How Two Lenses Work As One
Any photographer who has to lug around even a fraction of the lenses that can be used on the samesingle lens reflex (SLR)
cameras must have stopped at one time, rubbed his back, and wondered why someone couldn’t create one single zoom lens that
could cover all focal lengths—a lens that went ultra, super-wide at 10mm, or even afisheye180-degree view, all the way out
there to a 1,000—no, 2,000mm telephoto that let you count an eagle’s feathers. Well, there’s a reason no one’s made such a
lens. It’s hard. It’s too hard, in fact. The complexity in spanning more than a hundred or two millimeters in focal length grows as
image quality shrinks. But when you’re working with digital cameras, you have more options—such as using two lenses instead of
one, as Kodak has done in the V570 and V610 digital cameras.
(^132) PART 2 HOW DIGITAL CAMERAS CAPTURE IMAGES
To create a single camera with a 5X wide-
angle optical zoom in the V570 and V705,
and a 10X telephoto zoom in the V610,
Kodak built two lenses into each of the com-
pact camera bodies, each less than an inch
thick and about two inches tall.
1
Images enter the
camera through
two lenses whose
front elements—
primaries—are
located vertically
in the center of
the cameras.
Even when zoom-
ing, the lenses do
not stick out from
the bodies of the
cameras.
2
Behind the primary elements are prisms. One
facet of each prism is coated with a reflective
layer and positioned at a 45-degree angle
to light coming in through the primary.
3