Stemmer Imaging can now provide system developers with specialised monochrome and colour cameras that offer ultra-high resolution yet use standard lens technology. Measuring just 55 x 55 x 84.5mm, the CVC Ultra 125MP CL monochrome and CVC Ultra 45MP CL colour cameras offer a resolution of up to 125 and 45 million pixels respectively using pixel shift technology. Applications that benefit from this exceptional performance include all types of surface analysis, the inspection of printed circuit boards, documentation tasks and many scientific applications.
Since the camera is based on a 5 Megapixel image sensor, it can be used in conjunction with a 5 Megapixel lens even in ultra-high resolution mode. There is no need for ultra-high resolution lens optics. The ultra-high imaging resolution is achieved by using a piezo element to shift the sensor by fractions of a pixel both horizontally and vertically in quick succession. This allows a sequence of images to be captured which are then interpolated into the high resolution image on a host PC.
The colour version is particularly versatile. By using the sensor as a standard imager, the field of interest can be located quickly before switching to ultra-high resolution mode. In addition, by setting the pixel shift to be one pixel rather than a fraction of a pixel, the camera can operate at the sensor’s 5 Megapixel resolution to provide full RGB output for each pixel without colour fringing. In this mode the camera gives performance equivalent to a 3-CCD device from a single sensor.
The monochrome version offers a frame rate of 0.516 images per second at the full resolution of 125 million pixels. Faster rates of 1.43 images/s can be achieved at 45 Megapixels and 15 images/s at 5 Megapixels. The colour version also has a frame rate of 1.43fps at 45 Megapixel resolution and 3.12 images/s in the true RGB mode.
The image data is transferred to the PC via Camera Link Base at 8 or 10 bits. To facilitate easy integration and to generate high-resolution images, Stemmer Imaging provides sample applications with source code for Teledyne Dalsa X64-CL and Xcelera-CL PX4 image capture cards, but can advise on the use of other frame grabbers.
