lens

Office workers may never have to worry again about viewing hilarious but NSFW images surreptitiously. A pair of glasses developed by Brother Industries can project images or documents directly onto a wearer's retinas.

The Retinal Imaging Display technology displays a small image 10 centimeters wide that appears to float about 1 meter (3.3 ft) in front of a user's eye. Images have an 800x600 resolution and refresh at 60Hz.

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For a point-and-shoot, Panasonic’s new 12-megapixel Lumix DMC-ZR1’s zoom defies its size. Thanks to a first-in-class 0.1-inch aspherical lens, the shooter packs 8X optical zoom (35mm equivalent of 25-200mm) in a svelte, 1.02-inch-thick, 4.8-ounce frame. Aspherical lenses have always bested their perfectly rounded cousins in size, so it’s about time day-to-day shooters lost some weight, too.

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In place of glass lenses that move in order to focus, liquid optics uses a drop of water that changes shape when an electric charge is applied. The system is smaller and cheaper than glass and can supposedly focus faster. The tech recently appeared in the Akkord SnakeCam, a webcam sold in China. We brought one stateside and pitted it against two versions with glass lenses.

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The next time you take a trip to the water cooler, just think, what you're about to drink isn't just good for hydration; it makes for a very effective, energy-efficient lens, too. That's what researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have announced after designing and testing an adaptive liquid lens—comprised of a pair of water droplets—that captures 250 pictures per second.

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