Product-Development Announcement "New Tamron Fixed-Focal Lenses Covering a Broadband Spectrum from Visible-Light to Short-Wave IR Band"

November 4, 2020, Saitama, Japan - Tamron Co., Ltd. (President & CEO: Shiro Ajisaka; Headquarters: Saitama City, Japan), a leading manufacturer of optics for diverse applications, announces the product development of a new line of industrial-use fixed-focal lenses covering a broadband spectrum from visible-light to SWIR band.

Because the physical property of refractive index of optical lens materials differs by wavelength, images are out of focus when taken in different frequency bands. Hence, existing industrial-use lenses need to be refocused when the imaging band is changed between the visible-light band and the SWIR band. In addition, industrial-use lenses are optimized to maximize the spectral transmittance in the visible-light band, and images in the SWIR aband can be affected by insufficient transmittance, often resulting in defocused artifacts in image quality. For this reason, an additional lens that is specifically designed for imaging in the SWIR band was often required.

To address this problem, Tamron has developed a new optical technology and lens coating technology that makes lenses compatible with a broadband-spectrum band covering the visible-light and the SWIR band. A new line of lenses developed with the new technology effectively eliminates defocused artifacts and provides consistent high-resolution quality images without the need of re-focusing for different spectral bands. In terms of optical profiles, the new lenses also demonstrate a constant and high spectral transmittance across the specified spectrum. These features enable single-lens imaging covering a broadband spectrum from visible-light to SWIR band. The lenses offer distinguished benefits for various fields of industrial applications including food inspection and classification, agriculture, medicine and science.