To obtain a bright lens for reading an image, whose depth of focus is large and whose angle of view is large while coping with high resolution, and an image reader using the lens.

This lens has six lenses, that is, a 1st positive lens being a meniscus whose convex surface faces an object side, a 2nd lens whose both surfaces are concave, a 3rd lens whose both surfaces are convex, a 4th lens being a meniscus whose concave surface faces the object side, a 5th negative lens being a meniscus whose concave surface faces the object side and a 6th negative lens being a meniscus whose concave surface faces the object side in order from the object side. The lens satisfies respective conditional expressions when it is assumed that the focal distance of a lens being an i-th one when it is counted from the object side is (fi), the thickness of the 4th lens is d8, the radius of curvature of the surface on the image surface side of the 2nd lens is r4, the composite focal distance of the 5th and the 6th lenses is (fn) and the focal distance of the entire system is (f).