As the market for uncooled 8-12 micrometers thermal imaging cameras continues to expand and prices decrease the expense of the objective lens is increasingly becoming the major factor for total system cost. Limited mainly to expensive raw materials for lens element substrates and requiring costly optical polishing man-hours for manufacture, the lens costs have been difficult to reduce without sacrificing optical performance. A family of fast objective lenses has been designed for uncooled long wave IR cameras that utilize multiple diamond turned aspheric surfaces to reduce the size and number of lens elements. The cost of the objective is thereby reduced without giving up any of the necessary optical performance while at the same time gaining improvements in overall size and weight. A description is given of this family lenses and its inherent advantages. The effectiveness of this solution is demonstrated with several examples that have been manufactured and fielded.

Date Published: 26 July 1999
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 3698, Infrared Technology and Applications XXV, (26 July 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.354492

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3698:
Infrared Technology and Applications XXV
Bjorn F. Andresen; Marija Strojnik, Editor(s)