Enhancing Image Quality: Design and Aberration Control in a 5X Mechanically Compensated Imaging System

In this work, we introduce an imaging system capable of 5X zoom. We designed a mechanically compensated zooming lens system with only two moving lenses and the ability to change the zoom ratios from 5X to 2X and 1X. The different configurations were modeled and simulated with Zemax. To improve the quality of the image, we examined the Seidel coefficients and worked to minimize aberrations. In our optimization process, we prioritized driving our chromatic and spherical aberrations coefficients close to zero. To address the challenges of stray light and spherical aberration, we reduced the amount of light entering our sensor by incorporating apertures and added a corrective lens. To illustrate this finding, we conducted a comparative study of all system configurations. We evaluated varied methods to improve image quality and compared aberration coefficients between the original and optimized optical system. In the future, we aim to enhance zoom while maintaining image quality and make the system more compact and portable.