Basic optics for Photogrammetry

Janak Raj Joshi

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 Introduction
• Photogrammetric instruments, in some extent,
depends upon optical elements
• Depends upon the function of the instrument
• For example:
– small pocket stereoscope uses simple thin lens
– Aerial camera uses compound lens
– Complex stereoscopic plotter uses combination of many
lenses, mirrors and prisms
• Therefore, it is essential to learn some basic principles
of optics for better understanding of photogrammetry

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 Content for this chapter
• Refraction of light
• Reflection of light
• mirror
• Prism
• Simple thin lens
• Lens formula
• Real and virtual image
• Lateral magnification
• Lens quality
• Depth of field
• Scheimpflug condition

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 Terminology
• Medium
• Surface/interface
• Normal
• Incident rays
• Reflected rays
• Refracted rays
• Angle of incidence
• Angle of reflection
• Angle of refraction
• Angle of deviation
• Refractive index
• Critical angle
• Total internal reflection
• Thickness of the media
• Displacement of light ray
• Snell’s law 4
 Refractive index
• It is expressed as a ratio of the speed of light
in vacuum relative to that in the considered
medium
• n = speed of light in a vacuum / speed of light
in medium.
• For example, the refractive index of water is
1.33, meaning that light travels 1.33 times
faster in vacuum than it does in water.

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 Snell’s law
• Snell's law (the law of refraction) is a formula
used to describe the relationship between the
angles of incidence and refraction, when
referring to light or other waves passing
through a boundary between two different
isotropic media, such as water and glass

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 Snell’s Law
• Snell's law states that the ratio of the sines of the
angles of incidence and refraction is equivalent to
the ratio of phase velocities in the two media, or
equivalent to the opposite ratio of the indices of
refraction:

• with each θ as the angle measured from the

normal, v as the velocity of light in the respective
medium (SI units are meters per second, or m/s)
and n as the refractive index (which is unitless) of
the respective medium.
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 Lens
• A lens is an optical device with perfect or approximate
axial symmetry which transmits and refracts light,
converging or diverging the beam.
• A simple lens consists of a single optical element.
• A compound lens is an array of simple lenses (elements)
with a common axis
• the use of multiple elements allows more optical
aberrations to be corrected than is possible with a single
element.
• Lenses are typically made of glass or transparent plastic.

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 Types of a lens
• Biconvex
• Plano convex
• Biconcave
• Plano concave
• Positive meniscus
• Negative meniscus

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Types of lens

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Real Image
Top: The formation of a real image using a
convex lens.
Bottom: The formation of a real image using a
concave mirror. In both diagrams, f  is the focal
point, O  is the object and I  is the image. Solid
blue lines indicate light rays. It can be seen that
the image is formed by actual light rays and
thus can form a visible image on a screen
placed at the position of the image

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Virtual Image
Top: The formation of a virtual image using a
diverging lens.
Bottom: The formation of a virtual image using
a convex mirror. In both diagrams, f  is the focal
point, O  is the object and I  is the image,
shown in grey. Solid blue lines indicate light
rays. It can be seen that the light rays appear
to emanate from the virtual image but do not
actually exist at the position of the virtual
image. Thus an image cannot be seen by
placing a screen at the position of the virtual
image

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 Lens Formula
• Image Distance
• Object Distance
• Focal Length

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Magnification

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 Thin and Thick lens
• A thin lens is a lens with a thickness (distance
along the optical axis between the two
surfaces of the lens) that is negligible
compared to the focal length of the lens.
• Lenses whose thickness is not negligible are
sometimes called thick lenses

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 Mirror
• Mirror
– A mirror is an object with at least one reflective
surface.
– The most familiar type of mirror is the plane
mirror, which has a flat surface.
– Curved mirrors are also used, to produce
magnified or diminished images or focus light or
simply distort the reflected image.

