Optical Engineering & Camera Engineering Technical Blog

Autofocus in Machine Vision

How machine vision autofocus works: fixed focus vs autofocus, voice-coil and piezo M12 mounts, manual focus mechanics, and contrast vs ph...

What Is F-Number in Machine Vision?

F-number explained for machine vision: how aperture sets exposure, depth of field, and the diffraction limit, plus how to choose F/# for ...

Active Alignment for Camera Modules

Active alignment positions a lens to the image sensor in six degrees of freedom while measuring MTF live, then locks it with UV-cure adhe...

Lens Mount Guide: M12 vs C-Mount vs CS-Mount

Compare specs, adapters, sensor coverage. Engineering guide for machine vision. M12 lens (S-Mount) mount: M12×0.5mm thread. CS-mount: 12....

CMOS Sensor Size Chart and Format Guide

The sensor format size and pixel size of digital camera impacts many performance attributes of camera. The format type of a digital camer...

Chief Ray Angle (CRA) and Sensor Mismatch

The chief ray angle (CRA) of a lens and the chief ray of a sensor affect image quality factors such as color shading and vignetting.

What Is an M12 Lens? (S-Mount Lenses)

An M12 Lens / S-Mount lens is a miniature lens with 12mm diameter threads. Despite the small size, these lenses can outperform DSLR camer...

How to Clean a Camera Lens

Ever wondered about the best practices to clean a lens or image sensor? Our optical engineering experts have put together this article to...

What Is Image Noise?

High Dynamic Range (HDR) in Cameras

Motion Blur in Machine Vision

Camera Exposure Explained

Image Quality Metrics for Computer Vision

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 ...

Wide Angle vs Fisheye Lenses and Distortion

Optical distortion is a third order transverse aberration. The simple explanation is that distortion is the change in magnification (angu...

What Is Resolution? Cameras and Displays

Even the experts interchangeably use the term "Resolution" when it actually refers to four different technical metrics. We ran across thi...

How to Focus a Camera (M12 and C-Mount Lenses)

If you've recently purchased one our M12 lenses or C-Mount lenses, the first step is to assemble your camera. We also offer camera module...

M12 Lenses for the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera

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 c...

Nikon D750 vs iPhone 11 Pro Camera Benchmark

Shutter Speed: HDR and Low Light

Shutter speed (or pixel integration timing) is a critical factor when defining the required low-light capabilities of a sensor/lens combi...