Liquid Lens for your Camera Phone

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://wired-vig.wired.com//wired/archive/13.04/start.html?pg=10' target='_blank'>http://wired-vig.wired.com//wired/archive/13.04/start.html?pg=10</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Why do good cellular telephones fall for bad digital cameras? Blame the lenses. Unlike the optics on a full-featured camera, phonecam lenses are static, shoved into a product with neither the space nor budget for variable focus or zoom. Unless your subject is in the camera's sweet spot - the distance at which its focus is fixed - your picture will be blurry. In contrast, the ideal optical setup would be small, soft, and adaptable, like the human eye. So cell phone makers are salivating over liquid lenses, tiny gadgets that suspend a drop of liquid in an electrostatic field. Change the field and the shape of the droplet changes, too, altering how the light bends when it passes through - just like a lens."</i><br /><br />A little water and electricity will improve the quality and optical zoom of all these camera phones? It sounds a little far fetched to me. Why haven't I seen this in any of those super small digital cameras?

[rbrome]

A little water and electricity will improve the quality and optical zoom of all these camera phones? It sounds a little far fetched to me.
Not at all. It's very real - it was first announced a little over a year ago:

http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=804

This company specializes in it:

http://www.varioptic.com/

Why haven't I seen this in any of those super small digital cameras?
You will... this is simply very new technology that hasn't been perfected and fully commercialized yet.

[Foxbat121]

Even full-blown digital cameras with real lens have hard time pick a best focus for the subject. Being able to change focus and can focus correctly are two different things. I doubt it will ever show up in a phone cam.

[surur]

I dont blame the lenses. I blame the sensors. CMOS is just cr*p. Way too much noise and too little sensitivity. CMOS may be cheap, but they make a joke of increasing resolution, which just makes the pictures more noisy.

Surur