Camera Hardware

This page summarizes digital camera hardware suitable for general-purpose vision research. That is, cameras which deliver image quality good enough for most vision problems, in a cost-effective way.

Where to buy

Places to buy camera and framegrabber equipment can be found on our main computer hardware page. See also the digicampage.

Top-rated or otherwise interesting digital cameras

Digital cameras contain everything you need in one package, converting the lens input to digital output. They interface directly to the PC.

Handheld digital cameras emulate 35mm cameras including, in many cases, automatic control of shutter and flash using a light meter. They are most suitable for high-quality still images. They are battery powered and can be used away from the computer, storing images on internal memory. They are connected to the PC (typically via the serial port) to download images.

• Olympus D-500L and D-600L: Great FAQ, official 500L page, official 600L page. These seem to be the top-rate still cameras. They are apparently very similar, differing in price ($900 vs. $1300) and resolution (1024x768 vs 1280x1024). Both are SLR and threaded for 43mm filters.
• Epson PhotoPC line: The other line that gets consistently high ratings, typically having fewer features than the Olympus line but also a lower pricetag. official Epson page.
• Sony DSC-F1: Sony's page, has interesting options for taking multiple images. Has a wide-angle/telephoto adaptor kit.

Digital cameras optimized for motion capture deliver lower-resolution (and often lower-quality) images at a faster frame rate. Pictures are taken with the camera connected to the computer, and images are transferred immediately to the computer's disk.

• Connectix QuickCam: ok (but not good) pictures, fast frame rate, cheap, has linux driver.

Nice on-line summaries of digital cameras:

• digicampage
• dcresource

Digital camera drivers

Digital cameras are released with DOS and/or Mac drivers. Development of Linux drivers has lagged behind, largely because the manufacturers haven't realized that they stand to gain, not lose, from releasing the interface specs or a linux driver.

Linux drivers exist for two types of cameras:

• Connectix cameras. See Russell Nelson's page. and the Connectix developer page.
• A group of other cameras including Epson and Olympus. See the Project O page. and driver code

Framegrabbers

Framegrabbers work in conjunction with a source of NTSC video, e.g. a video camera (small ones are now sold cheaply for teleconferencing) or a TV. They convert the video output (NTSC in the US, PAL in most other countries) to digital format, and interface to the computer.

Notable framegrabbers:

• The Snappy is a tiny $100 high-resolution framegrabber for PC (parallel port). Up to 1500x1125 resolution. Produced by Play Incorporated.
• Matrox Meteor boards. Notable for having linux drivers.

Framegrabber drivers

Ftp addresses for drivers for the following video capture cards can be found on the Linux Hardware HOWTO:

• FAST Screen Machine II
• ImageNation Cortex I
• ImageNation CX100
• Pro Movie Studio
• Quanta WinVision video capture card
• Video Blaster
• Rombo Media Pro+
• VT1500 TV cards.

Jim Bray's driver for the matrox meteor can be found at [meteor driver ftp] along with its documentation. This is a fast framegrabber for PCI-bus machines. For the users mailing list, send mail containing the single line "subscribe meteor-users" to majordomo@rwii.com.

Cornell runs a mailing list LINUXVIS-L, for discussing linux support for camera and framegrabbing equipment. Its primary focus is motion capture and, thus, fast-capture framegrabber boards. To subscribe, send mail to listproc@cornell.edu containing this single line of text:

     SUBSCRIBE LINUXVIS-L your-email-address

For help send a message containing the single line

     HELP

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