“Now that you own a nice camera, how about a lens to go with it?”

1. Understanding the benefits of a custom lens “Now that you own a nice camera, how about a lens to go with it?” Mitch Ruda July 10, 2007

2. Agenda Ruda & Associates and Cardinal Optics Brief history What we do Examples of projects & markets What’s the advantage of a custom lens? What can a custom lens do (and not)? How to recognize the need for custom lenses A primer on the properties of lenses The customizing process, costs & schedule

3. RUDA & ASSOCIATES, INC. CARDINAL OPTICS, INC. COMPANY OVERVIEW www.ruda.com

4. About Ruda & Associates, Inc. …An optical engineering consulting firm specializing in the design, development, prototype and production of customized optical products for a diversified customer base over broad disciplines.

5. Company Histories • Started November, 1994 • Number of employees: 12 • Number of years experience: 125+ staff-years • The four company founders have worked together for 27+ years • Cardinal Optics, RAI’s daughter company was founded ’00. Most prototyping and production occurs in COI.

6. The RAI/COI Relationship RAI has responsibility for Concept phase, Trade studies Final designs, Opto-mechanical engineering COI has responsibility for Prototype, production manufacturing Assembly, alignment, test, certification

7. ISO 9100AS Certification RAI & COI are ISO AS9100 certified The “AS” extension applies to aerospace Usefulness: We can proceed with the production of military rated hardware as a sub-contractor to the big primes w/out the need for a quality audit.

8. Ruda & Associates, Inc.Organization Chart

9. Sample projects & products Sample projects: Discontinued lens objectives (important !!) Follow-on to the Hubble telescope (JWST) Laser Fusion (Nat’l Ignition Facility) Projector for full body measurement Hyperspectral imager – named by Aviation Week & Space Technology as “perhaps most advanced system worldwide” (See website) Patents for panoramic imaging (website) Hollywood special effects device – SmARTlens/Panavision

10. WIRO – NASA GSFC • Lens designed and built by Ruda & Associates, Inc. and Cardinal Optics, Inc. for NASA GSFC • Photo of Jupiter taken with the WIRO lens

11. Rear Projection TV – LED based

12. Stray Light/Veiling Glare Expertise Al Greynolds, RAI Chief Scientist, developed ASAP. An advanced system analysis software package RAI also has proprietary in-house stray light analysis applications See demo

13. RAI/COI Diversity is our strength We have developed a wide client base in numerous disciplines This is an advantage to our clients We draw upon the experience of these fields We stay abreast of latest technology We can transfer like in-kind technology

14. Industries/Projects Partial client base includes: Aerospace Automotive NASA Agricultural Data Storage Printing Nat’l labs Silicon Valley Defense Pharmaceuticals Biomedical Textiles Lithography Telecom Universities Hollywood Opthalmic

15. Ruggedized Systems RAI/COI develops full “mil-qualified” ruggedized hardware Survivability/operational from -55° to +70° typical Harsh vibration environments Products environmentally tested

16. In-house precision lens assembly We now have a precision alignment station Capabilities Ultra-precise assembly of lenses Lenses suspended in bonding agent No line-to-line (metal to glass) contact Ideal for military thermal excursions

17. There are a lot of advantages What’s the advantage of a custom lens?

18. What can an off-the-shelf lens do (and not do)? “Plain vanilla” lenses Merit function is uniformly spread among all parameters They do everything OK but rarely great Good distortion correction, not superb Price driven (usually) against competitors As suppliers change manufacturers, quality changes Rarely do they meet specific needs, like match or maximize the camera performance

19. Talking point: It is ridiculous to purchase an expensive camera and attach crummy optics.It is also ridiculous to purchase a plane vanilla lens for an application-specific product

20. Advantages of custom lenses Target the specific needs of the product OTS lenses are “plain vanilla” and generic Custom lenses imply a custom merit function Custom lenses can always be made available OTS lenses get discontinued – trouble! Matched to the camera properties Pixel size, FOV, F/#, wavelength, etc. Thus custom lenses maximize camera performance! The design and performance parameters allow deterministic analyses, modifications, etc. OTS lens mfg.’s never reveal design details. Big deal! Sometimes they may even cost less!

