Diaphragms

Author: the photonics expert Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta (RP)

Definition: circular (or approximately circular) openings through which light can travel

Alternative terms: stops, apertures

Category: article belongs to category vision, displays and imaging vision, displays and imaging

DOI: 10.61835/2us Cite the article: BibTex plain text HTML Link to this page LinkedIn

Diaphragms are circular (or approximately circular) openings, through which light can travel. They act as intentionally introduced optical apertures, e.g. in photographic objectives. Diaphragms may have a fixed opening diameter, but others have a variable opening diameter (iris diaphragms). Some of the latter can electrically controlled.

Typically, a diaphragm is quite thin, and its non-transparent parts are often absorbing, e.g. due to a black coating.

Diaphragms are also called stops because they stop the light passage in some regions. If they limit the field of view of an instrument, they are called field stops. In other cases, they may act as aperture stops, reducing the amount of light getting through a system.

The role of a diaphragm in an imaging system is explained in the article on imaging with a lens.

Types of Diaphragms

In the simplest case, a diaphragm is a blackened metal plate with a circular hole. If it is small, it is also called a pinhole. There are also devices with a rotatable metallic plate, containing holes of different sizes, so that one can select between them by rotating the plate. Devices of that kind have been used in older photo cameras.

Blade diaphragms have an opening of variable diameter, limited by some number of blades, which can be moved towards the center by some distance. There is often a mechanical mechanism, which allows one to move all blades in a coordinated manner e.g. by translating a single handle. The shape of the opening is a polygon, which approximates a circle if the number of blades is large.

Some of those devices are motorized, so that they can be electrically controlled. For example, some modern photographic objectives contain such variable blades diaphragms, so that the microprocessor of the camera can automatically select f-number settings.

Some diaphragms are used in beam shutters. They may be optimized such that they can tolerate substantial optical powers.

More to Learn

Encyclopedia articles:

Suppliers

The RP Photonics Buyer's Guide contains four suppliers for diaphragms. Among them:

Geola

The MID14-24 is precise motorized iris diaphragm, which is adjustable either mechanically or on a PC with an intuitive graphical user interface. Our unique design has aluminum blades forming a square diaphragm, always remaining centered to an internal SM1–threaded hole during size tuning. The adjustment step size is ≈10 µm.

The square Iris diaphragm is also designed to be compatible for either stand-alone (MID14-24) or 60 mm standard (for example Thorlabs) Cage System (MID14-24C).

Knight Optical

Knight Optical have an extensive range of iris diaphragms with steel leaves and housed in blackened brass body. Our catalogue diaphragms are available with a minimum aperture of 0.6 mm up to a maximum 225 mm aperture. Custom diaphragms are also available upon request.

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