The method that determines the appropriate damping factor is studied for a lens design. When suitable damping factor is applied to the additive damped least-squares (DLS) method, the convergence and the stability of the optimization process are examined in a triplet-type photographic lens design. We calculate eigenvalues of the product of the Jacobian matrix of error functions by using the singular value decomposition (SVD) method. We adopt the median of eigenvalues as an appropriate damping factor. The convergence and the stability of the optimization process are improved by choosing the adequate damping factor for the optimization of a photographic lens. It is known that the numerical inaccuracy in the calculation of normal equation is overcome by using the orthogonal transformations of the Jacobian matrix. Therefore, a combination of the method for setting a proper damping factor and the orthogonal transformations of the Jacobian matrix is good for application to the design of an aspheric lens with high-order terms. terms.