Shift-photography-assisted image super-resolution for optical zooming system based on Alvarez lenses

The optical zooming system based on Alvarez lenses (OZA) exhibits shortcomings in terms of zooming magnification and imaging quality. To address this, we propose a generic method utilizing an image super-resolution algorithm based on shift-photography to enhance the zoom ratio of OZA without altering the optical design. Shift-photography can mitigate optical aberrations across different fields of view, resulting in clearer local textures. With the assistance of multiple image inputs, our network model achieves reliable super-resolution results. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our image reconstruction performance surpasses existing methods, which can help the OZA system achieve a higher zoom ratio or reduce the number of required freeform lenses. An example is presented where a 4.17× OZA without specifically optimized freeform surfaces achieves image restoration and 4× super-resolution through the proposed method at the telephoto end, resulting in a total magnification ratio exceeding 16×. •Utilizing shift-photography to mitigate edge-field aberrations.•Enhancing zooming capability and reducing the burden on optical zooming.•A simple and effective model is presented.