Plenary Event
Monday Optical Systems Design Plenary Session
On demand | Presented Live 13 September 2021
Times for this live event are all Central European Summer Time, CEST (UTC+2:00 hours)
9:00 to 9:05 hrs
Welcome Address and Plenary Speaker Introduction
9:05 to 9:45 hrs
History of Lens Development at ZEISS for NASA Space and Moon Landing Missions
This live event took place in the past. Presentation video can be viewed here
Vladan Blahnik, Carl Zeiss AG (Germany)
The iconic photos of NASA's first space missions and Moon landings from the 1960s onwards were captured with ZEISS camera lenses mounted on Hasselblad cameras. They adorned the covers of many newspapers and magazines and appeared in color for the first time ever, as special issues.
Meanwhile, NASA's scientists were evaluating the scientific images: the photogrammetric images taken while in orbit were combined to form a detailed lunar map, the panorama pans on the lunar surface were turned into a topographic map of the landing area, and the pictures with broadband achromatized UV lenses gave insights into the overall soil conditions on the Moon and the Earth.
The talk will provide an overview of all the camera lenses developed by ZEISS for NASA. It will look at their technical specifications, describe the development work done for these lenses, and delve into the history of the partnership between NASA, Hasselblad, and ZEISS.
Just like space travel, the launch of mainframe computers at that time also spurred on optical design. Other ZEISS products for photography, cinematography, aerial photogrammetry, and optical lithography also benefited from these developments.
Biography: Vladan Blahnik studied physics and earned his PhD in partially coherent optical imaging theory from the Technical University of Braunschweig (Germany) and the Optical Sciences Center in Tucson, Arizona (USA).
He joined ZEISS in 2001 as Lead System Engineer and Project Leader for lithography optics, a role that saw him working on the development of projection lenses and illumination systems for lithographic scanners that would enable microchip mass production. Examples include ASML's TWINSCAN XT:1400. In 2008, Vladan then became Head of Optical Design at ZEISS' Camera Lenses division and worked on developing lenses for photography, cinematography and digital-optical systems. Later on, this was expanded to include binoculars and spotting scopes. Since 2018, Vladan has been a Senior Optical Systems Engineer at Optical Design & Concepts for ZEISS' Corporate Research and Technology department. He has been working on a variety of topics, such as LIDAR systems for autonomous driving, high-precision interferometry, and 3D scanning systems.
10:00 to 10:05 hrs
Plenary Speaker Introduction
10:05 to 10:45 hrs
Freeform Optics Design
This live event took place in the past. Presentation video can be viewed here
Pablo Benitez, Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and Limbak (Spain)
The higher flexibility of freeforms has opened the possibility to find better solutions than classical surfaces many optical problems, especially those whose specifications (either optical or geometrical) are far from rotational symmetry. For instance, short through distance multimedia projectors cannot be placed in front of the center of the projected image without blocking the spectators’ view, and this requires the projection to be done from one side. Offset rotational symmetric solutions are suboptimal, and a freeform projector can improve the image quality on the target area with the same number of surfaces or can match the quality with fewer optical surfaces 1. Similarly, many head-worn displays are located close to the eyes of the user to make the headset sleeker. In this case, some parts of the physical display are used at very high emitting angles and rotational symmetric cannot provide optimal solutions for this configuration. In nonimaging applications, low-beam headlamps of cars also need to produce an asymmetric pattern on the road to avoid blinding the incoming drivers. Freeforms permit to solve this design problem efficiently, and match aesthetic constraints.
The continuous progress in the technology to produce and test freeforms, as occurred in the past with rotational aspherics, is pushing optical designers to consider more and more the use of freeforms in their designs. However, the also higher complexity of these surfaces introduces multiple challenges in their design since traditional design methods have been focused in rotational optics. These challenges go from finding the best mathematical description of the optical surfaces to the design algorithms themselves. We’ll review the main design techniques proposed to design freeforms and illustrating its use in specific examples for several applications.
