Top Types of Optical Prisms
Introduction One of the most common images for any that has study optics is that of Sir Isaac Newton with a beam of white light going through a glass prism and a rainbow coming out on the other side. It is one of the most famous optical experiments, not only for its simplicity, but also […]
Surface texture requirement in optical drawings
In our previous article, we discussed how to read optical drawings while in this installment, we will focus on surface finish details. Optical lens performance can be heavily affected by the lens surface roughness. The surface texture symbols are used in optical drawings to define a lens’s necessary surface finish and roughness and will the […]
Cardinal Points
When I was a young undergrad engineering student, I always found optics to be a very confusing subject. It was not only the equations, but what it looked like hundreds of different definitions involved in even the simplest of optical systems. Some concepts, like radius of curvature, f-number, and focal point were easy to understand […]
5 Applications of Cylindrical Lenses
Introduction When thinking of a ‘lens’, most people have the image of a spherical lens in their mind, but there are different geometries for lenses, and one of the most common is the cylindrical lens. What’s the difference between spherical and geometrical lenses? And what applications require cylindrical lenses? In this article we will discuss […]
Understanding RMS Wavefront Error: An In-Depth Exploration | OFH
Introduction to RMS Wavefront Error As mentioned in several articles in this blog, aberrations are of great relevance when designing an optical system. The objective being to design a system that creates a “good image”. However, there are different metrics to evaluate what is a “good image”. Most of the time, a customer won’t express […]
Deciphering 4f Optical Systems: A Journey into Fourier Optics
Introduction A 4F optical system is a system architecture that uses Fourier Optics. In this article, we will explain why we need them and how to design a simple 4f correlator. We will leave out most of the mathematical derivations, but if you are interested in digging more in depth, we highly recommend “Introduction to […]