LensVector Decloaks, Reveals Solid-State LCD Focusing Lens for Mobile Phone Cameras
Mobile phone cameras are everywhere. Nearly every mobile phone handset shipped today incorporates a camera and nearly a billion handsets ship each year. Inside each of those camera-enabled mobile phone handsets is…one of the worst cameras ever created—high-tech equivalents of turn-of-the-century box cameras (that’s the year 1900 I’m referring to, not 2000). Echoing the megahertz wars from PC processors, cameraphone vendors hawk megapixels to uneducated consumers. What they don’t mention is that there’s generally a cheap, fixed-focus lens sitting atop that multi-megapixel CMOS sensor. Startup LensVector (Mountain View, CA) aims to change that with a solid-state LCD-based automatic focusing system (called LVAF for LensVector auto focus) where the only moving parts are the liquid crystals, as shown in the figure below.
The figure shows an LVAF LCD cell with two pieces of electrode-covered glass encapsulating the liquid crystals. The LVAF cell differs from a normal LCD cell because it incorporates an extra layer that LensVector calls a “Hidden Layer,” which is a graduated mix of two materials that are optically identical but differ dielectrically. The LVAF cell’s Hidden Layer shapes the electric field applied by the LCD electrodes. The shaped electric field produces variable rotation of the liquid crystal media depending on where the crystal is located in within the LCD cell. In turn, the variable crystal rotation shapes the refractive index within the cell, producing the same effect on light passing through the LVAF cell as would a lens. Varying the electric field applied to the cell changes the liquid crystal rotation thus shaping the lens.
This thing is tiny. To the right is a photo of the LVAF cell against a US penny. The LVAF cell covers two letters in the words “ONE CENT” at the bottom of the penny. It’s is small enough to fit into existing mobile phone camera modules, thus saving one of the most precious commodities inside of a cell phone: physical volume. LensVector also claims that the energy required to activate an LVAF cell is half that of a mechanical focusing mechanism, although that’s not much of an advantage when only 15% of cell phones ship with focusing mechanisms; The rest ship with fixed-focus lenses that need no energy at all for focusing.
Yet another advantage of the LVAF cell is that it’s silent. That’s important when shooting video because focus-hunting mechanical autofocus systems tend to inject motor noise into the audio that accompanies video recording. The LVAF system won’t have that problem.
Will LensVector revolutionize the camera industry? What do you think?
cell phone camera guy commented:
"Q" commented:
Stiggle commented:
Keith commented:
jim commented:
Steve Leibson commented:
BD commented:
Steve Leibson commented:
Fun Joe commented:
