Posted by
Zdenek Svindrych-2 on
Jan 22, 2019; 6:25pm
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/CMOS-inquiry-for-camera-gurus-tp7589055p7589076.html
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Hi Joshua,
to your question 2: there seems to be a number of decent cooled cameras
(e.g. with the mentioned IMX174 sensor) for amateur astronomy, but they all
seem to lack any synchronization (trigger, fire, etc). On the other hand,
machine vision cameras do usually come with flexible synchronization
options (Pt Gray / FLIR, for example), but no cooling.
I just came across an old SPOT RT3 camera (formerly made by Diagnostic
Instruments), that appears to have both cooling and synchronization, but it
uses an old interline CCD with 16 e- read noise. But you may want to look
into their newer products (spotimaging) whether anything matches your
criteria (price, sensitivity, noise, cooling, software compatibility, etc).
No commercial interest.
Best, zdenek
On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 2:36 AM Joshua Vaughan <
[hidden email]> wrote:
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>
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> *****
>
> Dear camera gurus,
>
> our Andor Zyla 5.5 sCMOS camera shows condensation on the chip when we
> cool it. Andor told us this might be caused by a backfill issue and it
> costs ~$1,000 to take a look, possible 4-6weeks turnaround and probably
> more money to fix the problem. I have a couple questions and I am also
> looking for a little advice.
>
> 1. I remember hearing a little bit about cameras holding vacuum, but not
> about this backfill problem. Anyway, what is backfill and how does it go
> wrong? Is it some kind of an inert, dry gas around the sensor that may now
> have some moist air in it? How is it possible to get a backfill problem
> without the seal on the vacuum also breaking? Interestingly, I believe I
> saw online that the (pre-2016) Andor warranty is 5years on the vacuum and
> 3years on the backfill.
>
> 2. If we have to spend ~$1k to have Andor take a look and then, assuming
> it is repairable pay more money (not sure how much, but I'd guess at least
> $1-2k), I wonder whether we might be better off just getting something new.
> Most recently, we had been using the Zyla on a spinning disc, though it
> might have been overkill there. Does anybody have suggestions for an
> alternative, such as a good and affordable CMOS camera? We're looking for
> something with >1MP, >50Hz, QE>65%, some cooling to help keep the read
> noise low, a fire signal for synchronization, and compatibility with
> Micromanager.
>
> Related to 2, here is a little info on the sort of thing we are interested
> in. We recently purchased a ZWO CMOS camera for ~ $900 and it has been very
> nice on our benchtop LED/epi scope (ZWO ASI 174 Cooled). It gives
> surprisingly good performance for the price. The specs state 2.4MP, 5.9um
> pixels, cooled to 40C below ambient, peak QE of 79%, up to 128FPS, works
> fine with Micromanager, but *lacks* a fire signal and we think only has a
> buffer of one frame. So it is very close to what we want, but we need
> really need a fire signal for synchronization on our spinning disc and we
> think a bigger buffer would probably also be important.
>
>
>
https://optcorp.com/products/zwo-asi-174-cooled-monochrome-cmos-telescope-camera>
> Thanks!
>
>
> Best regards,
> Josh
>
> --
> Joshua C. Vaughan
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Chemistry
> Box 351700
> University of Washington
> Seattle, WA 98195
> 206-543-4644
>
--
--
Zdenek Svindrych, Ph.D.
Research Associate - Imaging Specialist
Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth