Zoom Lens: Design

A simple zoom lens system

There are many possible designs for zoom lenses, the most complex ones having upwards of thirty individual lens elements, and multiple moving parts. Most however follow the same basic design. Generally they consist of a number of individual lenses that may be either fixed, or slide axially along the body of the lens. As the magnification of a zoom lens changes, it is necessary to compensate for any movement of the focal plane to keep the focussed image sharp. This compensation may be done by mechanical means (moving the complete lens assembly as the magnification of the lens changes), or optically (arranging the position focal plane to vary as little as possible as the lens is zoomed).

A simple scheme for a zoom lens divides the assembly into two parts: a focussing lens similar to a standard, fixed-focal-length photographic lens, preceded by an afocal zoom system, an arrangement of fixed and movable lens elements that does not focus the light, but alters the size of a beam of light travelling through it, and thus the overall magnification of the lens system.

Movement of lenses in an afocal zoom system.

In this simple optically compensated zoom lens, the afocal system consists of two positive (converging) lenses of equal focal length (lenses L1 and L3) with a negative (diverging) lens (L2) between them, with an absolute focal length less than half that of the positive lenses. Lens L3 is fixed, but lenses L1 and L2 can be moved axially, and do so in a fixed, non-linear relationship. This movement is usually performed by a complex arrangement of gears and cams in the lens housing, although some modern zoom lenses use computer-controlled servos to perform this positioning.

As the negative lens L2 moves from the front to the back of the lens, the lens L1 moves forward and then backward in a parabolic arc. In doing so, the overall angular magnification of the system varies, changing the effective focal length of the complete zoom lens.

At each of the three points shown, the three-lens system is afocal (neither diverging or converging the light), and so does not alter the position of the focal plane of the lens. Between these points, the system is not exactly afocal, but the variation in focal plane position can be very small (~±0.01 mm in a well-designed lens) and so this slight defocussing is not apparent.

An important issue in zoom lens design is the correction of optical aberrations (such as chromatic aberration, and in particular, field curvature) across the whole operating range of the lens; this is considerably harder in a zoom lens than a fixed lens, which need only correct the aberrations for one focal length. This problem was a major reason for the slow uptake of zoom lenses, with early designs being considerably inferior to contemporary fixed lenses, and usable only with a narrow range of f-numbers. Modern optical design techniques have enabled the construction of zoom lenses with good aberration correction over widely variable focal lengths and apertures.

Whereas lenses used in cinematography and video applications are required to maintain focus as the focal length is changed, there is no such requirement for still photography, or if a zoom lens is used as a projection lens. Since it is harder to construct a lens that does not change focus with the same image quality as one that does, the latter applications often have lenses that require refocussing once the focal length has changed (and thus strictly speaking are varifocal lenses, not zoom lenses). As most still cameras are autofocus these days, it hardly presents a problem.

Designers of zoom lenses with large zoom ratios often will trade one or more aberrations for higher image sharpness. For example, a greater degree of barrel distortion is tolerated in lenses that span the focal length range from wide angle to telephoto with a focal ratio of 10x or more than would be acceptable in a fixed focal length lens or a zoom lens with a lower ratio. Although modern design methods have been continually reducing this problem, barrel distortion of greater than one percent is common in these types of lenses. Another price paid is that at the extreme telephoto setting of the lens, the effective focal length changes significantly as the lens is focussed on nearer and nearer objects. The apparent focal length can more than halve as the lens is focussed from infinity to a few feet. To a lesser degree, this effect is also seen in fixed focal length lenses that move internal lens elements, rather than the entire lens, to effect changes in focal length.

Simplified zoom lens in operation