| Abstract: | The conical shape of the bundle of illuminating rays in the microscope causes a systematic error of transmittance measured with a microscope photometer in comparison with the (true) transmittance measured with a macrophotometer in which the ray bundle is cylindrical. The error is evaluated by the ratio of transmittance measured with the microscope photometer to the true transmittance. It is calculated for the following model objects: parallel-sided plates, wedges, spheres and circular cylinders. The results of calculations show that the error increases with decreasing transmittance, increasing angle of the cone of rays (evaluated by the effective numerical aperture of illumination), and increasing relative size of photometric field. On the whole, the error can be neglected if the true internal transmittance is greater than 0.1 (10%), the numerical aperture is less than 0.45 and the radius of the photometric field (in the object plane) is less than one-fifth of the thickness of the object. |
