Scott Wingo Business: UCSD engineers develop mini wide-angle lens that's ten times smaller than a regular one

What you see here, dear readers, is the image of a fiber-coupled monocentric lens camera that was recently developed by engineers from the University of California, San Diego. The researchers involved in the project say this particular miniature wide-angle lens is one-tenth of the size of more traditional options, such as the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L pictured above. Don't let the sheer magnitude (or lack thereof) of this glass fool you, however: UCSD gurus note that the newly developed optics can easily mimic the performance of regular-sized lenses when capturing high-resolution photos. "It can image anything between half a meter and 500 meters away (a 100x range of focus) and boasts the equivalent of 20/10 human vision (0.2-milliradian resolution)," according to engineers. As for us, well, we can't wait to see this technology become widely adopted -- don't you agree?

Filed under: Cameras