Patent ID: 7852572

Claim:
An imaging system comprising: an image-forming lens system consisting of, in order from object to image: a first negatively powered lens group consisting of two negatively powered non-cemented lenses L 1 and L 2 ; and a second positively powered lens group consisting of three positively powered non-cemented lenses L 3 , L 4 and L 5 , wherein the lenses are positioned in the order L 1 , L 2 , L 3 , L 4 , L 5 from the object to the image; the first and second lens groups acting in concert to image a field of view of at least 180 degrees onto an image plane; and a sensor array located at a focal plane of the lens system, the sensor array operating in three color bands wherein, at a central wavelength of each color band and for every field angle within the field of view, a modulation transfer function of the lens system does not fall below approximately 10% of the diffraction limited modulation transfer function for spatial frequencies below a pixel sampling rate for the color band.