• Deep dive

Liquid lens integration in off-the-shelve lenses

Front lens configuration

It is also possible to achieve good results by placing a liquid lens directly in front of off-the-shelf lenses.

In case of S-mount lenses, horizontal fields of view up to 56° are recommended and the liquid lens can often be mounted using the same C-mount resulting in a very compact solution as shown on the left.

In case of C-mount lenses, horizontal fields of view up to 30° are recommended and the liquid lens can be mounted on the filter thread as shown in the following.

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Back lens configuration

Optotune’s liquid lenses can also be placed between camera and imaging lens.

In case of C-mount lenses, the liquid lens act as a spacer, giving the possibility to use lenses with focal length of 35mm or more to address macro applications (image on the right).

In case of M42-mount lenses, the liquid lens has space within the flange focal distance, allowing the possibility to focus to infinity (image on the left).

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High magnification

To achieve magnifications of 5x up to 100x, the tunable lens is best placed between objective lens and tube lens. There are several off the shelf products available such as the Optem FUSION system by Qioptiq or Navitar’s Zoom 6000 system (test report).