JP2006194958A - Lens device, imaging apparatus and optical device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a lens device, realizing the prevention of the looseness or the float of a circuit board having flexibility using a simple constitution, and to provide an imaging apparatus and an optical device that uses the lens device. <P>SOLUTION: The end of an FPC 22 is connected to terminals 66a to 66d provided on the side surface of a motor 24. A bottom board 68 is attached to the upper surface of the motor 24, and an insertion hole 68a, through which the rotary shaft 24a of the motor 24 is inserted and a slot 68b curved in circular-arc shape, are formed on the bottom board 68. Then, a screw hole 70 and an insertion hole 71, through which the rotary shaft 24a is inserted, are formed on the lower surface 52a of a unit body 52. At the attaching of the motor 24 to the lower surface 52a, a gear 67 attached to the tip of the rotary shaft 24a is inserted through the insertion hole 71, and the bottom board 68 is rotated in a direction, where the FPC 22 is taken up to the motor 25, then a screw is inserted through the slot 68b and screwed in the screw hole 70 in a state with the FPC 22 applied with tension. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a lens device, an imaging device, and an optical device in which a circuit board having flexibility is disposed on an outer wall of a lens barrel, and a component electrically connected to the circuit board is provided on the outer wall.

  In recent years, a digital camera, which is an image pickup device that includes an image pickup device that picks up an image of a subject formed by a photographing lens and stores image data obtained by the image pickup device in a storage medium such as a memory card, or a silver salt film The silver salt camera used is in widespread use.

  The above-mentioned camera incorporates a lens device, and moves the lens holding frame in the lens barrel in the optical axis direction during zooming operation or focusing operation. For this reason, when the lens holding frame and the camera body are electrically connected, an FPC (Flexible Printed Circuit) which is a flexible circuit board is used to absorb the movement stroke of the lens holding frame. However, when the moving stroke of the lens holding frame is long, it is necessary to secure a space for storing the slack FPC, and there is a problem that the entire lens device is enlarged.

  Further, in the case of a lens apparatus in which the FPC is arranged so as to be placed on the outer wall of the lens barrel, the length of the FPC is longer than the length necessary for connection in consideration of workability when assembling parts or attaching the FPC. As a result, slack and floating occur in the FPC. For this reason, when the lens apparatus is incorporated in the camera body, there is a problem that the FPC is damaged by contact with surrounding parts.

In order to secure such FPC slack and FPC storage space, a camera having a winding mechanism for winding the FPC is known (for example, see Patent Document 1).
JP-A-9-185095

  However, in order to remove the slack of the FPC arranged on the outer wall of the lens barrel, when the winding mechanism described in Patent Document 1 is used, it is necessary to secure a space for arranging the winding mechanism on the outer wall of the lens barrel. There is a problem that the lens device becomes large, and there is a problem that the manufacturing cost becomes high because a dedicated part for winding the FPC is used.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and provides a small lens device capable of preventing the FPC from slacking and floating with a simple configuration, and an imaging device and an optical device using the same. The purpose is to do.

  In order to solve the above-described problems, in the imaging apparatus of the present invention, a flexible circuit board is disposed on the outer wall of a lens barrel that holds a lens, and components that are electrically connected to the circuit board are located on the outer wall. A first lens hole formed on a mounting surface of the outer wall to which the component is mounted; and the mounting surface when the component is mounted on the outer wall. An abutting plate that abuts; and a second hole that is formed in the abutting plate and disposed outside the side surface of the component, wherein the circuit board is connected at the side surface, and the first and second One of the holes is a screw hole, and the other is an elongated hole formed along the side surface. When the component is attached to the outer wall, the component is rotated in the direction of winding the circuit substrate, and the circuit substrate is rotated. Applied tension And inserted through so the screws to the elongated hole in the state is characterized in that screwed into the screw hole.

  Moreover, it is preferable that the said long hole is curved in circular arc shape in the direction which winds up the said circuit board.

  Furthermore, it is preferable that the first hole is the screw hole, the second hole is the elongated hole, and the component is an actuator that drives the lens in the optical axis direction.

  The actuator is a motor, and the contact plate is formed with a first insertion hole through which the rotation shaft of the motor is inserted, and the rotation shaft is inserted into the first insertion hole and attached. It is preferable. Furthermore, it is preferable that a second insertion hole through which the rotation shaft is inserted into the lens barrel is formed on the mounting surface.

  An image pickup apparatus according to the present invention includes the lens device described above and an image pickup element that picks up a subject image formed by the lens.

