Measurement of spherical aberrations using a solid-state image sensor

An improved way of using the traditional Hartmann test has been evolved to measure spherical aberrations of photographic lenses. Instead of photographic plates, a solid-state linear image sensor was successfully used to achieve improvements in accuracy and in measuring efficiency. It was found possible to locate the intersection of a ray with the image plane in a few seconds, with an error of less than 0.3 microm. Two standard lenses of known data were measured to compare the results of the experiments and the calculations. The precision of the method is briefly discussed theoretically and experimentally.