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:
Dec. 30, 2003
Filed:
Dec. 26, 2001
Tetsuo Nagata, Hachioji, JP;
Olympus Optical Co., Ltd., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A high-performance and low-cost image-forming optical system has a reduced number of constituent optical elements and is made extremely thin, particularly in a direction perpendicular to an image pickup device, by folding an optical path using only three reflecting surfaces. The image-forming optical system has a front unit including a first prism , an aperture stop , and a rear unit including a second prism . The first prism has a first transmitting surface , a first reflecting surface , and a second transmitting surface . The second prism has a first transmitting surface , a first reflecting surface , a second reflecting surface , and a second transmitting surface . An optical path incident on the first reflecting surface and an optical path exiting from the second reflecting surface intersect each other. The first reflecting surface of the first prism and the first and second reflecting surfaces and of the second prism have a curved surface configuration that gives a power to a light beam. The curved surface configuration is a rotationally asymmetric surface configuration that corrects aberrations due to decentration.