uncompressed B&W sort of hi-def that works now?

[Jef Bryant]

Maybe. Not a production solution in the professional world or if you're shooting for the Big Screen. As this is B&W and has various limitations, it may be of little interest here, but I thought I'd post it anyway. I was looking for a good solution for a b&w personal project.

PL-A741 pixelink camera

Resolution : max 1280 x 1024
Bit Depth : 8 or 10
Pixel Pitch : 6.7 µm
Lens Mount : C 1/2
Interface : FireWire (2)
Trigger Type : S/W or H/W
Shutter Type : Global or Rolling
Sensor : 2/3 CMOS (11mm dia.)

It works over ordinary firewire, so no expensive cameralink or other frame grabber is required, just the camera, lens, and laptop with a big drive. It has a true global shutter mode, 24p, shutter adjustable in ms (20.83 ms for 1/48 of a second shutter), extended dynamic range ability (multiple slope) in global shutter mode, uncompressed. In global mode it saves as tif, bmp, jpeg, or photoshop (sequential stills in a folder).

The fps, shutter speed and size of frame are all interdependent. Pixelink has a frame rate calculator for the global shutter mode. The following are the largest sizes when using global shutter at 1/48th sec, 24 fps. If you were to use rolling shutter, it goes faster (max 33fps at full-rez).

4:3 - 940x706
16:9 - 1100x621
2.39:1 - 1280x533

I haven't tested this thing, so I have no idea of the light sensitivity (ASA) or if it has any odd, unexpected problems. Also has LUTs and a variety of other features.

Price $1975.00 (US)

I haven't been able to find any other machine vision cameras with these features that are ready-to-go, in color or b&w, at this price point. They tend to all fall down in the area of global shutter/speed. If someone knows of one, let me know!

Oh, and I don't work for Pixelink. :)

[Jef Bryant]

I made a typo. It's actually $1795.00 ($1750.00 at Edmund Optics).

[Jef Bryant]

I guess it's the B&W that makes this uninteresting for folks here?

[Rob Lohman]

That might be indeed. Most people prefer to at least have the
color option. 99% of the work I see here on DVi is done in color.