Learn more about camera optical engineering from our US-based engineering team
Camera optical lenses, such as our M12 lenses, are also known as objective lenses. These are multi-element optics constructed from plano-convex, bi-convex, plano-concave, bi-concave, meniscus, aspheric, achromatic doublets, and more. The characteristics of an optical lens contribute to the image quality output from a camera.
In our series of blog posts, we explore the engineering side of imaging optics. We describe the impact on perceptual metrics and considerations needed when building an embedded vision camera system. We also investigate how image quality impacts computer vision, as related metrics will impact lens selection.
How to Focus a Camera?
Whether you're working on cameras for autonomous robotics, surveillance systems, or other projects, image resolution and sharpness ca can greatly impact the performance and accuracy of your embedded vision system. That's why understanding how to focus a camera lens is a must-have skill for every robotics engineer or camera hobbyist. In this guide, we provide the techniques, tools, and best practices to help you perfectly focus your camera lens.
What is an M12 lens?
An M12 Lens / S-Mount lens is a miniature lens with 12mm diameter threads. Despite the small size, these lenses can outperform DSLR camera lenses.
How to Clean a Camera Lens
Ever wondered about the best practices to clean a lens or image sensor?
In this article we review the impact of a dirty lens and sensor. We then discuss best practices and tools to clean optics.
CMOS Sensor Size
The sensor format size and pixel size of digital camera impacts many performance attributes of camera.
The format type of a digital camera sensor is one of the most confusing and ridiculous concepts in the vision industry.
Wide Angle Lenses and Fisheye Camera Lens Distortion
Optical distortion is a third order transverse aberration. The simple explanation is that distortion is the change in magnification (angular resolution) versus image height.
GoPro's marketing team was stuck with "Fisheye" because the first product used a cropped Fisheye lens. The newer GoPros use Wide Angle lenses which are not Fisheye lenses.
Resolution 101
Even the experts interchangeably use the term "Resolution" when it actually refers to four different technical metrics. We ran across this misunderstanding during a 2018 conversation within the IEEE P2020 working group...
We define and explore each in this article
Wide Angle Lenses and Fisheye Camera Lens Distortion
Optical distortion is a third order transverse aberration. The simple explanation is that distortion is the change in magnification (angular resolution) versus image height.
GoPro's marketing team was stuck with "Fisheye" because the first product used a cropped Fisheye lens. The newer GoPros use Wide Angle lenses which are not Fisheye lenses.
An Overview Of CCTV/CMOS Lens Mount Types
One of the first questions inevitably asked when designing vision systems is a variant of the following:
- Will my CS Mount Lens work with my C Camera Mount?
- Will my CS Mount Lens work with my C Camera Mount?
- What is the difference between a S Mount lens and a M12 lens?
Raspberry Pi Video Conferencing
A few early users of our lenses are actively involved in the RPi community and mentioned the products in a thread. And many people were curious "well what lens should I use?"
Image Quality Summit
This post explores 12+ Image Quality Metrics and the impact on computer vision. The blog posts and video are from a talk that Max H gave during the Embedded Vision Summit 2022.
- Camera Exposure and Computer Vision
- Motion Blur
- High Dynamic Range
- Resolution and Sharpness
- Shading and Vignetting
- Noise
- Fisheye Distortion and Wide Angle Lenses
- Fringing and Chromatic Aberration