EngNet » Product & Service News » Universal Image Intensifier Improves Low Light Performance of High Speed Camera / Video Systems

Universal Image Intensifier Improves Low Light Performance of High Speed Camera / Video Systems

Product News Monday, March 31, 2014: EngNet - Engineering Network

Specialised Imaging has introduced a new high speed relay lens to enable easy interfacing of its SIL2 range of image intensifiers to almost any high speed camera or video system.

The SIL2 family of gated image intensifier systems has been proven to improve the sensitivity, gating time, and spectral response of both high-speed video cameras and ultra high speed framing cameras. Used in low-light conditions to detect, capture and increase the intensity of ambient light, image intensifiers work by gathering weak emissions or reflected light from natural or from artificial sources and amplifying it to a level that can be seen with by digital image sensors.

Based upon high-gain microchannel plate intensifiers, these units provide a wide range of sensitivity, gain, and resolution options to satisfy even the most demanding low-light imaging applications. SIL2 intensifiers can be fitted with different types of photocathodes and input windows, which enables them to capture events that emit radiation at the shorter wavelengths of the UV region right through to the near-infrared. Triggered synchronously at high speed, the image intensifiers allow the fast framing rates and short exposure times necessary to investigate rapidly evolving, low-light processes, such as those that occur in automotive combustion research, high-voltage breakdown studies, and flow visualization, as well as fluorescence and chemiluminescence recording of biological events.

The SIL2 is offered with a comprehensive collection of operating parameters programmable via the intuitive local keypad or from a remote PC through an Ethernet link, which also allows archiving and loading of timing set-ups. With electronics refined to accommodate a range of camera and gating inputs, the SIL2 can shorten effective frame exposure times and arrest high-speed motion blurring effects.