«CamName» User’s Manual
8
DALSA Corp.
03-32-00253-13
1.4 CCD Camera Primer
In a camera such as the Piranha, a CCD image sensor converts photons (light) into
electrons (charge). When photons hit an image sensor, the sensor accumulates electrons.
This is called charge integration. The brighter your light source, the more photons
available for the sensor to integrate, and the smaller the amount of time required to
collect a given amount of light energy.
The way photosensitive
elements (pixels) on CCD
image sensors collect
charge has often been
compared to wells or
buckets filling with
water. From this analogy
comes the term “full-well
capacity,” meaning the
maximum charge (number of electrons) a pixel well can hold without “spilling” charge
onto adjacent pixels.
As an
image
sweeps
over a line
of pixels,
the pixels
collect
charge. At
certain
intervals,
the sensor
transfers its
collected
charge to one or more readout registers, which feed each pixel’s charge from the image
sensor into an output node that converts the charges into voltages.
After this transfer and conversion, the voltages are amplified to become the camera’s
analog output. In digital output cameras, the camera’s analog-to-digital (A/D) board
converts voltages to digital numbers (0-255 for 8-bit cameras, 0-4095 for 12-bit cameras).
These digital numbers are what the camera outputs as data to a framegrabber.
For more information on terms and concepts from the digital imaging industry, see DALSA’s
current Databook Glossary, CCD Technology Primer, and Application Notes.
Summary of Contents for PIRANHA CL-P1
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