There are some companies that have no real competition. Maybe a product here-and-there in their catalog is subject to market forces, but most of their items have no competing options from other companies….
Several people have reached out for guidance on designing and building an objective from scratch, when they have little-to-no background in custom optics. Here are some notes on the topic, in broad strokes, focused on the practicalities.
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The working distance is marked as 22 mm in this image, which is measured on-axis, from the center of the last lens. Practically, the mechanical working distance will be 20 mm.
We have designed a 20 mm working…
To advance deep imaging in multiphoton microscopy, it is essential to attempt to collect each photon generated in…
There’s been an interesting discussion on the Confocal listserv, and we’ll quote some of that discussion below. We’ve always used protected gold and silver mirrors for our multiphoton systems. That’s still what we…
The easy ways aren’t usually the best ways. This might be an exception. Check out the video.
This is an interesting product for cleaning and storing lenses. It’s called “First Contact”, and is made…
There are lots of ways to quickly change the z-focus plane, including tunable lenses, piezo objective movers, and a coupled objective. What is the best way to change the Z-focus…
Post by Amanda Foust
Applications are invited for the above post to work with Dr. Amanda Foust (Bioengineering department) and Prof. Pier Luigi Dragotti (Electrical and Electronic Engineering department) on a BBSRC funded project…
Moiré lenses are cool: two patterned diffractive optical elements are rotated relative to each other to vary the power of the “lens”. Just watch the video (below).
Demonstration of focus-tunable diffractive Moiré-lenses
Stefan Bernet, Walter…
RayLab is an iOS app (iPhone/iPad) for optics analysis. It has some nice features– more than I expected. It’s a nice piece of work! For many practical applications it cannot replace conventional optic design software (e.g.,…
Trying to decide which optical design software to use? Just try them out and decide for yourself. I like how Steve Eckhardt (great guy, btw, in case you’re looking for someone to consult with)…
In the talk I gave at the Short Course at SfN 2014, I briefly discussed the process of optical system design. A common strategy is to start with a published design, or at least…
When you run out of catalogs to read, Photonics has some nice short articles. It’s all pretty basic, not too complicated. Good for training (e.g., Optical design software, Fiber lasers)
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Ultrafast pulses are formed through interference of different wavelengths of light. Think of Fourier transforms, and how pulses can be generated through constructive and destructive interference of wavelengths with aligned phases. These wavelengths are close to the center wavelength, and spread over a wavelength…
This is a nice, quick, and practical introduction to optical alignment. A good place to start for training. By Rainer Heintzmann.
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