  An optical device according to the present invention includes the lens device described above.

  According to the lens device of the present invention, a circuit board having flexibility is disposed on the outer wall of the lens barrel, and one of holes for attaching a component electrically connected to the circuit board to the outer wall is a screw hole, and the other is When attaching this part to the outer wall of the lens barrel, rotate the part in the direction to wind up the circuit board, and insert the screw into the long hole with tension applied to the circuit board as described above. Since the circuit board is screwed to the circuit board, it is possible to prevent the circuit board from loosening or floating. Further, since it is not necessary to provide a new part for winding, it is possible to prevent the lens device from becoming large and reduce the manufacturing cost of the lens device.

  Further, by bending the elongated hole in an arc shape, the tension applied to the circuit board can be adjusted by finely adjusting the mounting angle of the component. For this reason, it is possible to prevent the circuit board from being damaged due to excessive tension applied to the circuit board.

  In addition, since the circuit board disposed on the outer wall of the lens barrel is prevented from loosening or floating, the circuit board comes into contact with other parts and is damaged when the lens apparatus is incorporated in the main body of the imaging apparatus or optical apparatus. Can be prevented.

  The digital camera 10 shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 is provided with a front lens 12 and a strobe light emitting unit 13 on the front surface of a camera body 11, and a power button 14 and a shutter button 15 on the upper surface.

  On the back of the camera body 11, an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) 16, a zoom operation button 17, a cursor button 18, and a mode switching button 19 are provided. The mode switching button 19 is operated by the user when switching between a photographing mode for recording a photographed image on a memory card, a reproduction mode for reproducing an image recorded on the memory card, and a setup mode for performing various settings.

  In addition to being used for image reproduction, the LCD panel 16 also functions as an electronic viewfinder that displays a through image for framing in the shooting mode. The LCD panel 16 displays a menu screen when set to the setup mode. The cursor button 18 is operated when moving the cursor on the menu screen or selecting an item displayed on the menu screen. The zoom operation button 17 is operated when changing the zoom magnification.

  The camera body 11 incorporates a lens device 20 including the front lens 12 described above. The configuration of the lens device 20 will be described below. A lens apparatus 20 shown in FIG. 3 includes a lens barrel 21, an FPC (Flexible Printed Circuit) 22 that is a flexible circuit board, and motors 23, 24, and 25 that are components electrically connected to the FPC 22. And.

  The lens barrel 21 includes an upper barrel 31, a lower barrel 32, and a shutter unit 33 disposed therebetween, and these are connected by screws.

  As shown in FIG. 4, the upper lens barrel 31 holds a first lens group 43 including a front lens 12, a prism 41, and a rear lens group 42, and a second lens group 44. The upper barrel 31 includes a prism housing part 45 formed on the upper part and formed of a frame having a substantially triangular cross section, and a lens housing part 46 formed of a substantially rectangular parallelepiped frame formed below the prism housing part 45. .

  A lens frame 47 that holds the front lens 12 is attached to the front surface of the prism housing portion 45, and a horizontally long rectangular opening 45 a is formed behind the front lens 12. A light shielding mask 48 is provided between the front lens 12 and the opening 45a. The light shielding mask 48 shields light that adversely affects the captured image, that is, harmful light such as sunlight incident from above the opening 45a.

  A triangular prism-shaped right-angle prism 41 is accommodated in the prism accommodating portion 45 and is disposed behind the front lens 12. The right-angle prism 41 faces the front lens 12 and is connected to the incident surface 41a on which the subject light beam transmitted through the front lens 12 is incident. The right-angle prism 41 is connected to the incident surface 41a at an acute angle. And a light exit surface 41c that is connected at right angles to the light entrance surface 41a and emits the subject light flux reflected by the light reflective surface 41b to the outside of the prism.

  The subject luminous flux that has passed through the front lens 12 enters the right-angle prism 41 so as to be substantially orthogonal to the incident surface 41a, is reflected at a substantially right angle by the reflecting surface 41b, and is emitted so as to be substantially orthogonal to the emission surface 41c. For this reason, the optical axis L1 of the front lens 12 is bent by the right-angle prism 42 to an optical axis L2 that is substantially perpendicular to the optical axis L1.

