Problems of Photography at the Diffraction Limit

Abstract

A number of recent publications show that the relation of various image properties to the line width and to the aperture of a diffraction-limited lens can be computed from the light distribution in the Airy disk. These properties include unit-line intensity and density profiles, profiles of line pairs, the relative “printing quality” of lines, changes of light intensity with line width, and the increase of line width with exposure. The finest line of given quality that can be produced by a diffraction-limited lens and the rate of increase of line width with exposure are directly proportional to the F-number of the lens.