A chief ray is the ray from an off-axis object point which passes through the center of the aperture stop of an optical system. The chief ray enters the optical system along a line directed towards the midpoint of the entrance pupil, and leaves the system along a line passing through the center of the exit pupil. To measure the angle between the optical axis and the chief ray on the image side the following method is used: The lens under test is illuminated by the collimator at different angles corresponding to the object sided chief ray angles. The detector head is moved to the image field position at which the lens focuses the image. Now the detector head is moved towards the lens in small steps while the software registers the lateral movement of the focused spot. From these lateral movements the CRA is calculated. At Optikos, chief ray angle (CRA) is measured by our OPTEST™ MTF Testing System and LensCheck™ VIS. For more information, click on the images below.
