Best in class OEM machine vision lenses, low cost, high performance with an easy to use lens selector

1st Vision‘s factory automation OEM machine vision lenses are designed using glass from one of the top Japanese lens manufacturers. These lenses are not branded and allow our clients to have excellent performance at a better price than the ‘named’ brand manufacturers, getting the most bang for your buck!

In comparing specifications, our OEM lenses have better resolution in many cases over brand name lenses, but at ~ 30% less cost in some cases.

1st Vision lens comparison — Conventional lens (left) vs 1stVision OEM lens (right)

In resolution chart comparisons, the 1st Vision OEM lens on the right outperforms the leading lens in its class. All lenses have locking screws for focus and iris. High temperature options are available providing ranges from – 30 C to +70 C.

Details specifications and pricing can be found HERE

Its now easier than every to find a desired lens it the new 1st Vision lens selector. Sort by focal length, optical format and lens quality to name a few sort attributes. Try it now HERE!

Need help in your lens selection? Our sales engineers all have over 20 years of vision experience and can help you identify the best lens for your application.

If you like our lens selector, check out the new camera selector! Watch our short video highlighting helpful new features and selectors on our website

We also have several blog posts providing additional education on lens selection including handy focal length calculators. Click on the resources below.

Resources:
Calculating Lens Focal Length
Video: Using the 1st Vision Lens calculator
Demystifying lens performance – MTF
Calculating your resolution for machine vision applications

November 1, 2017September 4, 2019

Dalsa line scan polarization camera makes invisible visible!

Teledyne Dalsa has released the first line scan polarization camera for machine vision. The Piranha4 polarization camera provides the capability of detecting , stress, surface roughness, birefringence and physical properties undetectable with conventional imaging making the invisible visible!

This unique technique uses four polarization channels with a color line scan camera solving various applications, but not limited to the following:

Glass Inspection: Glass bottles, architectural glass sheets, and automobile windshields, etc. – Enables inspection of internal stress and defects non-visible with conventional imaging

Film inspection: transparent films, packaging films, and patterned films etc. – Detect scratches, digs, and other surface defects that are difficult to detect with conventional imaging

Precision optics: optical lens, prisms, fibers, and micro-optical – Detect residual internal stress and thermal annealing effects

Flat Panel Display and PCB inspection: Thin film transistors, organic LEDs, printed circuit boards etc.- inspect ITO, dust particles, films thickness, and surface defects with enhanced contrast

Carbon fibers: effectively inspect the quality of composite materials that are widely used in aircraft, aerospace, wind energy, and automotive industry

Food and material sorting: Increase sorting accuracy and detecting capability of foreign materials such as plastics, glasses, metals etc. with polarization imaging

Bio-medicine: digital pathology, in vitro cells culture, optical coherence tomography etc.- Provides additional information in birefringence tissues
Remote sensing: helps identifying special objects from natural background
And many more…

Line scan polarization camera Features

CMOS Quadlinear sensor – 2048 pixels
High speed line rate of 70k hz with 14.08 um pixels
Camera Link interface
Three polarization states plus and unfiltered channel (Output format with 0 deg (S component), 90 deg (P component), 135 deg and unfiltered polarization states.)

Full specifications on the Teledyne Dalsa polarization camera ( P4-CP-02K07Q-00-R ) can be found HERE

White Paper – Learn about this unique polarization technique with line scan cameras! This white paper covers the following topics

How polarization techniques work in transmission and reflectance configuration
Comparison of three polarization filter technologies
How the sensor architecture is configured for polarization effects and visualization of defects.

1stVision has a strong working knowledge of polarization techniques, line scan cameras and lighting and can discuss your application in detail.

Video Tutorial: How to setup HDR Imaging in Teledyne Dalsa Linea Line scan cameras

November 1, 2017April 15, 2019

Beware of EMVA 1288 data!

Many camera manufacturers are now putting up EMVA 1288 data. This is test suite created by the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) that give you the characteristics and performance of cameras, e.g. S/N ratio, noise, etc. , and there are specifications on how to run the tests.

Please note that there is a significant amount of variance allowed within the tests. Each manufacturer has their own test setup, so comparing sensors or product lines from a specific manufacturer is very appropriate.

Comparing results between different manufacturers, especially looking at small details is NOT appropriate. For instance, if Manufacturer A’s test has a 5% variance on what Manufacturer B’s test is on the same sensor, but the difference between the two manufacturers is 5%, there is no valid conclusion! The result is within the variance. Do NOT get sucked into this comparison war.

The EMVA test produces a 30 page report for each specific camera test, testing is across multiple wavelengths, etc. Results that are given in tabular format with one number for each camera are not really a good picture of the test results to compare across manufacturers.

If you want further details, please contact 1stVision. We have conducted many comparison tests and can provide practical advice and discuss it in context of your application.

November 1, 2017October 6, 2021

Teledyne Dalsa TurboDrive 2.0 breaks past GigE limits now with 6 levels of compression

Teledyne Dalsa introduces TurboDrive 2.0 for their Genie Nanos

With the introduction of the Genie Nano came Turbodrive which allowed ‘faster GigE than GigE’ speeds. Turbodrive is a lossless hardware encoding scheme that potentially reduces the amount of data to be transmitted from the camera to the computer. Dalsa’s Nanos, which are priced identical to the competition, offers the users the ability to go faster at no extra cost. Note that the user can turn on or off the encoding.

However, the encoding scheme is data content dependent, and therefore if your data varies a lot within an image the compression is minimal. If your data varies a lot from image to image, then using the encoding means that only certain frames will get a speedup resulting in an inconsistent data transfer rate.

Teledyne Dalsa has just recently introduced TurboDrive 2.0, a firmware upgrade for all Nanos. The major enhancement is that now TurboDrive offers multiple levels of encoding. Level 0 is lossless, and each successive level has some potential lossy amount.

The table below indicates quality level, image compression ratio (absolute worst case scenario) and effective bandwidth gain

As you can see, at level 6, you have a worst case compression of 0.33, yet a speed up of 3. Note, this is a worst case situation so you might get a speed up of 3x, yet be at 0.8. The algorithm is data dependent! (more about this in the tech primer)

Depending on the application, various compression levels provide minimal degradation. The following images are shown for comparisons using the varying quality levels.

As you can see, even at level 4, there is very little degradation in the image. It is easy to imagine that with this image, you can still do your image processing yet get a speed up of 68%!

Level 0 “Lossless” to Level 6 indicate the quality level in the images.

Dalsa Nano Turbodrive quality level comparisons — Quality level comparisons

Learn more by clicking the icon below for the comprehensive application note!

Teledyne Dalsa Turbodrive application note — To learn more about Teledyne Dalsa TurboDrive 2.0, please download the application note for full details.

1stVision has a ton of resources to learn about TurboDrive technology in general. Please visit our dedicated Teledyne Dalsa Turbo Drive resource page HERE

1stVision Inc. – Machine Vision Articles

Posts

Best in class OEM machine vision lenses, low cost, high performance with an easy to use lens selector

Details specifications and pricing can be found HERE

Dalsa line scan polarization camera makes invisible visible!

Beware of EMVA 1288 data!

Teledyne Dalsa TurboDrive 2.0 breaks past GigE limits now with 6 levels of compression

Related Blog posts:

Teledyne Dalsa Nano XL-M4090 cameras – 16MP cameras are now faster, cheaper and smaller!

Teledyne Dalsa Nano XL-M5100 cameras providing 25MP resolution for < $6K!