Patent ID: 8159596

Claim:
An optical element comprising: a base material formed of a film-like resin material that has an infrared absorbing effect; and a multilayered film that adjusts spectral characteristics, and is formed on an object-side surface and an image-side surface of the base material, the optical element being disposed on a light path of an imaging optical system, and of such characteristics that its spectral transmittance, and its spectral reflectivities on the object-side surface and the image-side surface satisfy the following conditions (1) to (4) 0.75 <T IRCF (600) /T IRCF (540) <0.95 (1) 615<λ LT50% <670 (2) | T IRCF (700) /T IRCF (540) |<0.05 (3) 680≦λ LR50% , (4) where T IRCF (600) is the spectral transmittance of light with a wavelength of 600 nm, T IRCF (540) is the spectral transmittance of light with a wavelength of 540 nm, λ LT50% is the wavelength of near-infrared light at 50% spectral transmittance, T IRCF (700) is the spectral transmittance of light with a wavelength of 700 nm, and λ LR50% is the wavelength of near-infrared light at 50% spectral reflectivity, wherein the unit of the wavelength is nm.