The newest cameras have sensors made up of millions of pixels. When you point your camera and snap an image, light streams through the lens and hits the sensor. The sensor absorbs photons, measures the colour and intensity of the light, and turns that information into a long string of numbers. To a computer, that long string of numbers is a set of instructions that tells it how to show the image, which is why you can transfer digital images to any camera, computer or smartphone and they always look the same!

For microscope objectives having apertures, the optical properties and thickness of the medium lying between the front lens element and the specimen affect the calculations necessary to correct for image aberrations.

Curvature of field in optical microscopy and how it is a common and annoying aberration that is familiar to most experienced microscopists is explained in this featured interactive tutorial.

A demonstration on how internal lens elements in a high numerical aperture dry objective may be correctly adjusted with these varied cover glass thickness and dispersion fluctuations is featured in this tutorial.

Katherine Bennell-Pegg's epic journey to becoming Australia's first fully trained Astronaut.In a monumental achievement that has reverberated across the globe, Katherine Bennell-Pegg has made history as the first Australian to be trained as an astronaut with the...

Departures in lens action from the ideal conditions of optics are known as aberrations. Optical trains typically suffer from as many as five common aberrations: spherical, chromatic, curvature of field, comatic, and astigmatic.

The earliest cameras worked using a clever chemistry trick. Certain chemicals (like silver chloride) change colour when they’re exposed to light. In this case, silver chloride darkens when the light hits it, allowing a photographer to capture a black and white image.

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Brian O. Flynn, John C. Long, Matthew Parry-Hill, and Michael W. Davidson - National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 1800 East Paul Dirac Dr., The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, 32310.

Explore the two most prevalent types of distortion, positive and negative, and how they can often be present in very sharp images that are otherwise corrected for spherical, chromatic, comatic, and astigmatic aberrations.

The type of camera you’re more familiar with is the film camera. The first film cameras were developed in the early 1800s by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Building on earlier research that showed certain chemicals change colour when they’re exposed to light, Joseph was able to take the world’s first photograph in 1826.

An ideal microscope objective produces a symmetrical diffraction limited image of an Airy pattern from an infinitely small object point. The image plane is generally located at a fixed distance from the objective front lens in a medium of defined refractive index. Microscope objectives offered by the leading manufacturers have remarkably low degrees of aberrations and other imperfections, provided the appropriate objective is selected for the task and the objective is utilized properly in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations. It should be emphasized that objective lenses are not made to be perfect from every standpoint, but are designed to meet certain specifications depending on their intended use, constraints on physical dimensions, and price ranges.

Learn more about chromatic aberrations and how when white light passes through a simple or complex lens system, the component wavelengths are refracted according to their frequency.

Learn about the most serious of the monochromatic defects that occurs with microscope objectives, the spherical aberration, which causes the specimen image to appear hazy or blurred and slightly out of focus.

Early cameras were little more than dark boxes with a lens on one side. To take a photo, the lens would be uncovered, and the light that came into the camera was focused onto a plate that was coated with a chemical like silver chloride or silver iodide. The silver would change colour and capture the image that was coming through the lens.

Learn about comatic aberrations and how they are mainly encountered with off-axis light fluxes and are most severe when the microscope is out of alignment, as well as the result of when these aberrations occur.

With a history dating back thousands of years, cameras are one of our most important inventions. If you’re a budding photographer, chemist or filmmaker, the Street Science team would love to help you dive deeper into the topic! Our popular See the Light for Year 5s show is all about how light moves and is absorbed, and we guide students through the process of making light-sensitive bands that work much the same way as cameras.

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The very first type of camera was called a “camera obscura.” Unlike the camera on your phone, a camera obscura doesn’t snap a photo that you can print out and carry around. Instead, a camera obscura is a dark room with a small hole or lens in one wall. The light that streams through the lens projects an image of the outside world onto the wall across from it.

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Explore the relationship between astigmatism and comatic aberrations, and how astigmatism aberrations are manifested by the off-axis image of a specimen point appearing as a line or ellipse instead of a point.

Objectives are made with differing degrees of optical correction for both monochromatic (spherical, astigmatism, coma, distortion) and polychromatic aberrations, field size and flatness, transmission wavelengths, freedom from fluorescence, birefringence and other factors contributing to background noise. Depending upon the degree of correction, objectives are generally classified as achromats, fluorites, and apochromats, with a plan designation added to lenses with low curvature of field and distortion. This section addresses some of the more common optical aberrations that are commonly found (and often corrected) in microscope objectives.

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Celebrating the achievements of Street Science legends Danni and Laura as they graduate.At Street Science, we take immense pride in our team of dedicated educators, who work tirelessly to nurture the budding scientific minds of tomorrow. So, we wanted to shine a light...

Aberrations are divided into two main categories: errors that occur when polychromatic light (white light) is passed through a lens, and errors that are present when only a single wavelength (monochromatic) of light is utilized. The selected references listed in this section contain information about the cause and correction of the most common optical aberrations encountered with microscope and other lens systems. Bear in mind that the optical designer must correct for both polychromatic and monochromatic aberrations simultaneously in the production of well-corrected microscope objectives.

The technology that powers cameras is actually based on very simple principles, it has just taken us a while to get to the point where we can all carry around cameras in our pockets!

After Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s success, the world of photography moved forward quickly. Lots of different inventors and chemists turned their attention to creating better cameras and improved photographic chemicals. The biggest leap forward came in 1888 when George Eastman developed his first camera which he called “Kodak.” The Kodak was the first to capture pictures on rolls of photographic film, which produced better quality, longer-lasting images.

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These days, film cameras work on the same basic principles, but the technology has come a long way. Modern films use a group of chemicals called silver halides. Silver halides are light-sensitive crystals that change colour when exposed to light. On photographic film, silver halide crystals are coated in gelatin to protect them from being exposed to light and to make sure the photo doesn’t fade after it has been taken.

Discover an aberration-free meridional section of a point source of light located at a depth in the specimen layer having a refractive index and imaged with a virtual microscope objective.

Except, instead of using rolls of film made using light-sensitive silver halides, digital cameras have a sensor that’s made of silicon. A digital camera’s sensor has a grid of thousands of tiny “photosites” that are sensitive to light. You’ve probably heard photosites called by their more common name: pixels.

Curvature of field in optical microscopy is an aberration that is familiar to most experienced microscopists. This artifact is the natural result of using lenses that have curved surfaces.

That’s right. The tiny little camera on the back of your phone is the result of more than 200 years of research and scientific developments! While humans have been using our own two hands to paint and draw for thousands of years, it was only in recent times that we figured out the science of taking photos.