Some Liquid Lens fun :)
You may know from our past posts on 43rumors that one of the future key technologies will be the “liquid lens”. This allows lenses to be super compact, super fast AF with zero noise and other great features. My friend Frank from CanonWatch (Click here) found that cool video you see on top of this post. It explains well how the principle works. If you don’t have time to watch it all go on minute 7:40 of the video. I bet that after seeing this you will run to your tap to test that for yourself 
Gjim
2 years ago |Check out this post on techradar. Very weird.
http://www.techradar.com/news/photography-video-capture/cameras/olympus-sends-mystery-teaser-in-post-1078144
43shot
2 years ago |Now it’s clear why the EM-5 is weather sealed. Just add an egg and flour for a pancake lens.
Joshua
2 years ago |+1 billion
hehe. pancake lens…
Joshua
2 years ago |Liquid.Lenses.Are.Cool I.Want
bananacam
2 years ago |meh, how do you manual focus such lens? rub it?
bananacam
2 years ago |won’t these lenses evaporate on a sunny day?
lnqo-M
2 years ago |And how good is IQ in this lens too.
Kenny
2 years ago |sorry it doesn’t relate to the post, but some olympus nuts were sent to techradar: http://www.techradar.com/news/photography-video-capture/cameras/olympus-sends-mystery-teaser-in-post-1078144
Here’s (whishfully) hoping that its something regarding integration of pdaf/cdaf to bridge ft/mft, and not just a random genitalia reference.
edit: via dpreview forum
Mundstrøm
2 years ago |So… in 10… 20 years? Some working protoypes are probably out there already, but consumer models are going to be way off. You’d have to overcome so many practical challenges – image quality aside – before you could package this in a device that is stable enough to stuff in your pocket. Then again, somebody may be very close to making it work and suddenly a game-changer will come out of the blue. I bet they’ll be silly expensive to begin with.
jim
2 years ago |No I doubt they are that far off…
This is just a transormer, fiddly electrodes and the most high tech bit, a very very thin film hyrophobic surface… nothing there outside of current technological manufacturing techniques.
Relativly this is not too complex. Not complex like a microprocessor!
I bet we see first cams using this within 5 yrs (assuming water actualy makes a good lens)!
nicwalmsley
2 years ago |The 2 new primes. Pana better hurry with the 12-35.
Esa Tuunanen
2 years ago |Better put enough anti-freeze into those lenses, I don’t want lenses which freeze and break at winter.
Duarte Bruno
2 years ago |This is old news.
From what I remember from a few years ago the application on these is probably limited to cell phone sized sensors…
jim
2 years ago |Yeh – its very dependent on surface tension… hence size limmited.. and looking rather small!
I wonder if other liquids or additives could increase surface tension and allow for up to m4/3 size sensors? – not like it matters to us if they can make it for FF or not
Fabrice
2 years ago |The liquid lens, for now, is just capable for focusing, but it can focus faster and with less energy than an mecanical lens, and with no noise.
43shot
2 years ago |Panasonic has a prototype liquid lens, it is a 1 to 3 OZ zoom.
Scott Woiwode
2 years ago |Liquid lens work, I’m wearing them in my glasses. Check out superfocus.com. Not advertising just showing a real usage model that ‘zooms/focuses’ too.
avds
2 years ago |Doesn’t look like this will ever present wide scale advantages over plastic lenses.
That said, it looks cool. And the demo of that supple Stream of water wiggling tenderly towards the Electrode was damn sexy, I should say