該雜志出版了各種光學儀器的設計細節，以及對工程師、數學家、物理學家以及光學科學家有用的計算光學的重要章節。英文譯本由OSA出版，與瓦維洛夫國家光學研究所出版的俄語版光學雜志同時出版。

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