The effectiveness of global optimizers for non-zoomed lenses has been steadily improving, but until recently their application to zoom lens design has been less successful. Although some methods have been able to make minor improvements to initial design forms, the algorithms have not consistently discovered new solutions with different group power distributions in a single run. In many cases, the difficulty appears related to how effective focal length (EFL) is controlled across zoom positions. Improvements made to the Global SynthesisTM (GS) algorithm in Code VTM, together with a revised strategy for controlling the EFL via weighted constraints, have significantly improved the ability of GS to discover distinct zoom lens solutions, including those with different group powers. We offer a plausible explanation for the success of these changes, and we discuss an example zoom lens design problem based on a 2-group, 7-element patent design.
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