Are the cameras similar to what's in a consumer digital camera, that is, a single image sensor behind a bayer filer and a lens? Or does it use some other configuration, like an array of image sensors?
And does sensor readout work similarly to a consumer camera, sequentially reading out rows of sensor data? Is there any cool software processing during the capture, like decovolution?
> Are the cameras similar to what's in a consumer digital camera, that is, a single image sensor behind a bayer filer and a lens?
Yes they're quite similar to consumer camera sensors, our sensors are usually from high quality production bins. We advertise this quality as "scientific CMOS" (sCMOS) to help highlight this.
Consumer sensors can have a significant number of sensor defects which can be corrected so they aren't noticeable in casual photographs, but these defects are very detrimental for scientific imaging where quality is paramount.
Another big difference is the noise and quantum efficiency characteristics of the sensor which is another key requirement for scientific instruments.
We don't supply lens', I think the logic is that scientific customer's know exactly what kind of optical setup they want so most customer's would tend to use their own optical equipment or buy it in.
Our camera's are monochrome (scientific cameras tend to care more about raw resolution than having a smaller res with bayer layer) so customers typically use different color/wavelength filters to get what they want and process them into true color images later if needed.
> Or does it use some other configuration, like an array of image sensors?
This particular camera, the Zyla has just one sensor. Though it is a little unique in our portfolio, in that the sensor can be read out from both halves simultaneously in various patterns. If your interested in the hardware we provide lots of info in our hardware manual: https://andor.oxinst.com/downloads/uploads/Zyla_hardware_use...
I don't think we offer multi-sensor solutions, though I could be wrong.
> And does sensor readout work similarly to a consumer camera, sequentially reading out rows of sensor data?
Yes, there are two electronic shuttering modes we offer: rolling and global. Rolling takes a sequential row by row readout, and global does a readout of the entire sensor. The camera's used by the observator can only do rolling, but we have other Zyla models which also do global. There can be tradeoffs in choosing which one to use, typically framerate, noise and image distortion are the key factors in choosing.
Global is available on some high end consumer cameras, but generally most consumer sensors will do rolling. Though this may have changed since I last looked.
> Is there any cool software processing during the capture, like decovolution?
In the camera side of the company, we try to leave the image as clean and raw as possible.
We perform correction processing during acquisition on the camera; as high quality as the bins are, you still have to correct and characterize for various things to get the best performance in a scientific scenario.
In the applications side of the company we do all kinds of image processing: deconvolution (this is a big deal in the confocal microscopy world, we have our own patented deconvolution method: srrf-stream) https://fusion-benchtop-software-guide.scrollhelp.site/fusio..., AI analysis, 3d/4d imaging (https://imaris.oxinst.com/). Probably lots more I don't know about (I'm on the camera side).
Are the cameras similar to what's in a consumer digital camera, that is, a single image sensor behind a bayer filer and a lens? Or does it use some other configuration, like an array of image sensors?
And does sensor readout work similarly to a consumer camera, sequentially reading out rows of sensor data? Is there any cool software processing during the capture, like decovolution?