Liquid crystal device having the microlenses in correspondence with the

Abstract

For recording an image on a photosensitive material with the employment of a liquid crystal device, the device used therein is conventionally constructed so as to modulate an amount of light rays transmitted therethrough or reflected thereby commonly by the control of an amount of electric voltage impressed to the liquid crystal device and/or impression timing or frequencies thereof. In this instance, although the light rays irradiated are considered normally as parallel, they are not intact strictly parallel light rays, and consequently unless the light rays transmitted from the device are converged by Selfoc lens arrays and the like, sufficient resolution can hardly be obtained on the photosensitive material on account of the light rays still having comparatively large diffusion coefficients. Since the liquid crystal device made in accordance with this invention is provided with its own image formation abilities, contact exposure with the photosensitive material is possible, and image formation optical systems which have been used in conjunction with the device is safely and advantageously eliminated, whereby parallelism limitations imposed on the irradiated rays can be reduced, and optical mechanisms therefor could be compact and have remarkably improved efficiencies.