The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 09, 1999
Filed:
Sep. 01, 1998
Kunihiro Fukino, Fujisawa, JP;
Nikon Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A lens barrel including a surface wave motor to generate surface waves to drive a photographic optical system. The surface wave motor includes a fixed member to generate surface waves to drive the moving member which drives the photographic optical system. An externally operated manual operation unit drives the photographic optical system upon manual operation thereof. A roller is mounted in a freely rotatable state on the fixed member, and is in compressive contact with the manual operation unit via an intermediate ring. When a mode selection switch is set to a manual focus adjustment mode, the fixed member comes into compressive contact with a rotary element, and is rotatable integrally with a cam ring. By rotating a rotation ratio setting ring in a circumferential direction, a large diameter portion of the roller comes into contact with a changeover ring, and a small diameter portion of the roller to comes into contact with a changeover ring. Accordingly, the ratio of the rotation angles of the fixed member and the hand-operated ring can be changed in two steps. As a result, when the hand-operated ring is rotated during photography, the focus adjustment optical system for focus adjustment can be driven quickly or slowly for easy operability of manual focus adjustment.