Wray (lenses)
Encyclopedia
Wray Ltd. was a British camera
and lens
manufacturer based in Ashgrove Road Bromley
, Kent
.
The company had a reputation for producing excellent quality lenses
and durable quality camera
s including models such as the Wrayflex. Many Wray lenses remain in use, especially in photographic enlargers.
Wray also made aerial reconnaissance lenses. Their 36" f/6.3 is particularly good but has some residual spherical aberration at full aperture. They also made a highly distortion-free 36" f/4 for mapping. This can only be used with an orange filter and orthochromatic film to avoid the residual secondary spectrum (chromatic aberration).
Other products; 12" Wide Angle Lustrar Code A 30010, Focusing Magnifiers, 4" F.10 APO Lustrar Code A 10010, Wray Process Prisms.
Arthur Smith was the Managing Director and owner of the company, which had been created by his father, who left the Ross Optical Company to start it, initially as a small unit in Peckham.
Both World Wars caused the company to grow in size, due to the manufacture of service instruments such as binoculars.
Probably the most sophisticated lens produced by Wray was a 135mm F4 which has the unusual feature of a triple correction for astigmatism. It was designed by Charles Wynne, who was Wray's head optical designer at the time, having joined the company in 1943. In later years he went on to become a professor at Imperial College, London, Optical department.
Wray had a specific development shop for unusual products, which was substantially replicated by Charles Wynne at Imperial College.
Subsequent to this, David Day was appointed the Technical Director of Wray, heading a specialist optical design team.
During this period, Wray developed special lenses for CERN and for microchip replication, with advanced features which probably accelerated the early development of microelectronics.
Among many other projects, he developed an anamorphic projection system for cinemas, based on Brewster prisms. He later took a Ph.D in computer optimisation of optical designs at Imperial College.
Camera
A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...
and lens
Photographic lens
A camera lens is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or electronically.While in principle a simple convex lens will suffice, in...
manufacturer based in Ashgrove Road Bromley
Bromley
Bromley is a large suburban town in south east London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Bromley. It was historically a market town, and prior to 1963 was in the county of Kent and formed the administrative centre of the Municipal Borough of Bromley...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
.
The company had a reputation for producing excellent quality lenses
Lens (optics)
A lens is an optical device with perfect or approximate axial symmetry which transmits and refracts light, converging or diverging the beam. A simple lens consists of a single optical element...
and durable quality camera
Camera
A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...
s including models such as the Wrayflex. Many Wray lenses remain in use, especially in photographic enlargers.
Wray also made aerial reconnaissance lenses. Their 36" f/6.3 is particularly good but has some residual spherical aberration at full aperture. They also made a highly distortion-free 36" f/4 for mapping. This can only be used with an orange filter and orthochromatic film to avoid the residual secondary spectrum (chromatic aberration).
Other products; 12" Wide Angle Lustrar Code A 30010, Focusing Magnifiers, 4" F.10 APO Lustrar Code A 10010, Wray Process Prisms.
Arthur Smith was the Managing Director and owner of the company, which had been created by his father, who left the Ross Optical Company to start it, initially as a small unit in Peckham.
Both World Wars caused the company to grow in size, due to the manufacture of service instruments such as binoculars.
Probably the most sophisticated lens produced by Wray was a 135mm F4 which has the unusual feature of a triple correction for astigmatism. It was designed by Charles Wynne, who was Wray's head optical designer at the time, having joined the company in 1943. In later years he went on to become a professor at Imperial College, London, Optical department.
Wray had a specific development shop for unusual products, which was substantially replicated by Charles Wynne at Imperial College.
Subsequent to this, David Day was appointed the Technical Director of Wray, heading a specialist optical design team.
During this period, Wray developed special lenses for CERN and for microchip replication, with advanced features which probably accelerated the early development of microelectronics.
Among many other projects, he developed an anamorphic projection system for cinemas, based on Brewster prisms. He later took a Ph.D in computer optimisation of optical designs at Imperial College.