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Tag: scmos

  • Tucsen High QE Libra CMOS Announced

    High QE, small pixel size

    Libra CMOS

    Recently Tucsen had a presentation on their new Libra CMOS cameras which includes some nice improvements in sensor performance.

    Key highlights were:

    • Improved QE at 92%
    • Large Full Well Capacity (48,000 e)
    • Native binning / debin system

    In a recent presentation here a series of improvements were listed, among them a smaller pixel size selection option which supports a drop in pixel size to ~ 3.27um. From the explanation I assume the camera runs natively in a binned mode to produce 7.x um pixels, but can be optionally de-binned.

    Each of the cameras (3 models announced) appear to have this feature, as shown below.

    I’m more interested in the full well, as having a ~50k e full well seems a nice improvement in dynamic range over current options. Once item that was very interesting to me is that the full well capacity does NOT reduce when enabling the higher resolution mode. If this is correct, a 3.x um pixel with a 48ke full well would still be quite a nice bump in range and quite a feat!

    For pricing, the presentation noted 0.4x the cost of a “classic CMOS”. I’m curious what that means in an actual dollar amount.

    -Austin

  • 95% QE SCMOS vs. EMCCD

    In 2011, I reviewed the Andor Neo, one of the first scmos cameras commercially available. I ended my report with this statement,

    “…there is much life left in the good old frame transfer sensor…until someone cooks up a back thinned scmos…”

    Recently, back thinned scmos camera have come to market, and Kurt Thorne at the UCSF NIC has an excellent report on Photometrics’ new Prime 95B camera. While there may be specific areas of research that can benefit from a BT EMCCD, it looks like the days of EMCCD are at an end for most of us. I guess the question now is, what comes next?

    -Austin

     

     

  • Neo camera at 100fps

    Andor’s Neo camera has been out for about a year now. I first wrote about using it back in February. The camera immediately showed the major difference in field of view between sCmos sensors and traditional interlines quite well, but the speed, binning, sub-array and bias clamp controls weren’t available. Over the past few firmware/SDK updates, Andor has steadily addressed these limitations. I had a chance to field test the latest combo of firmware and driver SDK. Basically I found a camera that runs at 100fps with roughly four times the field of view of a typical Sony285 type sensor. In my last post I noted that people would wait until end user software platforms could take advantage of the sCmos architecture. I think the wait might be over.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjBv9ChZknk

    I’ll continue to report on this as I have an opportunity to put it through it’s paces. I’m curious to see how people respond to it’s performance…

    -Austin

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