Setting Up an Optical Testing Station | LensRentals

There are a lot of right ways to do optical testing. The gold standard is to put the lens on a $150,000 optical bench or run it through a well-equipped Imatest lab. But unless you have an optical bench or Imatest lab handy, that’s not practical. We have to optically test around 400 lenses a day, which is more than our Imatest lab can possibly handle. So over the years we’ve learned a lot about practical ways to test lenses. We’ve constantly double-checked our methods using Imatest and an optical bench, refining our optical testing. We’ve developed a simple set up that is about 98% accurate in identifying lenses that are decentered or optically misaligned. A lot of people could do this at home themselves. Certainly any camera club could make an identical setup. Judging from the emails I get, a lot of people want to be able to test their lenses optically and few know how to do it, so this should be useful for them….

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