Dove Prisms

Dove prisms have an unusual and very interesting characteristic — if you look through the prism and rotate it around a longitudinal axis, the image rotates through twice the angle through which the dove prism itself rotates. For optimal peformance, use dove prisms with collimated light. The top surface of each TECHSPEC® Dove Prism is ground and the longest length (specified by dimension B) features an unbeveled sharp edge.

TECHSPEC® Dove Prisms are offered uncoated, with anti-reflection coated diagonal faces, or with aluminized diagonal faces. Aluminized dove prisms feature a protected aluminum coating with black Krylon paint on the diagonal faces and are ideal for displaced retroreflection. They provide a u-turn for incident laser beam light.

Reflection is displaced 49mm (in 15mm sizes) or 75mm (in 25mm sizes) when incident rays are centered on the diagonal face. Aluminized TECHSPEC® Dove Prisms can be used in imaging systems (with fields of view less than dimension A/ dimension C) to view areas behind the camera or around corners. They can also provide a split image, where one scene is displaced relative to the other.