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FrozenGate by Avery

Beam expander on a camera

Nutball

Nutball

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There's lots of talk about beam expanders on lasers, but how about using them on small cameras? Are the optics high enough quality? I assume so. Would a BE be compatible with camera optics? The idea would be to just slide a BE over a pocket camera's telescoping lens and maybe using magnets to hold it on, for the purpose of improving lighting conditions. Where can I find a good one to try? Ideally the small lens would be around 15-20mm, and the big one around 40-60mm.
 





A telescope is the same thing as a beam expander, a camera telephoto lens is one too but custom made for the camera sensor. You could try to use a beam expander on a camera, but the aperture size might be too far off for the sensor size.
 
You would need achromats (lenses where the focal shift is the same over the visible spectrum) which are pretty costly. But if you can get a lens pair cheap it will definitely work with some degraded optical image quality.

Singlemode
 
I wouldn't call a telephoto lens a BE in the way I mean. I'm hoping, if possible, to use one as an aperture expander (like a reverse BE?) vs expanding light for zoom. That's why I don't know if a normal BE would work. Because it might just act like a wide angle lense instead of a neutral zoom extra light gathering lens. I've had the idea a few time, then keep remembering that what I want might be impossible without a much more complex lens setup.
 
I didn't think about the different wavelengths of color, good point SM.
 
I guess normal light wouldn't work through a BE very well anyway
 
A BE is a telescope. In fact, in laser optics the two are used interchangeably.
 
Nutball said:
There's lots of talk about beam expanders on lasers, but how about using them on small cameras? Are the optics high enough quality? I assume so. Would a BE be compatible with camera optics? The idea would be to just slide a BE over a pocket camera's telescoping lens and maybe using magnets to hold it on, for the purpose of improving lighting conditions. Where can I find a good one to try? Ideally the small lens would be around 15-20mm, and the big one around 40-60mm.
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If you have a Wal-Mart near you keyword search "phone telephoto lens" to test your idea. Some are less than $14.
 
I'm not looking for extra zoom, just extra light gathering ability that will still give me the same range of focus too.

I know they make extra zoom add ons for many cameras. My really old Sony H2 had some specifically designed for it.
 
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Nutball said:
I'm not looking for extra zoom, just extra light gathering ability that will still give me the same range of focus too.

I know they make extra zoom add ons for many cameras. My really old Sony H2 had some specifically designed for it.
Click to expand...

You didn't state what kind of camera you have which doesn't matter to us. What matters is the answer. That answer is you want a fast lens. However, that won't solve the problem because as an add-on lens you will still be limited by this camera's internal lens system which seems to not be interchangable.
 
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Chromatic aberrations could be an issue, many camera zoom lenses have multiple lenses to correct for chromatic aberrations, simple beam expanders won't.
 
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This thread discussion makes me wonder what lenses were used with black and white film before color, I mean, even if black and white, there were different colors producing lighter and darker areas on the film which couldn't have been as sharp as they would have been if using a achromatic lens to keep the blur down, right?
 
Only the film itself was black/white. The light hitting the film was in color and all chromatic errors were the same...

Singlemode
 
Alaskan said:
This thread discussion makes me wonder what lenses were used with black and white film before color, I mean, even if black and white, there were different colors producing lighter and darker areas on the film which couldn't have been as sharp as they would have been if using a achromatic lens to keep the blur down, right?
Click to expand...
19th century photographic lens developments.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_design#Overcoming_optical_aberrations
 
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