  Further, the rear lens group 42 and the second lens group 44 are housed in the lens housing portion 46 and are disposed on the bent optical axis L2. The rear lens group 42 includes a lens 42 a and a lens 42 b and is held by a lens frame 49. The lens frame 49 is disposed below the emission surface 41 c of the right-angle prism 41 and is fixed to the lens storage portion 46. The second lens group 44 includes three lenses 44 a to 44 c and is held by a lens frame 50.

  The second lens group 44 is a zoom lens group, and the lens housing portion 46 is provided with two guide shafts (not shown) arranged in parallel with the optical axis L2. The lens frame 50 is held by these guide shafts so as to be able to advance and retract, and the second lens group 44 moves forward and backward along the optical axis L2. One end of each of these guide shafts is held by the lens storage portion 46, and the other end is held by the lens frame 55.

  A motor 23 is provided on the outer wall of the upper barrel 31. The lens frame 50 is moved forward and backward along the optical axis L2 by the motor 23. The motor 23 is a stepping motor, and the origin position of the lens frame 50 is detected by a photo interrupter (not shown) that is an optical position detection means, and the position of the second lens group 44 is determined based on this detection signal. Be controlled. As a result, on the second optical axis L2, the relative distance between the second lens group 44 and a fourth lens group 58, which will be described later, changes, and the subject image is zoomed. The motor 23 may be a DC motor. In this case, an encoder may be provided to control the position of the second group lens 44.

  The shutter unit 33 is attached to the lower part of the upper barrel 31 and is configured to include various components in a unit body 52 formed in a box shape. Further, the unit main body 52 is provided with a third lens group 54, and the third lens group 54 is disposed on the optical axis L2. The third lens group 54 includes a lens 54 a and is held by a lens frame 55. The lens frame 55 is fixed to the lower end of the upper barrel 31.

  Further, a shutter device 56 having a diaphragm function is provided inside the unit main body 52, and is configured by a pair of shutter blades facing each other. Openings are formed on the upper and lower surfaces of the unit main body 52. The left side portion of the unit main body 52 protrudes outward from the upper lens barrel 31 and the lower lens barrel 32, and the motor 24 is provided on the lower surface 52a thereof. The shutter blades are driven by the motor 24 to adjust the amount of subject light incident on the opening, that is, the amount of subject light incident on a fourth lens group 58 described later. As the motor 24, a stepping motor or a DC motor is used.

  A fourth lens group 58 is housed in the lower barrel 32. The fourth group lens 58 includes three lenses 58 a, 58 b, and 58 c and is held by a lens frame 59. The fourth lens group 59 is a focus lens group, and in the lower barrel 32, two guide shafts (not shown) arranged in parallel with the optical axis L2 are provided. The lens frame 59 is held by these guide shafts so as to advance and retract along the optical axis L2.

  The lens frame 59 moves forward and backward on the optical axis L2 by driving the motor 25 fixed to the outer wall of the lower barrel 32. This motor is a stepping motor similar to the motor 51, and the origin position of the lens frame 59 is detected by a photo interrupter (not shown) which is an optical position detecting means, and the fourth lens group is based on this detection signal. The position of 58 is controlled. After zooming, the fourth lens group 58 moves on the second optical axis L2, and the focus of the subject image is adjusted. The motor 25 may be a DC motor. In this case, an encoder may be provided to control the position of the fourth group lens 58.

  A storage portion (first storage portion) 60 that is a concave portion is formed below the fourth lens group 58, that is, at the rear end portion in the optical axis direction of the lower barrel 32. The storage unit 60 stores a CCD image sensor (hereinafter simply referred to as a CCD) 61 that is an image pickup element that captures a subject image formed by the first to fourth lens groups. An optical low-pass filter 62 is provided above the storage unit 60, that is, in front of the CCD 61. The optical low-pass filter 62 is a filter that optically suppresses a high-frequency component that degrades an image by using birefringence of quartz. Further, a plate spring 63 is provided so as to cover the lower surface of the lower barrel 32, and the CCD 61 is biased upward by the plate spring 63 and fixed to the storage unit 60. In the present embodiment, a CCD image sensor is used as an image pickup device, but the present invention is not limited to this. For example, a CMOS image sensor may be used.

  Further, the FPC 22 described above is disposed so as to crawl the outer wall on the front surface of the lens barrel 21, and one end is fixed to the right side surface of the lower barrel 32 by a screw 64. The motors 23, 24, and 25 are electrically connected to the FPC 22, and are fixed to the outer wall of the lens barrel 21 in a state where the FPC 22 is rotated in the winding direction.

