

Porro–Abbe prism projects image forward, rotated by 180° and displaced.Porro prism projects image backwards and displaced.Even number of reflections, image projects upright (without change in handedness may or may not be rotated).Corner-cube retroreflector projects image backwards.Roof pentaprism projects image sideways flipped along the other axis.triangular prism reflector, projects image sideways (chromatic dispersion is zero in case of perpendicular input and output incidence).Odd number of reflections, image projects as flipped (mirrored).In combination with anti-reflective coating of input and output facets, this leads to an order of magnitude lower light loss than usual metallic mirrors have. They are typically used to erect the image in binoculars or single-lens reflex cameras – without the prisms the image would be upside down for the user.īeing usually made of pure optical glass, reflective prisms use total internal reflection to achieve near-perfect reflectivity on their facets that light impinges under high-enough oblique angle.

Reflective prisms are used to reflect light, in order to flip, invert, rotate, deviate or displace the light beam. Spectral dispersion is the best known property of optical prisms, although not the most frequent purpose of using optical prisms in practice. Grism, a dispersive prism with a diffraction grating on its surface.Littrow prism with mirror on its rear facet.Amici prism and other types of compound prisms.Blue light is slowed more than red light and will therefore be bent more than red light.

Dispersive prisms are used to break up light into its constituent spectral colors because the refractive index depends on frequency the white light entering the prism is a mixture of different frequencies, each of which gets bent slightly differently.
