Optiland – Can you use an open-source tool for optical design?
By Madeleine Åkeson| Have you ever wanted to make, analyze or adjust an optical design, but did not have access to a license for an optical design software such as Zemax? Or, have
Light pollution
By Katharina Zeuner| When light ends up where it doesn’t belong Living in Stockholm has its perks – one of them is having a ski slope within walking distance. It’s so clo
ADAS Optics – Not Just LiDAR
By Olov von Hofsten|I have previously written some articles about LiDAR. This is what I have worked with the most and it is an interesting technology. But ADAS (Advanced Driver Ass
The Myth of the 10 000 Lux Lamp
December in Stockholm and the sun rises at 8.30 and sets at 14.30, which makes many of us wonder, “why am I living here” or start looking for southern vacation destinations. It
Everything you wanted to know about Metaoptics but were too afraid to ask
By Olov von Hofsten | Metaoptics brings something truly new and innovative to optics. The possibility to exchange a large number of lenses into a thin, flat surface sounds almost t
Speckles and their likelihood of detection
By Olov von Hofsten| Speckles are something that I have always been fascinated by. When I saw them for the first time, during school, they didn’t look like anything I had ever se
LiDAR Link Budget
By Olov von Hofsten| One of the most important specifications of a LiDAR is the range. How far can the LiDAR see? This may be the first question one asks. You quickly realize that
Using the EMVA1288 standard
By Linus Frantzich | Comparing the performance of two image sensors can almost be an administrative, rather than a technical task. Most image sensor metrics depend on exposure time
The Optics Of Rainbows
By Gustav Strömqvist | Rainbows are a beautiful physical phenomenon, forming as the result of how the sunlight refracts and reflects inside droplets of water before reaching
Lightguides – shape and performance – part 2
By Billy Kaldvee | In the last post we recommended to keep the distance between the LED and the light guide ten times smaller than the light guide diameter. To demonstrate why this
Lightguides – shape and performance – part 1
By Billy Kaldvee | Have you ever done a mechanical design of a light guide without doing any optical simulations and wondered why the result looked as something you did not expect?
Etendue and Optical Invariants
By Olov von Hofsten and Simon Olin | “The possibilities of optics are endless” – you may have heard things like this and it sounds great and wonderful. Unfortunately it is no
The Perfect LiDAR – does it exist?
By Olov von Hofsten | As a consultant, I have often been approached by unrealistic requirements from customers, and the LiDAR business is particularly prone to this. Perhaps becaus
Understanding Camera Sharpness: The relationship between pixel count and resolution in smartphone cameras
By Jan Lüttgens | In a previous post, we explained how sharpness and resolution are two separate characteristics of a camera system. Yet, from a consumer perspective they may seem
LiDAR Detection Techniques
Since LiDAR has been around for quite some time, I have heard a lot of different names of various detection methods. In practice there are not as many methods of detecting signal a
Simulating Luminance in Zemax
By Olov von Hofsten | Luminance is arguably the most important component to analyze when evaluating a lighting design since it answer the fundamental question, “What will it look
Setting up a camera lab
By Henrik Eliasson | Measuring the image quality of a camera is no small task. If you are setting up a lab for this purpose, there are quite a few considerations to take into accou
Sharpness and resolution, part II
By Henrik Eliasson | In the previous post we looked at the relation between optical resolution and sharpness. We could see that there is no clear correlation between the two. In th
Sharpness and resolution, part I
By Henrik Eliasson | Sharpness is one of the most important image quality attributes for a camera. Often, the sharpness and resolution of a camera system are confused and used inte
7 Best Zemax Tricks and Tips
By Olov von Hofsten | At Eclipse we use Zemax a lot, everyday actually. But although we know the optics necessary to make optimal optical designs, knowing a software’s hidden sho