Which Optics Textbook Is Best for Beginners?

[fluidistic]

I just started an introductory course dealing with geometrical optics for now and maybe some physical optics later (undergraduate level). I've heard that M. Born & E. Wolf's Principles of Optics is a good book. Can you suggest another book? Also, would you suggest the Born/Wolf book for a first approach with optics?
I've looked through this forum (Sc. book discussion) and the few threads related to Optics didn't get any answer. I hope to have more luck!

 

[jasonRF]

I am not an optics expert by any stretch, but I am familiar with Born and Wolf. It is old-fashioined and dense, yet contains a lot of good material on fundamentals of propagation, diffraction, coherence, etc. However, by no means is it introductory! It is at a similar level as Jackson's EM book.

jason

 

[fluidistic]

Ok thanks. I'll be looking for it. I'm also starting classical mechanics (level of Goldstein's book) and Electromagnetism (Jackson's book) aside; yet I didn't take any intro to Optics course. But I guess I can catch up with some upper level undergraduate Optics textbook so thanks a lot for the suggestion.