CCD Camera

Anti-Blooming: Saturation occurs when the light that is sensed exceeds a pixel's capacity to emit electrons. Excessive charge can bleed into adjacent pixels and cause bright spots or streaks to appear on the image, a condition known as blooming. Anti-blooming gates remove excessive charge and can significantly reduce blooming, but often at the cost of reduced sensitivity.

Auto-Lens: Auto-lens operation is a mode in which the lens iris automatically adjusts to maintain a predetermined level of light on the image pickup device. Cameras with auto-lens mode may also provide automatic lens focusing.

Board Mount: Camera optics are mounted directly on a printed circuit board (PCB). Often, PCBs are components of larger devices.

Cooled Sensor: Sensors are actively cooled by a Peltier element or other method. Cooling reduces "dark current" noise and improves sensitivity.

Dome: Cameras are enclosed in a protective dome made from materials such as acrylic or polycarbonate. Typically, these materials are optically-corrected for accurate image capture. This can create a tamper-proof housing common for security use.

Gain Control: Automatic gain control (AGC) uses electronic circuitry to increase video signals in low-light conditions. This can introduce noise and, subsequently, graininess in the picture. Typically, AGC is disabled and specifications are presented with this feature turned off.

Gamma Correction: Gamma is the nonlinear relationship between the video signal level and the subsequent image element brightness. Gamma correction compensates for this nonlinearity in order to render the image true in color while providing intensity to the original object.

High Definition: High definition is a video standard that has higher picture sharpness, larger picture, more colors, and higher quality sound than regular video standards. The low-end threshold for HD video is considered 1,280 x 720 pixels.

High-Speed Camera: High-speed cameras record images at a higher frame rate than a typical camera. After recording, the images can be played back in slow-motion for close study of actions that may be ephemeral. This is particularly helpful for scientific study, but also has a wide variety uses. Almost all modern high-speed cameras are digital in design and capable of recording over 1000 frames per second. Too many frames per second sacrifices area coverage while also producing a large, unwieldy file.

Low-Light Camera: These are meant to be used in dark situations where an otherwise suitable camera will not have reached an exposure level capable of capturing an image. The cameras contain image sensors that are exceptionally perceptive of subtle light sources.

Machine Vision Sensors: Machine vision sensors have the capability to analyze events captured by its camera, and alert operators or make decisions based on the information collected. These are also called smart cameras. If they are not uniform machines, the camera is typically linked to a computer interface via a FireWire, USB, or Ethernet connection.

Outdoor Rated: Outdoor-rated devices are designed to withstand outdoor temperature variations, rain, snow, and other weather conditions.

Pan/Tilt: These devices have integral or optional mounting features enabling side-to-side (pan) and up-and-down (tilt) controllable motion.

Progressive Scan: This is a CCD design that allows acquisition of both even and odd fields at the same time. Each pixel contains information from one complete frame. This technology allows high resolution without the use of a mechanical shutter. Progressive scan cameras are used for image acquisition of rapidly moving objects and accurate dimensional measurements.

Radiation Hardened: Devices are designed to withstand high levels of radiation. These cameras can be used in nuclear facility applications, or in scientific research that will expose the device to radiation.

Underwater Rated: Devices are designed to work when completely submerged in water. This feature can be added with an aftermarket housing.

Zoom: Cameras are designed with a feature that allows the device to closely focus on distant objects. Optical zooms offer better resolution than digital zooms.

3D Recording: The camera has the capability of recording images in three distinct directional planes. This is helpful for recording the depth of an object.