Cameraphone image quality seems to have hit a brick wall somewhere around 3.2 megapixel sensors. Yeah, the image quality gets a bit better at 5MP but it’s still a long way from matching the image quality offered by standalone digital cameras. The reason, in the main, is down to having to squeeze tiny lenses into phone bodies.
Now researchers and the University of California in San Deigo have, by borrowing techniques used by reflective telescope makers, come up with a possible solution to our photographic needs. By carving concentric rings into an optical crystal, the researchers were able to create a ‘tiny hall of mirrors’. The light hits the lens and bounces its way to the sensor, offering, it is claimed, image quality that approaches that of a traditional lens but in an optic that is around seven times thinner.
A patent for the lens has been applied for, a version five times smaller is in the works… And one may well turn up in your 2009 cameraphone. Fingers crossed, hey?
(Popular Science via Gizmodo)
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