The Tessar lens: A commercial success that started an era.The Cooke triplet and anastigmat lenses: The first “complete” lens.The Petzval lens: The first systematically designed lens.The doublet lens: More to it than meets the eye.The singlet lens: The first lens that deserves your attention.Imaging lenses: Classic imaging lenses and the dawn of lens design
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If you’re interested, you can get the PDF version too. There is a lot in here, so feel free to navigate around with the table of contents below. I’ll provide links within the Guide, but I’ll also try to make it an easier read without saying “I said this already lookie over here” This is because of the web and ebook format, where I feel it isn’t quite as easy to go back a few pages and re-read the material and immediately come back to the place you left off. I may repeat the same explanations from time to time. I can’t catch all of the design forms, but let me know in the comments if you want to know more about a subject, or if you feel there is a lens form missing. You’d be surprised to see what lenses are related to one another, and how we can break down seemingly complex lens design into parts from different lens forms. But the not all the lens designs are simple lenses, we will look at newer and important lens design forms as well. The basic lens design forms are in here, and we can take a deep look into the development of lens design.
This is an Ultimate Guide of lens design forms, the optical systems that are used in our world. What if we don’t know where to start with the lens design, when only given a specification sheet? Overview What lens design alternatives should I consider?
What lens design for do I need for this system? Why is one lens type used over the other? There are so many optical systems that are out there.