Determination of the diffuser reference plane for accurate illuminance responsivity calibrations

Abstract

It is difficult to predict where the effective measurement plane is situated with dome-shaped diffusers often used in commercial photometers and radiometers. Insufficient knowledge of this plane could lead to large systematic errors in calibration of the illuminance responsivity of photometers. We propose a method that can be used to determine this reference plane accurately, based on the inverse-square law between the measured signal and the distance from the source. The method is demonstrated with three commercial photometers with dome-shaped diffusers of different geometries. By taking into account the measured shifts of the reference planes (5.0 +/- 0.5 mm, 7.8 +/- 0.3 mm, and 8.5 +/- 0.7 mm), we reduced the systematic measurement errors up to 2% to statistical uncertainty components at the level of 0.2%.