New Arrival: Arducam’s New Low Distortion Lenses

In our last post of the new M12 Lens Kit, we introduced a variety of lenses that will cover most of the use case scenarios. However, “most” is not enough, and we want to take a step forward to face bigger challenges. Today we are glad to add several new low distortion lenses to our product family.

Seeing is believing

To put it simply, the broader Field of View (FOV) you need, the easier you will have distortion. Because with more details captured, you’ve got to find a way to squeeze all the information onto the image sensor. The optical design decides that you will face this “lens error.” After all, it’s hard to think of another method that allows you to shot 180 FOV without bending the image to a sphere.

When we use cameras to take pictures, we are capturing the light and squeezing it onto the sensor frame, so technically speaking, we have not reproduced the object, but instead, imaged it.

Straight Forward

If you are using our cameras for surveillance, it would be okay to have those distortions, and the fisheye effect is even somehow aesthetically interesting. However, if the image is for the computers and microcontrollers to process, you will want it to be as accurate as possible. We can use an algorithm to restore the degradation of the image, but industrial cameras that can correct and restore the distortion is actually not cost-effective. Why not reduce the distortion at the beginning with a low distortion lens? That will make life a lot easier.

Look ahead

As the distortion is a “lens error,” we will need lenses to handle this error. The optical design of those zero distortion cameras is different and efficient enough to present you with what the image really is. We’ve tested one of the lenses on an OV5647 sensor, and you can see from the pictures below about the clear difference between the low distortion lens and the normal ones.

Here are the newly arrived low distortion lenses:

Check out these zero-distortion lenses or get them from one of our distributors.