A method of adjusting the pupil delay compensation of a convergent or divergent beam that includes placing a device composed of an afocal system comprising one or more passive optical components disposed on the propagation axis of the beam, at least one of the components being a focusing diffractive component, and moving the device along the propagation axis of the beam until the required pupil delay compensation is obtained, where the compensation is the algebraic sum of pupil delays of each passive optical component of the afocal system and lying in a range of values the limits of which are functions of the particular combination of the optical components chosen to form the afocal system of the compensation device.