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eric mac
23-Mar-2005, 07:15
Greetings

Any suggestions on a book on lens design/theory for LF users. I am looking for something below a true textbook, but above a primer. I found a couple of pages on the web, but I prefer a book to reading my computer screen.

Eric

Gem Singer
23-Mar-2005, 07:45
Hi Eric,

look up the books that Rudolph Kingslake wrote. He was Kodak's lens guru. His writings are considered to be the "bibles" of lens design.

James E Galvin
23-Mar-2005, 07:50
Search Rudolf Kingslake on Amazon (he was head of the optical department at Kodak for many years). I can recommend "A History of the Photographic Lens", "Lens Design Fundamentals", and "Optics in Photography". "Applied Optics and Optical Design" is a very mathematical text.

Ted Harris
23-Mar-2005, 08:01
All of Kingslake's books are excellent and I too recommendn them to you. OTOH you say "less than a textbook" and I am not sure exactly what depth you are looking for. Lens design and optical theory i snot a subject into which you can delve very deeply without some understanding of optics and a fair knowledge of advanced math. Take a look at Kingslake's books in a libarary but if that is too much then take a look at what i soffered in an encyclopedia (I recommend Britannica).

Ted Harris
23-Mar-2005, 08:03
I forgot! There is or used to be a book called "The Way Things Work" which will likely have a solidi and fairly non-technical discussion.

Arne Croell
23-Mar-2005, 08:21
Most of the Kingslake books have been mentioned and are good. The "History of the Photographic Lens" is the easiest to read and might be the best start. Another book to consider is Sidney F. Ray: Applied Photographic Optics. That would be something to get through the library as it is quite expensive ($140 at Amazon). It does not go into lens design in detail but covers all the different lens types (not only for LF), other optics (viewfinderes etc.) and the basics.

Arne Croell
23-Mar-2005, 08:29
And if you really want to get into it, check for Warren J. Smith: "Modern Optical Engineering" (the basics) and "Modern Lens Design: A resource manual" (lots of design data). Some of the older, out-of-print books are also worth considering like Arthur Cox's "Photographic Optics".

Chris Gittins
23-Mar-2005, 11:13
FYI, I ordered "A History of the Photographic Lens" from Amazon in mid-January. I'm still waiting on it. I've been receiving a "Your order has been delayed." message pretty much every week for the past month.

Chris

fred arnold
23-Mar-2005, 11:48
Skokie public library has Kingslake's "Lens Design Fundamentals", which I browsed one day as it showed the formulas, schematics, and some theory behind the Protar, Dialyte, etc, designs, including the choice of refractive index for the glass, etc. The old Ignalls "Amateur Telescope Making" books also had some information on lens designs, though related mainly to eyepieces and refractor telescopes (which could be thought of as a two-element design in really long barrel, on this forum)

Daniel Geiger
23-Mar-2005, 19:39
Also consider Sidney Ray's "Applied photographic optics", published by Focal Press. I think there is a third edition out now. A bit dense, with a bunch of math in there, but lots of great general info.

eric mac
23-Mar-2005, 19:49
Thanks to everyone who replied. I found the history of the photographic lens at a used bookstore( they knew what they had, not as pricy as Amazon, but more than I'd usually pay.) I am an electrical engineer by education, but the toughest math I've done lately is long division ;>)

Thanks again
Eric

Emmanuel BIGLER
24-Mar-2005, 08:07
Sidney Ray's book is quite expensive so I have delayed the day when I'll eventually purchase it ;-).
I have Cox's. It has a nice catalogue of older lens formulae classified by type. Otherwise the book is outdated as far as design techniques are concerned.
A suggestion which is less provocative that it might look at a first glance is to download OsloŽ Edu, a free demo software for professional optical design. You can download the companion .pdf reference textbook that explains how the software works but it is in itself an extremely valuable textbook.
This was suggested to the French MF/LF group galerie-photo.info by a French professional lens designer.
OsloŽ edu allows 10 surfaces, so unfortunately you cannot simulate a modern 6-element plasmat. However for a 4-element dialyte or a Tessar design my understanding that many questions frequently asked here can be explained very simply by running a simulation.
a pointer to the company that distributes OsloŽ www.lambdares.com (http://www.lambdares.com) www.lambdares.com/downloads/ (http://www.lambdares.com/downloads/)www.lambdares.com/pub/Optics_Reference.pdf (http://www.lambdares.com/pub/Optics_Reference.pdf)

Arne Croell
24-Mar-2005, 08:46
Emmanuel's suggestion of OSLO Edu is a good one if one really wants to go into designs in depth, that is for the serious lensoholic ;-).

I have actually done that about a year ago and learned a lot. The last edition of Warren J. Smiths "Modern Lens Design: A resource manual" refers to OSLO and has lots of lens data to play with. Of course one can get those also from the patent descriptions which are available online (www.uspto.gov) - Kingslakes "History" lists a lot of the patent numbers . A good foundation of basic optics and understanding of aberration charts is necessary to really use that program.
If anyone wonders why 10 surfaces are not enough for a plasmat, the aperture plane and the object plane have to be counted as 1 surface each, so that leaves essentially 8 glass-air or glass-glass surfaces.