I was given the task of creating various solutions for capturing panoramic images. One was to be an off-the-shelf solution for development, others were custom camera systems and optics for a very low cost solution. The development system, a rapid prototype, required Camera-Link capture cards and a very fast PC. It was bulky. The final version had to operate with only a laptop for capture.
Unfortunately,
the off-the shelf cameras were not only expensive, but they had some
interesting problems that showed up in the form of unexpected noise.
Left:
color balance of the cameras here are excellent. The only thing I am not
too happy about here is...the background had a lot of unexplained
'mosaic' noise when zoomed in. It made it very hard to scale without
artifacts.
When I tackled the cost-reduced version of the above (trimmed it from $12,000.00 to $1,920.00), I was able to get a very tight physical integration.
With
my mathematics guru, programmer, and good friend Jim Peterson, we
got some real nice images. Jim made the case, and remarked that this
was going to be the first camera case in the world with 8-layer boards!
Our images, below...
and a closeup of a white-to-wall transition....