  Below, the attachment method of the motor 24 is demonstrated. As described above, the motor 24 is provided on the lower surface (mounting surface) 52 a of the unit main body 52. As shown in FIG. 5, the outer shape of the motor 24 is substantially cylindrical, and four terminals 66 a to 66 d are provided on the outer peripheral surface (side surface) of the motor 24. The ends of the FPC 22 are attached to these terminals 66a to 66d and are electrically connected. A rotation shaft 24a is provided on the upper surface of the motor 24, and a gear 67 is attached to the tip of the rotation shaft 24a.

  A ground plane 68 is attached to the upper surface of the motor 24. The base plate 68 is a contact plate that contacts the lower surface 52 when the motor 24 is attached to the lower surface 52. The base plate 68 is formed with an insertion hole (first insertion hole) 68 a through which the rotation shaft 24 a of the motor 24 is inserted, and an elongated hole 68 b that is formed in an arc shape along the side surface of the motor 24. . Since the rotary shaft 24 a is inserted into the hole 68 a and the ground plane 68 is attached to the upper surface of the motor 24, the gear 67 is disposed above the ground plane 68.

  In addition, an insertion hole (second insertion hole) 71 through which the screw hole 70 and the rotary shaft 24a are inserted is formed in the lower surface 52a. When the motor 24 is attached to the lower surface 52a, the gear 67 is inserted into the insertion hole 71 and meshed with a gear (not shown) that drives the shutter blades of the shutter device 56, and the upper surface 68c of the base plate 68 is brought into contact with the lower surface 52a. Make contact.

  Thereafter, the motor 24 is rotated in the direction of winding the FPC 22. That is, the motor 24 is rotated clockwise from the position shown in FIG. 6A, and the main plate 68 is moved to the position shown in FIG. At this time, tension is applied to the FPC 22 to form a straight line, and the FPC 22 is not loosened or lifted from the front surface of the lens barrel.

  Thus, in a state where the FPC 22 is linear, the screw 73 is inserted into the elongated hole 68b from the lower surface side of the main plate 68 and screwed into the screw hole 70. Thereby, the motor 24 is attached to the lower surface 52a.

  The long hole 68b may not be curved in an arc shape. However, if it is curved in an arc shape, the tension applied to the aforementioned FPC 22 can be adjusted by finely adjusting the mounting angle of the main plate 68b (motor 24). For this reason, since it is possible to prevent the FPC 22 from being damaged by applying a large tension to the FPC 22, it is preferable that the long hole 68b is curved in an arc shape.

  Thus, since the motor 24 is rotated and fixed in the direction in which the FPC 22 is wound up, the FPC 22 is tensioned and becomes linear, and the FPC 22 does not loosen or float from the outer wall surface. For this reason, when the lens apparatus 20 is incorporated in the camera body 11, the FPC 22 can be prevented from being damaged due to contact with other components.

  In addition, although the method of attaching the motor 24 to the outer wall of the lens barrel 21 has been described, the motors 23 and 25 are also attached in the same manner to prevent the FPC 22 from being loosened or lifted.

  Next, the electrical configuration of the digital camera 10 will be described. As shown in FIG. 7, the digital camera 10 is provided with a system controller 100 that controls the entire camera. The system controller 100 includes a ROM 100a that stores a control program for controlling each unit, and a RAM 100b that temporarily stores work data. The system controller 100 controls each unit based on this control program.

  The system controller 100 is connected to the motors 23 to 25 via the motor driver 101, and the system controller 100 controls the motor driver 101 to drive the motors 23 to 25. As described above, the motor 23 moves the aforementioned second lens group 44 forward and backward along the optical axis L <b> 2, and the motor 24 drives the shutter device 56. The motor 25 moves the fourth lens group 58 forward and backward along the optical axis L2.

  A CCD 61 is connected to the system controller 100 via a CCD driver 103. The system controller 100 drives the CCD 61 by controlling the CCD driver 103. The CCD 61 converts the subject image into an electrical signal by photoelectric conversion, and acquires image data that is an analog signal. Further, the CCD 61 is connected to the image signal processing unit 104, and image data captured by the CCD 61 is output to the image signal processing unit 104. The image signal processing unit 104 is connected to the system controller 100 via the data bus 105 and is controlled by the system controller 100.

  The image signal processing unit 104 includes a correlated double sampling circuit (CDS), an amplifier (AMP), an A / D converter, a signal processing circuit, a memory, a compression / decompression processing circuit, and the like. The CDS removes noise from the image data acquired by the CCD 61. The AMP amplifies the image data from which noise has been removed and outputs the amplified image data to the A / D converter. The A / D converter converts the amplified image data from an analog signal to image data of a digital signal and outputs it to the signal processing circuit.

