Transmission :
A length of 3/4 m of fibre was coupled to an incoherent light source (either EQ99X LDLS or tungsten halogen bulb) and its light transmission was optimised through fibre allignment and re-cleaving of fibre cleaves. Then a scan of signal versus wavelength was performed to collect the transmission data.

Cutback :
A long length of ~ 30 - 40 m of fibre was coupled to an incoherent light source (either EQ99X LDLS or tungsten halogen bulb) and its light transmission was optimised through fibre allignment and re-cleaving of fibre cleaves. Then a scan of signal versus wavelength was performed to collect the transmission data followed by a reduction in length to ~ 10 m and the previous process repeated.

Bend loss:
A length of ~ 4 m of fibre was laid in a roughly straight line and its transmission was measured. Various bends were then introduced and their transmission spectra also recorded.

Near-field and far-field images:
A ~ 3 m length of fibre was coupled to the white light source, filtered by a 12 nm FWHM bandpass at 1300 nm. At the fibre output a InGaAs camera imaged the near-field or far-field, using a lens for a the near-field. For the far-field the distance to the camera was calibrated by taking a number of pictures at different distances and using the intercept to determine the absolute position to the camera. For the near-field the scale was determined by the position of the capillaries using saturated images.