Customer Reviews

Field Guide to Geometrical Optics (SPIE Vol. FG01)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This little book is an excellent optics reference book. It collects together the basic concepts and formulas of geometric optics in a clear and concise form, and also defines and explains common optical terminology (pupils, rays, FOV, NA, etc.). It reviews common optical systems like telescopes and microscopes, and has sections on aberrations and chromatic effects. If you do optics, you want to have a copy of this on your desk. The book is particularly useful for those of us who learned basic optics from a book like Hecht's Optics, but now need to actually put what we learned into practice. Beware, though: the sign conventions used may be unfamiliar and may take some getting used to.

When I took the course this Field Guide is based on, I walked away with a binder full of hand-written notes, which I probably never looked at again. 15 years later, I keep this (and about 4 other Field Guides from the same series) within arm's reach in case I don't feel like deriving a paraxial equation or searching for the scotopic response function or digging up some other not-quite-trivial piece of information. One nice feature is that each page is self-contained and devoted to a single topic. Another nice feature is the spiral binding, so it stays open.

I had this book as a text for a class and as a text book it stinks, I give it 1 star. However it isn't a text book but rather a reference book. As a reference book I give this 5 stars. It is great if you need a little refresher on optics but this is not something to learn optics from.

This is a very useful summary of the main results in geometrical optics in a compact and reasonably-priced little book. There are no proofs given, but the main results are clear and I will recommend my students to use it for revision and summary of the course. It is also very useful to a lecturer preparing a course on geometrical optics since the topics are laid out, one to a page.

Dr. Greivenkamp has published an excellent reference guide for anyone interested in optical systems. It is an invaluable resource for those of us taking his OPS 201-2 classes at the University of Arizona. He presents the topics straight forward without all the mumbo/jumbo found in many other geometrical optics books. It's a very handy and quick reference guide that includes most if not all of the optical instruments.