Patent ID: 7046455

Claim:
A variable magnification lens comprising, in order from an object side: a front lens unit with positive refracting power; and a rear lens unit with negative refracting power, spacing between the front lens unit and the rear lens unit being changed to thereby vary a magnification of the variable magnification lens, wherein the front lens unit has a negative single lens element with a concave surface facing the object side at a most object-side position and a positive single lens element at a most image-side position; in the front lens unit, only a second lens element from an image side is provided with at least one aspherical surface; all lens elements included in the front lens unit are constructed as single lens elements arranged through air spacing; an aperture stop is interposed between the front lens unit and the rear lens unit; the rear lens unit is composed of a negative single lens element; and the variable magnification lens satisfies the following condition: 1.8 <flt/flw< 3.5 where flt is a focal length of an entire system at a telephoto position and flw is a focal length of the entire system at a wide-angle position.