Pco pixelfly qe, Operating Instructions Manual

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2. Functional Principle
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PCO 2006
pixelfly
Internal Data Stream of color cameras
The PCI-Board gets the 12bit data from the camera and trans-
fers it via PCI-Bus to a 16bit array (of the PC memory). The
higher 4bits are set to zero. The 16 bit data are converted
automatically into a 3 x 8 bit array and accessed by the graphic
board. We recommend to display it in 32bits on the monitor.
File Formats
The command ‘Export’ stores 16bit or 8bit data on hard disk in
B16, TIFF, FITS, BMP, or ASCII format.
For further information see Chapter 2.3.
Display
The camera which acquires always 12 bit images resolves with
4096 (2E12) grey levels between black and white, however the
monitor display of the image is always limited to 8 bit and there-
fore to 256 (2E8) grey levels.
The command ‘Convert Control’ allows to select a discretionary
range between 0 ... 4095 grey levels which is then displayed in
256 grey levels on the PC monitor.
Camera
PC
Monitor
PCI-Interface-Board Graphic Board
PCI-Bus