Biography: Pablo Benitez is professor at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Spain, where he leads the Optical Engineering group. In the last 20 years he has pioneered research in design of aspheric and freeform optics for nonimaging and imaging applications, specifically he is co-inventor of the SMS optical design method. More recently, Pablo Benitez has cofounded and is CTO of Limbak, which is an IP company developing advanced freeform optics for the forthcoming VR and MR glasses. Pablo Benitez is the 2020 recipient of the SPIE A.E. Conrady Award in Optical Engineering
9:00 to 9:05 hrs
Welcome Address and Plenary Speaker Introduction
9:05 to 9:45 hrs
History of Lens Development at ZEISS for NASA Space and Moon Landing Missions
This live event took place in the past. Presentation video can be viewed here
Vladan Blahnik, Carl Zeiss AG (Germany)
The iconic photos of NASA's first space missions and Moon landings from the 1960s onwards were captured with ZEISS camera lenses mounted on Hasselblad cameras. They adorned the covers of many newspapers and magazines and appeared in color for the first time ever, as special issues.
Meanwhile, NASA's scientists were evaluating the scientific images: the photogrammetric images taken while in orbit were combined to form a detailed lunar map, the panorama pans on the lunar surface were turned into a topographic map of the landing area, and the pictures with broadband achromatized UV lenses gave insights into the overall soil conditions on the Moon and the Earth.
The talk will provide an overview of all the camera lenses developed by ZEISS for NASA. It will look at their technical specifications, describe the development work done for these lenses, and delve into the history of the partnership between NASA, Hasselblad, and ZEISS.
Just like space travel, the launch of mainframe computers at that time also spurred on optical design. Other ZEISS products for photography, cinematography, aerial photogrammetry, and optical lithography also benefited from these developments.
Biography: Vladan Blahnik studied physics and earned his PhD in partially coherent optical imaging theory from the Technical University of Braunschweig (Germany) and the Optical Sciences Center in Tucson, Arizona (USA).
He joined ZEISS in 2001 as Lead System Engineer and Project Leader for lithography optics, a role that saw him working on the development of projection lenses and illumination systems for lithographic scanners that would enable microchip mass production. Examples include ASML's TWINSCAN XT:1400. In 2008, Vladan then became Head of Optical Design at ZEISS' Camera Lenses division and worked on developing lenses for photography, cinematography and digital-optical systems. Later on, this was expanded to include binoculars and spotting scopes. Since 2018, Vladan has been a Senior Optical Systems Engineer at Optical Design & Concepts for ZEISS' Corporate Research and Technology department. He has been working on a variety of topics, such as LIDAR systems for autonomous driving, high-precision interferometry, and 3D scanning systems.
10:00 to 10:05 hrs
Plenary Speaker Introduction
10:05 to 10:45 hrs
Freeform Optics Design
This live event took place in the past. Presentation video can be viewed here
Pablo Benitez, Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and Limbak (Spain)
The higher flexibility of freeforms has opened the possibility to find better solutions than classical surfaces many optical problems, especially those whose specifications (either optical or geometrical) are far from rotational symmetry. For instance, short through distance multimedia projectors cannot be placed in front of the center of the projected image without blocking the spectators’ view, and this requires the projection to be done from one side. Offset rotational symmetric solutions are suboptimal, and a freeform projector can improve the image quality on the target area with the same number of surfaces or can match the quality with fewer optical surfaces 1. Similarly, many head-worn displays are located close to the eyes of the user to make the headset sleeker. In this case, some parts of the physical display are used at very high emitting angles and rotational symmetric cannot provide optimal solutions for this configuration. In nonimaging applications, low-beam headlamps of cars also need to produce an asymmetric pattern on the road to avoid blinding the incoming drivers. Freeforms permit to solve this design problem efficiently, and match aesthetic constraints.
The continuous progress in the technology to produce and test freeforms, as occurred in the past with rotational aspherics, is pushing optical designers to consider more and more the use of freeforms in their designs. However, the also higher complexity of these surfaces introduces multiple challenges in their design since traditional design methods have been focused in rotational optics. These challenges go from finding the best mathematical description of the optical surfaces to the design algorithms themselves. We’ll review the main design techniques proposed to design freeforms and illustrating its use in specific examples for several applications.
Biography: Pablo Benitez is professor at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Spain, where he leads the Optical Engineering group. In the last 20 years he has pioneered research in design of aspheric and freeform optics for nonimaging and imaging applications, specifically he is co-inventor of the SMS optical design method. More recently, Pablo Benitez has cofounded and is CTO of Limbak, which is an IP company developing advanced freeform optics for the forthcoming VR and MR glasses. Pablo Benitez is the 2020 recipient of the SPIE A.E. Conrady Award in Optical Engineering