Lens designs with extreme image quality features

In order to best assess the importance of new technologies to optical design, it is useful to consider what the limits are to what can be done with 'old' technologies. That may show where something new is needed to overcome the limitations of existing optical designs. This article will give a survey of some remarkable highperformance designs, some of which are extremely simple, and most of which only use technology that has already been around for decades. Each of these designs has some limitation that would be nice to overcome. One new technology that will probably revolutionize optical design will be curved surfaces on image chips.