Finally, the lens calculator app!

Everyone working in machine vision should have a lens calculator utility on their computer. This little gadget – and my personal favorite is MachVis from Qioptiq – will determine the field-of-view or working distance for a given lens and camera sensor. I find it essential for playing “what-if” games, or perhaps I should say, “evaluating design scenarios.” However you describe the purpose, a lens calculator is jolly useful.

Well it’s useful so long as you’re at your computer. But a lot of we machine vision-istas have to travel, and whether you’re visiting the factory floor or an unfamiliar continent, it would still be useful to have ready access to your lens calculator.

Now, thanks to Stemmer Imaging, you can put a lens calculator app on your iPhone. (Sorry, no Android or Blackberry version just yet.)

Mark Williamson of Stemmer Imaging UK tells me the following link will work from an iPhone:

itms://itunes.com/apps/lensSENSOR

I’m not a slave to Apple so I’m unable to test it myself. If you run in to problems I suggest you visit Stemmer at their UK site: www.stemmer-imaging.co.uk .

Here are a couple of screen shots from the app, and this is what Mark has to say about it:

“LensSensor is the essential app for machine vision integrators providing flexible tools to aid the specification of the lens and camera your application.

A flexible lens calculator defines the required geometry, focal length or visual angle of a lens.  

The Resolution calculator provides the real world resolution that can be achieved with a particular sensor along with information to identify resolution demands of the lens.

Compatible interfaces can be identified with the data rate calculator and interface lookup.

A comprehensive help and optical diagram is also included.”