Sunday, January 13, 2008

The concepts of entrance pupil and exit pupil

The entrance pupil of a system is the image of the aperture stop as seen from an axial point on the object through those elements preceding the stop. In contrast, the exit pupil is the image of the aperture stop as seen from an axial point on the image plane through the interposed lenses, if there are any.

The definition of pupil can be found from any optics textbook, however it's still hard to imagine what difference between the exit and entrance pupils. After seeing the left picture, you may impress the pupil on the memory. It's a normal camera lens, the entrance pupil is the image of aperture from the front side, and the exit pupil is the image of the same aperture from the back side .

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