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 Prism
• Prism
– In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat
surfaces that refract light.
– The traditional geometrical shape is that of a triangular prism
with a triangular base and rectangular sides.
– Prisms are typically made out of glass, but can be made from
any material that is transparent to the wavelengths for which
they are designed.
– A prism can be used to break light up into its constituent
spectral colors (the colors of the rainbow).
– Prisms can also be used to reflect light, or to split light into
components with different polarizations

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 Quality of lens
• Such lenses which do not have any aberration
effects are considered as good quality lenses
• Aberration
– Imperfections which degrade the sharpness of
image
• Spherical Aberration
• Coma
• Astigmatism
• Chromatic Aberration

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 Lens Defects
• Spherical aberration
• Spherical aberration occurs because spherical surfaces are not the
ideal shape with which to make a lens,
• Spherical aberration causes beams parallel to, but distant from, the
lens axis to be focused in a slightly different place than beams close
to the axis.
• This manifests itself as a blurring of the image.
• Spherical aberration can be minimized by careful choice of the
curvature of the surfaces for a particular application:
• for instance, a plano-convex lens which is used to focus a
collimated beam produces a sharper focal spot when used with the
convex side towards the beam source.

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 Coma
• Coma
• Another type of aberration is coma, which derives its name from the comet-like appearance of
the aberrated image.
• Coma occurs when an object off the optical axis of the lens is imaged, where rays pass through
the lens at an angle to the axis θ.
• Rays which pass through the centre of the lens of focal length f are focused at a point with
distance f tan θ from the axis.
• Rays passing through the outer margins of the lens are focused at different points, either
further from the axis (positive coma) or closer to the axis (negative coma).
• In general, a bundle of parallel rays passing through the lens at a fixed distance from the centre
of the lens are focused to a ring-shaped image in the focal plane, known as a comatic circle.
• The sum of all these circles results in a V-shaped or comet-like flare. As with spherical
aberration, coma can be minimised (and in some cases eliminated) by choosing the curvature
of the two lens surfaces to match the application.
• Lenses in which both spherical aberration and coma are minimised are called bestform lenses.

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 Chromatic Aberration
• Chromatic aberration
• Chromatic aberration/ Achromatism is caused by the dispersion of the
lens material—the variation of its refractive index, n, with the
wavelength of light.
• it follows that different wavelengths of light will be focused to different
positions.
• Chromatic aberration of a lens is seen as fringes of colour around the
image.
• It can be minimised by using an achromatic doublet (or achromat) in
which two materials with differing dispersion are bonded together to
form a single lens.
• This reduces the amount of chromatic aberration over a certain range of
wavelengths, though it does not produce perfect correction.
• Different lens materials may also be used to minimise chromatic
aberration, such as specialised coatings or lenses made from the crystal 25
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 Astigmatism
• An optical system with astigmatism is one
where rays that propagate in two
perpendicular planes have different foci. If an
optical system with astigmatism is used to
form an image of a cross, the vertical and
horizontal lines will be in sharp focus at two
different distances. The term comes from the
Greek α- (a-) meaning "without" and στίγμα
(stigma), "a mark, spot, puncture".
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 Depth of field
• Depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and
farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an
image.
• Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time,
the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused
distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is
imperceptible under normal viewing conditions.
• In some cases, it may be desirable to have the entire image sharp,
and a large DOF is appropriate.
• In other cases, a small DOF may be more effective, emphasizing
the subject while de-emphasizing the foreground and
background.
• In cinematography, a large DOF is often called deep focus, and a
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small DOF is often called shallow focus
Depth of field

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 Scheimpflug condition
• Normally, the lens and image (film or sensor) planes of a camera are parallel,
and the plane of focus (PoF) is parallel to the lens and image planes.
• If a planar subject (such as the side of a building) is also parallel to the image
plane, it can coincide with the PoF, and the entire subject can be rendered
sharply.
• If the subject plane is not parallel to the image plane, it will be in focus only
along a line where it intersects the PoF, as illustrated in Figure 1 (below).
• When an oblique tangent is extended from the image plane, and another is
extended from the lens plane, they meet at a line through which the PoF
also passes, as illustrated in Figure 2 .
• With this condition, a planar subject that is not parallel to the image plane
can be completely in focus
• This condition is called Scheimpflug condition

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 Figure 2. The angles of the Scheimpflug
principle, using the example of a photographic
lens
Figure 1. With a normal
camera, when the subject is
not parallel to the image plane,
only a small region is in focus

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