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Sunday, February 21, 2016

Curved Sensor Advantages

SPIE publishes an article on curved sensor optics benefits "Current trends in miniature camera lens technology" by Dmitry Reshidko and José Sasian. The curved sensor are said to give a 1-stop advantage due to allowing optics with a larger aperture:

MTF of a mobile camera. (a) Conventional flat field design at f/2.2. (b) Representative lens imaging on a curved sensor at f/1.6. The lens imaging on a curved sensor is one f-number faster and shows more uniform performance over the field. OTF: Optical transfer function.
Sensitivity to lens element decenter (left) and tilt (right). Lens imaging on a curved sensor shows better as-built performance. The horizontal line indicates the nominal criterion value. RSS RMS: Root sum square, root mean square.

3 comments:

  1. I'm really not sure if 1 stop is worth the trouble, assuming this is all we get from it. Any other benefits?

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    Replies
    1. Yes there is also a much shorter lens leading to a thinner form factor. The MTF is also better across the image as is light fall off. So 1 stop faster, better image and thinner.

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    2. 1 stop is a big deal! It's enough reason for many people to spend thousands of dollars going from APS-C to "Full Frame". I suspect it's difficult or impossible to optimize a curved sensor for a zoom lens though, but it's still a great solution for cell phone cameras.

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