Liquid Lens Can Magnify at the Flick of a Switch

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.'"

This is old

[2.7182]

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.

Seeing double??

[EmbeddedJanitor]

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

Re:This is old

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Herbert used it in Dune in 1965...

[obender]

Are there any earlier mentions of liquid lenses before Dune?

In the Mysterious Island novel by Jules Verne published in 1874, Cyrus Harding lits a fire with a lens made up of two watch glass lids stuck together and filled up with water. You can read the chapter here [online-literature.com]

Re:Hubble

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, of course, that Hubble's MIRROR had spherical abberation and this is talking about lenses....

Re:with a technology like this...

[Achromatic1978]

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.

Re:Hey, wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

you, my friend, are great at missing context.

it's the first liquid lens system that is capable of variable levels of magnification with no moving parts.

then the summary mentions some crap about liquid lenses in general.

and then it mentions how samsung is already using liquid lenses in their cell phones.

no, it doesn't suggest that they use liquid lens systems with variable magnification and no moving parts.

Re:Herbert used it in Dune in 1965...

[pclminion]

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.

Re:Herbert used it in Dune in 1965...

[pclminion]

The way you've worded your post is pretty much a flat contradiction of all optics since Newton. Go look up what a lens is.

I didn't say the shape of a lens doesn't matter. I said it doesn't alter the refractivity (and by that I mean its index of refraction). Of COURSE it alters the behavior of the lens. Refractivity is an intensive property, the geometry of the lens is an extensive property.

Perhaps my wording wasn't as clear as it should have been. The point stands that the shape of a lens does not alter the ability of the material to refract light, it only alters the specific geometries of the refracted rays.

Re:with a technology like this...

[migloo]

If you have coaxial annular lenses, each with its own focal length, you get as many focal planes. You can thus make a multifocused picture at the cost of more blurry background.
This has been used for bifocal soft lenses for presbyopia. Focus splitting with diffraction gratings is more commonly used now.

Re:Lens isn't working

[2meen]

There are already products out there which use liquid lenses to provide cheap classes to people in developing countries.

http://www.adaptive-eyecare.com/ [adaptive-eyecare.com] comes to mind (link from an article in Illustrerad Vetenskap http://www.illvet.se/Crosslink.jsp?a=1218&id=7354_ 2 [illvet.se], a swedish popular science magazine).