该杂志出版了各种光学仪器的设计细节，以及对工程师、数学家、物理学家以及光学科学家有用的计算光学的重要章节。英文译本由OSA出版，与瓦维洛夫国家光学研究所出版的俄语版光学杂志同时出版。
The journal publishes design details of a diversity of optical instruments, along with a strong section on computational optics useful to engineers, mathematicians, and physicists, as well as optical scientists. Issues of the English translation volume are published by OSA and appear at the same time as the Russian language edition, Opticheskii Zhurnal, which is produced by the Vavilov State Optical Institute