  The signal processing circuit performs various image processing such as gradation conversion, white balance correction, and γ correction, and YC conversion processing on the image data of the digital signal. In the shooting mode, the image data input to the image signal processing unit 104 before the shooting process is executed is subjected to simple image processing and simple YC processing and is output to the LCD driver 106. The system controller 100 controls the LCD driver 106 to display the image data on the LCD 16 as a through image.

  The image data input to the image signal processing unit 104 when the photographing process is executed is subjected to image processing, YC conversion processing, compression processing (for example, JPEG method), and the like. The system controller 100 controls the media controller 107 to store the compressed image data in the memory card 108. In the playback mode, the image data stored in the memory card 108 is expanded and displayed on the LCD 16 as a playback image.

  The system controller 100 is connected with a power button 14, a shutter button 15, a zoom operation button 17, a cursor button 18, and a mode switching button 19. The system controller 100 acquires an operation signal from each button and executes processing corresponding to each operation signal.

  In the above-described embodiment, the case where the FPC is wound by the motor has been described as an example. However, other actuators such as a piezoelectric element may be used, or components other than the actuator may be used. The contact plate may be attached to either the upper surface or the lower surface of the component.

  Furthermore, in the above embodiment, the case where the screw hole is formed in the outer wall of the lens barrel and the long hole is formed in the contact plate has been described as an example, but the present invention is not limited to this, and the component to which the FPC is connected When attaching to a flat plate, a long hole may be formed in the plate, and a screw hole may be formed in the contact plate.

  In the above-described embodiment, the case where a lens barrel of a bending optical system is used has been described as an example. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and a normal lens barrel that forms an image without bending a subject light beam may be used. Further, the outer shape of the lens barrel is not limited to the above embodiment, and may be a cylindrical lens barrel.

  In the above-described embodiment, a digital camera has been described as an example of the imaging apparatus. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and the present invention may be applied to a digital video camera. Further, the case where the lens apparatus of the present invention is applied to an imaging apparatus has been described as an example. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and the present invention may be applied to an optical apparatus such as a silver salt camera or a projector.

It is a perspective view which shows the structure of the front side of a digital camera. It is a perspective view which shows the structure of the back side of a digital camera. It is a perspective view which shows the structure of a lens apparatus. It is sectional drawing which shows the structure of a lens-barrel. It is a perspective view which shows the attachment method of a motor. It is a top view which shows the direction which rotates a ground plane. It is a block diagram which shows the electric constitution of a digital camera.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 Digital camera 20 Lens apparatus 21 Lens barrel 22 FPC
23 to 25 Motor 24a Rotating shaft 52a Mounting surface 68 Base plate 68a Elongate hole 68b Insertion hole 70 Screw hole 71 Insertion hole 73 Screw

Claims (7)

In a lens apparatus in which a circuit board having flexibility is disposed on the outer wall of a lens barrel that holds a lens, and a component that is electrically connected to the circuit board is attached to the outer wall.
A first hole formed in a mounting surface of the outer wall to which the component is mounted;
A contact plate that is attached to the upper surface or the lower surface of the component and contacts the mounting surface when the component is mounted to the outer wall;
A second hole formed on the abutting plate and disposed outside the side surface of the component;
The circuit board is connected to the side surface, one of the first and second holes is a screw hole, the other is a long hole formed along the side surface, and when the component is attached to the outer wall, A lens apparatus, wherein the component is rotated in a winding direction of a circuit board, and a screw is inserted into the elongated hole while a tension is applied to the circuit board to be screwed into the screw hole.   The lens device according to claim 1, wherein the elongated hole is curved in an arc shape in a direction in which the circuit board is wound up.   The first hole is the screw hole, the second hole is the elongated hole, and the component is an actuator that drives the lens in the optical axis direction. The lens device described.   The actuator is a motor, and the contact plate is formed with a first insertion hole through which the rotation shaft of the motor is inserted, and the rotation shaft is inserted through the first insertion hole. The lens device according to claim 3.   The lens apparatus according to claim 4, wherein a second insertion hole through which the rotation shaft is inserted into the lens barrel is formed on the mounting surface.   An imaging apparatus comprising: the lens apparatus according to claim 1; and an imaging element that captures a subject image formed by the lens. An optical device comprising the lens device according to claim 1.

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