The wedge prism is an optical element typically made of glass ground at slight angles to refract light passing through it from the smaller width side of the prism to the thicker width side of the prism. By refracting the light, the wedge prism offsets the object being focused upon.

Corner cube prisms reflect input beam by 180 degrees independently of its angle of incidence with the function of total internal reflection based on critical angle. This means that any light incident on the aperture will emerge along the same path that it came from in high reflectance.

A Dove prism is a type of reflective prism which is used to invert an image. Dove prisms are shaped from a truncated right-angle prism.

A pentaprism is a five-sided reflecting prism used to deviate a beam of light by 90°. The beam reflects inside the prism twice, allowing the transmission of an image through a right angle without inverting it as an ordinary right-angle prism or mirror would.

 Right-angle prism is the most common type of prisms. It is used to re-direct a beam of light at 90 degrees from the the incident direction or used as a 180 beam retro-reflector. They are often coated with various optical coatings to form cubic beam splitters and color separation cubes used in various projection systems.