Press Release

TAMRON ANNOUNCES FAST APERTURE NEAR INFRARED LENS FOR DAY/NIGHT CAMERAS

New 3.0-8mm F/1.0 IR Corrected Lens is Ideal for a Multitude of Around-the-Clock Surveillance Applications

ISC West, March 27, 2004, Las Vegas, NV—Tamron USA, Inc. announced the immediate release of an IR version of the popular fast 3.0-8mm F/1.0 Aspherical Vari-Focal. This new lens, along with the simultaneous announcement of a 10-40mm F/1.4 IR Aspherical Vari-Focal covering the telephoto range, makes Tamron’s IR line-up the broadest in the industry: Tamron offers the only IR mono-Focal lenses available (2.8mm, 4mm, 6mm, 8mm) and a 2.8-11mm F/1.4 announced last year.

This new lens is important to the line-up because of its excellent cost to value ratio, but more importantly, because of its ability to function superbly in a wide variety of lighting conditions over a 24-hour period. The fast F/1.0 aperture is twice as bright as F/1.4 and will yield excellent results in conditions dimmer than 1-lux, even when using a 1-lux camera.

While virtually all camera manufacturers are marketing Day/Night cameras today, and the need for 24-hour surveillance is overwhelming, the selection of IR-corrected lenses offered by manufacturers has been slim to none.

Since this lens covers a standard range and is more widely used than other focal lengths, the 3.0-8mm will be found on surveillance systems installed in a variety of lighting conditions such as fluorescent, halogen, daylight and combinations thereof. Infrared light can be found in all of these lighting types. For example, halogen light contains 80% IR. That means that even without an IR illuminator, Tamron's IR lenses will yield images that are sharper and that have more contrast than those captured with non-IR lenses.

Like the 2.8-11mm IR already available, and the new 10-40mm F/1.4 IR announced at this time, the 3.0-8mm F/1.0 IR Vari-Focal uses state-of-art optical design and LD glass technology to solve the out-of-focus range between visible and near-IR light. Using Tamron’s special Multi-Coating also improves transmittance in the near-IR range and effectively eliminates flare and ghosting. High quality images are achieved by using Aspherical lens elements.

The 3.0-8mm IR lens features locking mechanisms built into each ring (focus, iris and zoom) and provide a built-in Slip Mount mechanism for precision installations. The designers have even considered environmental impact by making a lens that is environmentally friendly in design: glass with no lead content was selected and lead-free solder was used to manufacture the lens. It is available in both manual and DC iris versions.

SPECIFICATIONS

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3/04