from Hacker News

Types of optical systems in a lens designer's toolbox (2020)

by picture on 5/23/25, 6:33 PM with 14 comments

• by alexbock on 5/23/25, 7:36 PM

  If you want to play with any of these lens descriptions (or look at code for simulating them), I made a free and open source visual web UI for lens design. The default project when you visit it is a double gauss lens similar to the one shown in the article.

  https://alexbock.github.io/open-optical-designer/

• by Xmd5a on 5/24/25, 12:38 AM

  >Who this guide is NOT for: [...] People that are okay with becoming a lens design zombie.

  https://web.archive.org/web/20230914035459/https://caoyuan.s...

  A $500 DIY near-IR spectrometer that would sell for $10,000, Yuan Cao

  >The placement of the cylindrical lens (position & angle) affects the focal point for different wavelength. I did not do a rigorous calculation here —— I simply resorted to a trial-and-error method to figure out the optimal placement.

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37498142

• by joshvm on 5/23/25, 7:58 PM

  I always wanted to play with Optica for Mathematica. It seems like a problem that would lend itself really well to the Wolfram way of visual + functional programming. However I've never met anyone who uses it and while academics usually get Mathematica for free, the plugin is pricey.

  https://www.opticasoft.com/tour

  https://www.opticasoft.com/copy-of-lenslab

• by contingencies on 5/24/25, 2:44 PM

  If you like this sort of thing I highly recommend seeking out a hardcover copy of the last edition of a long-running book, View Camera Technique: 7th Edition. I found it exceptionally well illustrated and very interesting.

  https://www.amazon.com/View-Camera-Technique-Leslie-Stroebel...

  Somebody in Dongguan once introduced me to the Korean running the iPhone lens assembly production systems (it was outsourced; ~COVID). IIRC they had 13 lens elements at the time and each assembly was characterized and digitally corrected according to its specific optical characteristics. Fascinating guy to talk to over beer. He moved east after that, someplace near Shanghai IIRC.

• by elikoga on 5/23/25, 7:23 PM

  Potentially relevant:

     Show HN: Torch Lens Maker – Differentiable Geometric Optics in PyTorch (63 days ago) 2025-03-21
  

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435438

  https://victorpoughon.github.io/torchlensmaker/

• by NKosmatos on 5/23/25, 9:51 PM

  I remember playing around with a lenses and light sources simulator, but can’t find the link :-( If I’m not mistaken it was posted here on HN but couldn’t find it by searching with various related keywords. If anyone has it please share :-)