OSSC Member Greg Smith has two books available for on-line purchase: Practical Computer-Aided Lens Design, published by Willmann-Bell, Inc and Camera Lenses: From Box Camera to Digital, published by SPIE Press. According to Greg, "The Lens Design book is a text book for people who are actively involved in doing lens design, although it contains a lot of basic tutorial optics too. The Camera Lenses book is more a fun book that many photographers would enjoy reading." Chapter 31 of his camera lens book, describing the Mars Rover camera lenses, may be downloaded for free.
Gregory Hallock Smith is an optical engineer and lens designer. He first became interested in optics and astronomy in 1954 at age 13. In 1972, he received his Ph.D. from the Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona. Since that time, he has held optical engineering positions at several major corporations and research institutions. His specialty is lens design. His experience ranges over such areas as photographic techniques, astronomical instruments, image intensifiers, optics for military and NASA spacecraft, and optics education. Greg designed all of the camera lenses for Mars Exploration Rovers for which he received a NASA award from JPL Director Charles Elachi. The number of pictures taken of the Martian surface through these lenses is in the hundreds of thousands.
Greg served two terms as Councilor for the OSSC in 2000-2001 and 2001-2002. Greg is also a long-time board member, Treasurer and webmaster for the Mount Wilson Observatory Association, a volunteer support group for Mt. Wilson Observatory.
Click on the images of the books for additional information.
