Lens design

Hi folks. I'm an amateur photographer and professional nerd. I expect few photographers have made their own lens systems in the past century or so, so I'm not sure that this is the best forum to inquire about lens design, but I don't know who else to ask.

I've been toying with ray tracing lately and I've built a rather interesting app. It's not a typical ray tracer though, it's a Monte Carlo-style complete photon path tracer. I'm trying to stay as physically realistic as I can, and although my tracer works very well, my virtual camera does not... so I'm looking for someone who understands the science / math of lens systems who would be interested in helping me out.

My current "camera" is little more than a 2D disc which, when struck by a photon on it's front face, attempts to translate the hit location and incident angle into a final position on the film where the photon is deposited. Obviously this is a grossly over-simplified model of a camera, which lacks almost all of a camera's basic abilities. It was sufficient for a time, but now I want something more realistic. Accordingly, I've added lens geometry to my tracer so I can simulate elements with any material properties and in any configuration, but that's about the limit of my ability so far.

I'd really appreciate some help with forming an image using lenses with the goal of packaging the necessary elements into a new virtual camera. My initial experiments show positive results, but I'm having trouble with focus, spherical aberration, etc. I have many questions, like what lenses in what configuration would make a minimally-acceptable prime lens with adjustable focus? Would using materials with an unrealistically high index of refraction (and thinner lens elements) help reduce spherical aberration? Is there a source of published information regarding complete lens setups? Hopefully in great detail? ... I assume mfgs don't regularly share this info though.. :/

Any help would be appreciated.

Here is some optical design software anyone can afford.

www.opticalsoftware.net/index.php/how_to...ware/winlens3dbasic/

fmw wrote: Here is some optical design software anyone can afford.

Many thanks for that, man!