Liquid lenses for focus stacking

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Argu
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2020 5:01 pm
Location: İstanbul, Turkey

Liquid lenses for focus stacking

Post by Argu »

Years ago i dreamt of, wished a lens capable of changing its shape without directional movement, thus changing the focal lenght just like the eye. I thought of a flexible lens maybe in a liquid , with means of pressure. It was a wish of very small highly controllable scifi type lenses.
Apperently they already did them.
In the first video the creator of the youtube channel applied science

https://youtube.com/c/AppliedScience

mentions of the lens in this video,

https://youtu.be/HVSjUW2qQ6U

where he talks about maybe using it for high speed focus stacking, also for video.
(I am curious if it creates any vibrations)
Second link is of a high speed focus stacking example by the creators of the lens

https://youtu.be/xOyXdnJOHC

Third and four links are ishikawa vision's paper about how the lens works.


http://ishikawa-vision.org/mvf/FocusSta ... dex-e.html

http://ishikawa-vision.org/mvf/DML/index-e.html

Apperently they also sold the lens to be used in a consumer webcam ( a digitus usb webcam) as the applied science owner tells in this video

https://youtu.be/zvMv6WiWMHA

This is the product page of the lens.


https://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/in ... -lens.html

Apart from all these the youtube applied science creator also attempted to build his own electron microscope and other cool stuff.

Has anyone encountered this lens i wonder.

Lou Jost
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Location: Ecuador
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Re: Liquid lenses for focus stacking

Post by Lou Jost »

For traditional stacking, the biggest time-waster is still the write time to the card or disc, not the refocusing time. However, if the output is video, this could be very exciting!

Chris S.
Site Admin
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Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 9:55 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Liquid lenses for focus stacking

Post by Chris S. »

Argu,

One video creator you linked to is Ben Krasnow, who is among my favorite educator/experimenters on Youtube. Must admit that his explorations of building an electron microscope, and of refurbishing a derelict commercial electron microscope, dissuaded me from attempting such things myself.

A source of ready-to go liquid lenses, and information about them, is Edmund Optics. (I haven't yet looked at all your links--if this has already been covered, I apologize.)

While I've watched liquid lenses a bit as they've developed, there are two issues that keep me from experimenting with them. The first, as Lou pointed out, is that for the kind of still photography most of us in this forum do, liquid lenses don't seem to solve problems we happen to have. On the other hand, if one is doing high-speed machine vision in a manufacturing setting, there might indeed be advantages to liquid lenses.

The bigger issue in my mind--not addressed in the sources I've seen--is chromatic aberration (CA). (Correct me if this is addressed in one of your links that I haven't perused yet.) A liquid lens appears to act as a single-element lens, or perhaps a hemi-demi-semi two-element lens. When single-lens optics are used across the full spectrum of visible light, CA is a big problem. A large fraction of lens design, complexity, and cost go into reducing CA. So in our use, a liquid lens might introduce more problems than it solves. Here again, for industrial machine vision, full-spectrum imaging is not necessarily needed, so CA might not be an issue. So far, I've taken it as a strong hint that Edmund Optics pitches liquid lenses mainly for use in industrial machine vision.

This said, keep the fresh ideas coming! :D

--Chris S.

Argu
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2020 5:01 pm
Location: İstanbul, Turkey

Re: Liquid lenses for focus stacking

Post by Argu »

Lou Jost wrote:
Fri Dec 25, 2020 6:30 am
For traditional stacking, the biggest time-waster is still the write time to the card or disc, not the refocusing time. However, if the output is video, this could be very exciting!
Hi Lou,
Yes this reminds me of buying ssd disks to my computers soon , plus convincing myself of building some highend pc, especialy cause i am interested also in learning blender3d. Waiting for the days of cheap desktop quantum computers to arrive ;o)
Last edited by Argu on Sun Dec 27, 2020 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Argu
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2020 5:01 pm
Location: İstanbul, Turkey

Re: Liquid lenses for focus stacking

Post by Argu »

Chris S. wrote:
Sat Dec 26, 2020 1:03 am
Argu,

One video creator you linked to is Ben Krasnow, who is among my favorite educator/experimenters on Youtube. Must admit that his explorations of building an electron microscope, and of refurbishing a derelict commercial electron microscope, dissuaded me from attempting such things myself.

A source of ready-to go liquid lenses, and information about them, is Edmund Optics. (I haven't yet looked at all your links--if this has already been covered, I apologize.)

While I've watched liquid lenses a bit as they've developed, there are two issues that keep me from experimenting with them. The first, as Lou pointed out, is that for the kind of still photography most of us in this forum do, liquid lenses don't seem to solve problems we happen to have. On the other hand, if one is doing high-speed machine vision in a manufacturing setting, there might indeed be advantages to liquid lenses.

The bigger issue in my mind--not addressed in the sources I've seen--is chromatic aberration (CA). (Correct me if this is addressed in one of your links that I haven't perused yet.) A liquid lens appears to act as a single-element lens, or perhaps a hemi-demi-semi two-element lens. When single-lens optics are used across the full spectrum of visible light, CA is a big problem. A large fraction of lens design, complexity, and cost go into reducing CA. So in our use, a liquid lens might introduce more problems than it solves. Here again, for industrial machine vision, full-spectrum imaging is not necessarily needed, so CA might not be an issue. So far, I've taken it as a strong hint that Edmund Optics pitches liquid lenses mainly for use in industrial machine vision.

This said, keep the fresh ideas coming! :D

--Chris S.
Hi Chris,

I guess too that the liquid lenses might need some time to reach the optical quality needed for precise
Macro photography, my motivation in posting these was the thrill of the potential possibilities. ;o)
Yet the last link , the corning product page describes the lens as fit to scientific research, ofthalmology and for microscopy, maybe they are getting there slowly.
My other hope would be how much miniaturisation and technological breakthroughs we have seen in our lifetimes, even in short times as decades. Good focusing macro or microscope lenses , or tubelenses with no moving parts would be a interesting concept i guess.
Still in sci-fi mode , probably watched too much star trek ;o)

(And as i looked now they introduced a development kit for microscopy applications in december 2019

https://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/in ... t-kit.html

Argu
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2020 5:01 pm
Location: İstanbul, Turkey

Re: Liquid lenses for focus stacking

Post by Argu »

Hi Chris,
I found an interesting book about Tunable micro optics, mentioning also liquid lenses.

https://www.amazon.com/Tunable-Micro-op ... 1107032458

You can examine the book through library genesis i guess. Most of the times i buy books through kindle for iphone, and also through google books for tablet, if i find a hard copy at the book store for the love of reading on paper. Which makes it very hard when moving to s new house. ;o)
This book i will wait till kindle edition comes out i guess, hard copy is a bit expensive.

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