Marines were chomping at the bit to scoop me up but my recruiter made the mistake of calling me up to tell me to stop being a mama's boy and get down there to sign up, unfortunately I was not in the mood to get chewed out by an adult (as a cocky teenager) so instead of signing up with the Marine's I called the recruiters' CO and chewed him out and said I would not be joining the Marine's because of this recruiter... the next day I walked past the Marine recruiting office (all branches were in the same building) to the Army office and enlisted. When I was at the MOS office the officer said I qualified for any specialty the Army offered and I looked at him and said "I want 11 Bravo" and he looked at me incredulously and said, "no you don't!" and he did his best to convince me to go into a special field, but I was insistent on 11 Bravo because I foolishly thought I wanted to "backpack and shoot guns", so he reluctantly signed me up 11B. During Basic and MOS training it was actually pretty cool, but when I was stationed at Fort Ord I realized why that MOS Officer was so adamant - I was bored to death and while I did do some training the majority of my day was spent mopping, sweeping, mowing and boy did I have the cleanest M16 A2 because we cleaned them what seemed like 3x a day

I wanna be a boatswain's mate............what I think they do

What they really do

 

[Fig]

Actually, when you think about it, BM3 is about the only third class who never touches a broom or mop. Deck is invariably the largest division, and low rank BMs have the most men under them.

 

[308pirate]

Actually, when you think about it, BM3 is about the only third class who never touches a broom or mop. Deck is invariably the largest division, and low rank BMs have the most men under them.

Yep, I used to be their div-o on a frigate.

 

[lte82]

Everyone dump your Tangents now before Frijole Optics undercuts the market and makes them worthless!

 

[gremcat]

We looked at Mexico as a potential JV to manufacture complicated lens structures. They are not what they are perceived as at the higher levels. Cutting/forming these lenses as Koshkin said is a whole separate challenge separating theory from manufacturability. Thanks for the link I hadn’t seen that yet but look forward to reviewing it. Some of the shapes Koshkin mentioned can look very foreign to what you’ve experienced.

 

[LeftyJason]

Any rough pictures of the lense cross section? There is some amazing work that can be done with cnc machines these days.

For an example check this company out.

 

[koshkin]

Free form surfaces have existed for a quite a while and there are good methods to make them. The easiest way to make them in quantity is via molding, although surface polishing is still kinda challenging.

ILya

 

[mmlook]

Free form surfaces have existed for a quite a while and there are good methods to make them. The easiest way to make them in quantity is via molding, although surface polishing is still kinda challenging.

ILya

there's no need to polish a freeform surface, especially for molding.
you actually induce more errors on a freeform surface by polishing it, unless its being done by MRF.

this lens design can be made.
it would a pain in the ass to program though, since they don't use any common optical design formula's
so you would have to make a surface map in Matlab, then do the compensations manually.

from a geometric optics standpoint, I don't think it'll achieve the desired performance though.
unless you find a lens with near 100% transmission.


To me, it's funny they come up with this crazy design, when you can achieve the same thing with a parabolic mirror

 

[MTB doc]

It was an attempt at this thing called sarcasm, maybe you've heard of it? 99% of any news coming out of that shithole is not good. I was joking. Are we going to start having to use non gender specific terms now too?

Your comments reflect your lack of education. Your quantification that "99% of any news coming out of that shithole is not good" only further reinforces this as well as gives insight into the media sources that you personally consider 'news'. When I was at UCLA, the lab I was working in at the time was heavily involved in oncogene research for breast cancer. We collaborated extensively with UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). Several of us flew back and forth to their labs with breast cancer tissue samples to use their DNA probes. Their labs, facilities, controls and level of professionalism were world class and absolutely on par with the top US research centers.

As with UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, Cal Tech, etc, admission to UNAM is extremely competitive and gets applicants worldwide. In 2016, UCLA had a record low acceptance rate of approx 17%. UNAM's acceptance rate that year was approx 8%.

Our labs' collaboration with UNAM represented only a tiny sliver of world class academic research going on in Mexico at that time. The 'news' that I stay in touch with that comes out of Mexico continues to show high level research/publications in numerous fields just as in our country and many others. As 308pirate accurately stated, "there's always a dumbass in the room".

 

[Primus]

It was an attempt at this thing called sarcasm, maybe you've heard of it? 99% of any news coming out of that shithole is not good. I was joking. Are we going to start having to use non gender specific terms now too?

Autists don't pick up on subtleties like sarchasim.

 

[Primus]

Your comments reflect your lack of education. Your quantification that "99% of any news coming out of that shithole is not good" only further reinforces this as well as gives insight into the media sources that you personally consider 'news'. When I was at UCLA, the lab I was working in at the time was heavily involved in oncogene research for breast cancer. We collaborated extensively with UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). Several of us flew back and forth to their labs with breast cancer tissue samples to use their DNA probes. Their labs, facilities, controls and level of professionalism were world class and absolutely on par with the top US research centers.

As with UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, Cal Tech, etc, admission to UNAM is extremely competitive and gets applicants worldwide. In 2016, UCLA had a record low acceptance rate of approx 17%. UNAM's acceptance rate that year was approx 8%.

Our labs' collaboration with UNAM represented only a tiny sliver of world class academic research going on in Mexico at that time. The 'news' that I stay in touch with that comes out of Mexico continues to show high level research/publications in numerous fields just as in our country and many others. As 308pirate accurately stated, "there's always a dumbass in the room".

All the real work is done at DOE labs or DARPA /NSA/ NRO. University research is nothing but revenue generation for the schools and espionage for foreign nationals. Half of the tenured proffessors should be shot for treason and the other half should be beaten with hammers. Anyone who spends time in higher education and doesn't see this, IS part of the problem. "From the folks who brought you global cooling...... ER....global warming......ER.. Climate change..."

Now that's not sarchasim, just to be clear to the autists.

 

[fx77]

I've seen that.


I read the article. This is some rather exciting news from a general optical design standpoint, but it will take time to make a difference in most fields, I think.

Lens design, to be honest, has always been more art than science, in my opinion. From a scientific standpoint, this branch of optics is very uninteresting, but from a practical standpoint, it is quite complicated.

The complication in designing lens systems is that no single lens is perfect, so the image you get from one lens has significant flaws (different types of geometric and chromatic aberrations). To correct those flaws, a second lens element is introduced which corrects some of the flaws of the first lens element. However, some flaws remain uncorrected and some new flaws are introduced by the second lens element itself. The next element is introduced to correct some more flaws and, naturally introduce some new ones. At some point, enough problems are rectified and a lens designer stops adding lenses.

The best known and one of the most egregious aberrations is a spherical aberration and what this paper does is define a way to make a lens element with no spherical aberration. It will potentially make for well corrected lens systems with fewer elements than before which should be especially useful for wide angle optics. However, all other aberrations are not addressed by this paper, so practical ramifications of how this works with real world optical systems are not clear, but it is a step in the right direction.

Final word of caution is that this paper defines some really weird surface shapes that will be pretty tricky to make in many cases.

ILya

Famous CEO once said...Keep your head in the clouds, but your feet on the ground.
or
one of my Profs said
A triumph of technology over reason.