Ivon Franciscus Helwegen

Zoom camera based on liquid lenses

A 1.7× VGA zoom camera was designed based on two variable-focus liquid lenses and three plastic lenses. The strongly varying curvature of the liquid/liquid interface in the lens makes an achromatic design complicated. Special liquids with a rare combination of refractive index and Abbe number are required to prevent chromatic aberrations for all zoom levels and object positions. A set of acceptable liquids was obtained and used in a prototype that was constructed according to our design. First photos taken with the prototype show a proof of principle.