7-12 I E S LIGHTING HANDBOOK

Reflecting prisms reflect light internally, as shown in Fig. 7

-12(h).
Applications: luminaires, retrodirective markers.
Maintenance: moisture, moist dirt, and grease in optical contact with
surfaces reduce reflection ; smooth glass permits easy cleaning but must be
cleaned on both surfaces (front and rear).
Fresnel lenses. Excessive weight and cost of glass in large lenses used in
illumination equipment can be reduced considerably by a method de-
veloped by Fresnel. Several variations are used, as shown in Fig. 7
-12(c).
The use of lens surfaces parallel to those replaced (shown by the dotted
line) brings about a great reduction in thickness. The optical action is
approximately the same. Although outside prisms are slightly more
efficient, they are likely to collect more dust. Therefore, prismatic faces
often are formed on the inside.
Positive lenses form convergent beams and real inverted images as in
Fig. 7-15(a). Negative lenses form divergent beams and virtual, inverted
images as in Fig. 7-15(6).
FIG. 7-15.
Ray path traces
through lenses:
(a) positive,
(b) negative.
Lens aberrations. There are, in all, seven principal lens aberrations:
spherical, coma, axial and lateral achromatism, astigmatism, curvature
and distortion. Usually they arc of little importance in lenses used in
common types of lighting equipment. In telescopic objectives and the
like (small angular fields), the most important are spherical aberration,
coma, and axial achromatism, which are illustrated in Fig. 7-16(a), (b)
and (c). In such systems as photographic objectives (wide angular
fields), astigmatism, curvature of field, and distortion also are important.
These are shown in Fig. 7-16 (d) and (e). In modern telescopic and
photographic lenses astigmatism and curvature usually are eliminated
for all practical purposes and the lenses are likely to be complex. The
simpler the lens system, the more difficult is the correction of the aber-
rations.
6
Transmittance and Transmitting Materials
Transmittance is a characteristic exhibited to some degree by many
materials: glass, plastics, textiles, crystals, and so forth. The luminous
transmittance T of a material is the ratio of the total emitted light to the
total incident light; it is affected by reflections at each surface of the ma-
terial, as explained above, and by absorption within the material.