Here are some resources that can be useful for an optical engineer.

Books

• Principles of Optics: 60th Anniversary Edition, M. Born & E. Wolf - the classics when it comes to theory of optics.
• Lens Design Fundamentals, R. Kingslake - although one can argue that this book is somewhat dated by now, I still revisit it from time to time. I think it’s an important book to go through, if you work in optical design.
• Modern Optical Engineering, 4th Ed, W. J. Smith - A very good book on optical design. I find it complements R. Kingslake’s book very well.
• Optical System Design, Second Edition, R. E. Fischer, B. Tadic-Galeb, P. R. Yoder Jr. - I think this book provides a very good overview on a plethora of optical engineering topics. I especially enjoy the chapter on bloopers and blunders in optics.
• Modern Lens Design, 2nd Edition, W. J. Smith - an excellent book with reference designs from various areas of optics. It seems that the 3rd Edition will come out in 2025.
• Introduction to Fourier Optics 4th Edition, J. W. Goodman - my go-to book when it comes to Fourier optics. There is also a significant amount of problems at the end of chapters, which is beneficial for learning.
• Modern Optics Drawings: The ISO 10110 Companion, E. Herman, D. M. Aikens, R. N. Youngworth - a really useful book for understanding the ISO 10110 standard for tolerancing optics.
• Designing Illumination Optics, J. Muschaweck, H. Rehn - I really liked this book, since it provides examples and goes through variety of important topics pertaining to illumination optics.
• SPIE Field Guides - not a singular book, but a collection from SPIE. Excellent when you need a quick reference without going deeply in the theory/details.
• Designing Optics Using CODE V & Designing Optics Using Zemax OpticStudio®, D. C. O’Shea, J. L. Bentley - two books that do excellent job of an introductory courses to CODE V and Zemax OpticStudio.
• A History of the Photographic Lens, R. Kingslake - this book will not teach you much about optical design, but it will provide a historical perspective on the developments of photographic lenses. I find such topics valuable. The short biographies of optical designers at the end of the book are also a pleasant addition.

Websites

• https://www.pencilofrays.com/ - an amazing website made by the equally amazing Dr. Kats Ikeda. The guides contained on the website are really nice, but the main highlight for me are the newsletters. They do not come often, but always contain extremely interesting information.
• SPIE.Online On Demand - contains a lot of on-demand webinars on a variety of topics. Obviously you need to be a member of SPIE, but I assume many optical designers already are.
• Optica Technical Groups - the technical groups from Optica also contain a variety of interesting webinars.
• Presentations by Dave Shafer - Dave Shafer is quite famous in the field of optical design. It is nice of him to upload many of his presentations on slideshare.
• https://www.privacyguides.org/ - doesn’t have to do anything with optics, but is a good website if you plan to deal with confidential data and wish to improve some aspects of your online privacy.

YouTube Channels

• Huygens Optics - a channel on various optical topics - both experinetal and theoretical.
• Spotlight Report - an optics-themed podcast/interview channel.
• Design Optics Fast - a YouTube channel by the Emeritus CEO of Zemax Mark Nicholson. I think it’s helpful if you are beginner in Zemax.
• Stephen Remillard - short lectures on optics and optical design.