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Liquid Lens Can Magnify at the Flick of a Switch

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the zap-zoom dept.

An anonymous reader writes "German engineers have designed the first liquid camera lens with no moving parts that provides two levels of zoom. 'Liquid lenses bend light using the curved boundary between watery and oily liquids. When the two liquids are held in the right container, the boundary between them can be made to curve in a way that focuses light simply by applying a voltage. Liquid lenses have attracted much attention because they are potentially smaller than conventional optics and cheaper to build. Samsung has already built them into some cellphones.'"

5 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. This is old by 2.7182 · · Score: 3, Informative

    A guy did this at Bell Labs 2 years ago, and around the same time so did some French company that was going to put them in cell phones.

    1. Re:This is old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is about liquid lenses with zoom capability, which is new.

      Samsung etc. have had liquid lenses, but they haven't been able to do zoom. The German researchers found out how to make it work.
      Hope that helps.

  2. Seeing double?? by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Informative

    With better lenses we might see that this is a dup. These were reported in the media, and slashdot, a year or so back.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  3. Re:with a technology like this... by Achromatic1978 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uhh, no need. You can do that with glass lenses. Its called depth-of-field, aperture, etc. The higher the f number, the deeper it is. Up the f, increase the depth of field, everyone is in focus (at the cost of decreased shutter speed - the f number is a ratio of 1/x of the diameter of the lens, so less light). Down the f number and you get nice portraits where only a small DOF exists and everything forward, or back, is out of focus.

  4. Re:Herbert used it in Dune in 1965... by pclminion · · Score: 3, Informative

    Changing the shape of a lens doesn't adjust its refraction, it just... changes the shape of the lens. Refractivity is a property of the material, not the geometry of the lens.