21. Advantages of custom lenses (cont’d) Can get rid of standard mounts C-, F-, etc. More lenses near image  better performance Quality control for the specific application

22. A classic example of the benefits of a custom lens An Example

23. The Problem Customer was developing an optical diagnostic system for automobile wheel alignment They were using a $200 F/2 Konica lens Our job was to cut the price of the lens to $15. How could we, in small volume, beat a Japanese mass produce lens? Because we take the time to really understand what the customer needs. I mean really. And the answer is…

24. In this project we noticed: Illumination was with LED’s so a lens designed for white light wasn’t needed The object was always at the same distance so focusing wasn’t needed and the lens could be optimized for one distance The iris was stopped down to F/20 so an F/2 lens wasn’t needed (neither was the iris) There is a huge difference in the cost of these designs They needed very low distortion They didn’t want the vignetting

25. The result… We designed a Hypergon -- a 150 year-old lens design that used 2 identical lenses, of inexpensive glass, placed back-to-back, with the stop in the middle. Natural near-zero distortion Production cost < $15

26. And the bonus… When installed in the prototype, the distortion was so low that it unmasked all of the other problems they were having and allowed the to finally properly calibrate the system

27. Some of the issues we deal with daily A primer on properties of lenses

28. The concept of a merit function Merit function – The weighting factor used in the design of lenses. OTS lenses weight everything evenly resulting on OK but not great or application-specific lenses. Custom lenses heavily weight the most need performance parameters, e.g. low distortion or don’t weight color because a laser is used

29. Factors in lens quality First order parameters Focal length – consistent from lens to lens? F/# – how is it defined? (good luck finding out) T/# – F/# corrected for transmission losses Field of view (FOV) Wavelength range (often 400 – 700nm) Mount type Vignetting towards edge of FOV

30. Factors in lens quality (cont’d) Monochromatic aberrations – (These are independent of wavelength band) Degradation with larger FOV? (typical) Uniform across FOV? (Big plus if so) How close to ideal performance? Distortion Some applications require it to be very low

31. Factors in lens quality (cont’d) Chromatic aberrations – 4 main types Axial color – blue/red separated on-axis Lateral color – blue/red separated with FOV Secondary axial color* – blue/red superimposed on-axis but green is separated Secondary lateral color* – blue/red superimposed with FOV but green is separated *Corrected with expensive, exotic glass

32. Factors in lens quality (cont’d) Glass choice – this has become complicated Movement to lead free glass means that Certain glasses no longer available Lead free substitute has different properties Ordering “more” lenses implies design change Glass catalogs have reduced # of choices Lenses moved off-shore might switch to Chinese glass – and performance changes Digital camera markets sucking up supply Smaller pixels demand higher quality optics  exotic glass

33. MTF – Rules of thumb(How good does a “good” lens need to be?) First, look at Nyquist frequency, N: N = 1/ (2 x pixel size) Thus, 8 pixel has: N = 1/(2 x 0.008) = 62.5 lp/mm (line pairs per mm) Rule of thumb is a very good lens has a system MTF > 0.3 at Nyquist To calculate the system MTF we multiply the CCD (or CMOS) MTF by the lens’ MTF. At Nyquist, the CCD MTF is 0.63 So, lens MTF @ N (mfg’d) should be > 0.5

34. Once you’ve established that there is a benefit to custom optics, how do we get there? The custom design process

35. The design, prototype, productionprocedure Roll up our sleeves and really understand what the product needs Develop a project matrix (RAI ISO need) Customer signs off Design phase Might include multiple candidate designs, trade studies, etc. Down select to a few choices Chose and finish final design

36. The design, prototype, productionprocedure (cont’d) Commence & deliver prototype design Customer feedback Commence & deliver production design Notes: Often prototype and production design are different for many, many reasons Costs – vary greatly. Factors include: complexity, time frame, guaranteed units, mechanical design, required environment, military, etc.

37. Summary Educating the customer on how his product can (sometimes) be improved with a custom lens is good business for everyone I would be happy to entertain the prospect of presenting more material on other subject at the next sales meeting – just let me know!