Pentax Varifocal Plus Megapixel CCTV Lens
Monday, June 8th, 2009The new Pentax Varifocal Plus megapixel CCTV lens as captured in action at IFSEC 2009:
Pentax are well known for the quality of their CCTV lenses, but they have taken a long time to produce and launch their first megapixel CCTV lens. However, it seems that the wait may have been worthwhile as judging by the pre-production model demonstrated at IFSEC they’ve built in a new feature which might well see them take the lead in this sector.
Firstly, let’s explain what a vari-focal CCTV lens is – it is simply a lens which allows you to manually adust the field of view being monitored by the camera to exactly that which you wish your surveillance to cover.
Once upon a time we only had fixed focal length lenses available to us e.g. 4mm, 8mm,12mm, etc. These lenses provided a certain field of view, perhaps a horizontal viewing angle of 60° and that was what you got i.e. the view could not be adjusted. A set focal length lens provides a fixed field of view (horizontal and vertical viewing angle).
With the advent of the varifocal CCTV lens we were able to adjust the scene covered / field of view at the point of commissioning, so that only the area which we wished to cover was ’seen’ by the camera. This allowed us to concentrate all of the camera’s available resolution onto the important area. For this reason vari-focal lenses are now used in the vast majority of all new CCTV installations.
With all of the currently available vari-focal lenses, as the field of view is adjusted, you then need to re-focus the lens at each scene setting. With their new ‘Varifocal Plus’ lens Pentax have developed technology which allows the lens to stay in focus as you manually zoom.
The guys on the stand weren’t revealing too much about how Pentax had achieved this first, they simply said that it utilised technology transfer from their lenses for the Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera market.
Precise focusing of CCTV camera lens combinations is something which many end-users struggle with, so this new lens from Pentax should bring great benefit to many end-users and field engineers.
It’s a 1.3 megapixel lens and should be available Q3 2009 for a price in the region of just £99!
Click the image to the right to visit the new page in our webshop and to download the datasheet from there for further information.
NB This lens will only work with cameras which have a lens connection socket and can be back-focused with an adjuster ring at the front of the camera (if you need any further help or information then give us a call on 01304 827 609).
