Zemax & Optics Essentials: Learn Imaging the Easy Way

Explains how a lens creates an image from an object by showing how point sources, pinhole, and camera obscura concepts separate mixed light, and how distance and aperture affect imaging.

Explore how camera obscura uses a pinhole to project scenes for drawing, and how decreasing pinhole diameter improves image quality in simple geometry optics.

Explore the brightness versus image quality trade-off in pinhole imaging, showing how smaller diameters sharpen images but reduce available energy and light, while larger diameters boost brightness but blur detail.

Spot size determines image quality in Zemax imaging; decreasing the pinhole diameter yields a smaller spot size and more information, but lowers image brightness.

Pinhole imaging shows how pinhole diameter sets the spot size, trading image quality for brightness; the lecture questions how to combine high quality with brightness.

Identify midfield as the key middle field point and place three representative points on axis, edge, and midfield, using the 0.7 height rule to optimize aberrations with limited computation.

Navigate the Zemax interface for sequential optical systems, using system explorer and lens data editor to set wavelength, aperture, and field of view, and apply optimizers to refine image quality.

Learn how to set the field type in Zemax by angle, object height, paraxial image height, or real image height, with emphasis on angle for most use cases.

Use the Zemax field wizard to create uniform and equal-area fields in y and x, build grid and radial patterns, and manage fields with overwrite, delete, and multi-arm options.

Discover meridional rays and meridional planes in a Cooke triplet, using the optical axis and object points, with y fan visualization and Earth’s meridians analogy.

Explore sagittal rays and meridional rays and their perpendicular relationship to understand how astigmatism arises when sagittal and meridional focuses differ.

Switch the field to ring to view axial rays, adjust the stop using paraxial ray aiming to resolve edge blocking from pupil aberration, and observe axial rings in Zemax.

Trace marginal rays from the optical axis to the stop edge to see how stop position and size set the maximum acceptance angle theta m and the marginal focus.

Explore chief rays, or key phrase, defined as rays from the edge of field that pass through the center of the aperture stop to image edge, independent of stop size.

Relate mechanical datum targets and datum a, b, and c to the optical clear aperture, showing how measuring a few points with a CMM stylus defines tolerance and pass/fail decisions.

Explore the role of clear aperture in rhomboid optics, illustrating total internal reflection, surface scratches, and how clear apertures guide measurement and communication with glass shops.

Build a simple Zemax camera using three lenses, two identical outer plano-convex lenses and a middle biconcave lens, to explore the clear aperture and entrance pupil concepts.

Configure a Zemax camera example: set aperture to 25 and 550 nm. Insert surfaces, select BK7 and NBK7 glasses, designate stop, and add a dummy surface with marginal ray height.

Explore how the clear semi diameter defines the clear aperture and how a 10% margin expands usable lens size while the stop remains unchanged.

Use ray aiming to fix pupil aberration by aligning marginal rays with the edge of the aperture stop, improving vignetting at the cost of slower computation.

Explore how changing the stop in Zemax alters the optical system, automatically adjusting surface clear apertures to pass light through all lenses, with cautions for optical engineers.

Change the clear aperture of lenses to match real-world Thorlabs optics, explore placing a 12.5 mm clear semi-diameter, and analyze how vignetting limits ray transmission beyond the stop.

Adjust the entrance pupil diameter to reduce vignetting and ensure all rays pass through the optical system; initially estimate by eye, then explore automatic methods to minimize vignetting in Zemax.

Define the exit pupil as the image of the aperture stop seen from the image space, which can reside anywhere—from inside the system to outside or between lenses.

Explore how to locate the entrance and exit pupils in Zemax, measure their diameters and distances from first and imaging surfaces, and perform pupil matching between telescope and eye.

Describe traveling rays from multiple object points, with Canada as the object and the USA as the entrance pupil, using normalized coordinates h_x h_y and p_x p_y.

Learn ray coordinates in Zemax imaging by tracing axial, marginal, chief rays from object through entrance pupil to image plane using h x h y and p x p y.

Discover the optical specifications: field and entrance pupil, and learn how effective focal length, angular field of view, format size, f-number, and numerical aperture guide lens design for imaging systems.

Explore effective focal length concepts by examining how optical centers, marginal rays, and collimated light define focal length in single and multi-element systems, including telephoto designs.

Learn how to compute the f-number and entrance pupil diameter for a 50 mm lens, and how higher f-numbers reduce the aperture.

Explore how the speed of a lens affects image brightness and exposure time. See how changing the entrance pupil diameter and f-number makes the camera fast or slow.

Numerical aperture is a dimensionless measure n sin theta that describes light gathering and resolution in any optical system, and relates to entrance pupil diameter by NA ≈ D/(2f).

Explore the working f-number, where for objects not at infinity magnification m adjusts the f-number by multiplying it with 1 plus m, a concept used in microscopes.