Interesting optics thread

I think if you were building an ultra-short-throw video projector on the cheap, these could work great!

Those would work horrible, as the fresnel ridges would completely distort any image projected through it.
Projectors require precision grade single surface glass lenses.

Yes, for 720p I agree. For cheapie 480p LCD projector, it probably doesn’t matter. The final lens yes should be glass but in back of the LCD can be Fresnel (to collimate the light from the LED), and in fact with the cheap Amazon projectors the lens in front of the LCD is also Fresnel.

Sure I can go to Edmund or ThorFire and get some precision ground lenses… but this is Budget Light Forum, not “the sky’s the limit budget” LOLOL! I emphasize “on the cheap” here. Sure it’s cheaper to just buy a crap DLP projector off eBay and put a brighter LED, but that’s not a build - that’s an installation job. That’s no fun.

Just thought I’d put up this oldie but goodie optic for nostagia sake, from Inova TIROS series. It had a really great narrow throw with just a little spill.

Regrettably I had to send my light in for repair for a cracked bezel lens and rather than replace the lens they replaced my entire light but with a newer reflector based model :frowning: Had I known they would not return my light I would have simply replaced the cracked lens myself. I miss that beam.

First of all, projectors do not collimate light.
Otherwise the image would be a few centimeters in size.
The entire point of a projector is to do the opposite, and project a large image not a small one.

Second, even 480p would be completely distorted.
No matter what resolution you use it would be completely messed up not only due to chromatic aberration but also because the ridges of a fresnel lens are not perfectly aspherical.

Imagine your projector has a resolution of 1 pixel, it would still look like crap.
You can see this by looking at the die image of fresnel throwers, it doesn’t even look like a square anymore.

Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts and experiences!

Some of this could be improved, f.e.:

  • these lenses have smaller groves than Edmunds which hints at higher quality - but that’s not warranted
  • using a lens much larger than 15 mm makes any necessary gaps less significant
  • using a LED that has extremely thin silicone layer may do the same (White Flat?)

So I really don’t think that in a well done light the flood would have width close to throw.

Also now I noticed that such light could put more lumens in the beam than any optics other than TIR.

But seeing your results I’m really not convinced it’s worth trying.

Interesting…is it glass? What’s the size?

This is from Can Fang’s (4sevens) very recommendable synopsis: LED optics in flashlights

Because the LCD screen will only allow light to pass through perpendicular to its plane the light has to be collimated to allow this. AFTER the light has left the LCD it is then focused on the projecting lens. You can argue about distortion all you want and are 100% right. But they’ve been making cheap projectors like this now for at least a decade. They’ve been using Fresnels in overhead projectors for decades.

As to Fresnel throwers… You can see in my pics I project an almost perfectly square die image - 200 yards into a brick wall. It’s rectangular now because I put a 2mm^2 in. I can’t capture it with my cell phone but at 40ft focused i could read the inscription on the MCPCB at 40ft. Possibly because the RLT moved on me and is illuminating the whole MCPCB.

So sure, I don’t expect a hi-def video projection. But you can search the thousands of YouTube videos of both DIY and cheap manufactued video projectors and see the image quality, while not great, is far better than you describe.

If I recall correctly, it was made of Polycarbonate. The diameter of the optic from that light was about 1-inch at the widest point.

You weren’t talking about the LED when you said this, you were talking about a short throw projector:
“I think if you were building an ultra-short-throw video projector on the cheap, these could work great!”
A short throw projector needs to have an optical system that outputs light at a large exit angle, not collimate light from a light source with large incidence angles.

Also I see absolutely no retail digital projectors that use fresnel lenses on google, other than people that made a diy projector with an overhead projector and laptop screen.
And the only reason the image is even usable is because the light is going through a massive LCD that is 15” in size or something, not a regular projector LED which is usually less than one or two inches.

They must block such search results in Vancouver, otherwise you may attempt to rule the world…

Here’s some of dozens of YouTube videos:

And Instructables:

These guys tear down these Fresnel projectors:

Looks like Fresnels on both sides to me. My thought was to put the short focal range Fresnel on the front past the LCD.

I emphasize the phrase “video projector on the cheap.”

I’ve been around bowling for about 25 years. Back in the day they did not have computerized automatic scoring like they do now - automated scoring came about just before I started. What they did what give you a transparency with the score boxes and a yellow wax pencil. You set the transparency on the “Tele Scorer” which is basically an overhead Fresnel projector with a Fresnel underneath the table and overhead in a box with a mirror inside to face the projected image forward onto a screen.

OK, here’s a Fresnel lens designed to collimate 14 LEDs:

What performance would I expect from it?

  • cheap plastic fresnel = bad throw
  • lots of beam artefacts from LED cross-talk i.e. shining at the neighbouring lenses

OK, I don’t think this particular lens is good.
But I find the general concept of multi-LED aspheric VERY interesting.

But first one would need to solve the crosstalk issue.
It’s easiest to do with baffles. With a proper baffle system between the LEDs there would be no crosstalk whatsoever.
But what if the baffles were actually collars, carefully machined to have the right aperture shape?

One could build a multi-LED thrower (actually I wouldn’t prefer 14 except for huge lights. 3 would be more like it) with

  • high output
  • very high throw (collars!)
  • high efficiency
  • quite short focal length

Unlike multi-LED TIRs or reflectors (I’ll call them T/R) - these have no dead zones i.e. ones that don’t produce throw. However:

  • with fresnels reflection off ridges costs throw. And precision tends to be lower
  • with convex lenses - I strongly suspect the valleys between individual lenslets wouldn’t be very precisely made.

So the loss structure is different from T/R. It scales differently, f.e. 3-up is quite bad with T/R and should be good here. OTOH 7-up is quite good with T/R.

EDIT:
Again, I post here and within minutes stumble upon just the same kind of stuff. This time I got email with this:

You can buy adhesive backed vinyl with Fresnel patterns and metalized coatings behind; they use it for decorative stuff as well as cut for letterings and stuff with a prismatic effect. Which got me thinking… probably not practical, but one could do the opposite - take a Fresnel with a parabolic profile, put a reflective coating, and have a parabolic reflector that is essentially flat…

You can be an insect…

And buy the lens…

Sorry,
but this lenses are bullshit.

Ok for flood and many many Leds
but not worth to make a custom build with a lot of work…

The lens is good to protect from dust.
Another advantage I can not see.

Just my 2 cents !

Regards Xandre

I have seem those microlenses before. But macro? These are the only 2 that I’ve seen so far.

I’m not sure which lenses are you referring to? The multilens + collar concept or the microlens array?

Fenix E16 is known for its unique flat optics. This kind of optics is called RXI and quite popular in literature but nearly completely absent from the market. It seems to stifled by patents.

I found 2 makers that manufacture such optics. Neither looks like the Fenix one so there are surely more.

GR Optics has a family of COB lenses from 35 mm to 91 mm

Light Prescriptions Innovators makes a 41 mm lens:

Soraa uses RXI in their bulbs:
https://www.archlighting.com/technology/leds-understanding-optical-performance_o

Some paper that I liked, they fold light path RXI-style with refraction alone:

It’s the same as this, just worse.

And it’s called a catadioptric.