New lens invented

[Ramrod]

researchers have created a new lens they say could revolutionize photography by allowing the smallest cameras to take crystal-clear zoom photos. The new lens, five times thinner than a sheet of paper, can zoom and focus with no moving parts, potentially eliminating the distortion caused by digital zoom and the bulky glass of conventional optical lens. Galstian's lens adds a light-sensitive compound to a thin sheet of liquid crystals, eliminating the need for the finely ground glass of conventional photographic equipment.
When the sheet is zapped with a laser beam, the center becomes denser than the edges of the lens. Small jolts of electricity change the material in the lens to bend light and adjust focus and zoom.

Link

Nice invention!

[Halcyon]

It never seizes to amaze me how small things are getting.
It will be interesting to see how these take off.

Originally Posted by Halcyon

It never seizes to amaze me how small things are getting.

thats the cold weather
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cant be too good if they are targeting mobile phones. However its a good place to start in order to develop and refine the idea

Originally Posted by Ramrod

Link

Nice invention!

Crystal clear pictures of that 'happy slap' AND a laser in the phone too - to control the lens?

"It sounds like something a photographer would dream up," said Greenslade.

Hmm. This photographer thinks that getting the same image quality from a 35mm camera as can be got from a large frame camera would be a real innovation.

As it is, getting camera phones to produce anything that looks better than a pin-hole camera seems to be difficult enough.

This integration of functions is leading people to accept mediocrity, since a phone/camera/mp3 player will, for the foreseeable future, be a compromise. So, in the mean time, we are encouraged to think that a 10x improvement in image quality from a phone is something to cheer about, when it is still woefully short of the image quality possible from even the most basic stils camera.

It might actually make much more sense if the phone had a better calculator integrated (how many phones offer a full xxx function scientific graphing calculator?) or maybe a decent spell-checker to ensure text messages are actually sent in a meaningful language? Has anyone bothered to think about adding a usable voice memo system to a phone?

Maybe I'm a luddite by modern standards, but I somehow feel that the development of features on phones has much more to do with 'marketing' than it has to do with 'utility', from a user's perspective.

Guess this has gone far enough off-topic