Real scene lighting for visual analysis

A device to reproduce a natural scene under constant and defined lighting conditions

Test charts are used to test digital cameras or cell phones and to perform objective measurements. But there are certain aspects in testing a camera that require a real scene. One of these aspects is the correct white balancing for different types of illuminants. Another aspect might be the determination of the visual loss of detail due to noise reduction or the amount of noise in an image.

You can do tests with real scenes for yourself, but how to make these tests comparable over time? Or between different work groups when they are located in different parts of the world?

Image Engineering has developed the lightSTUDIO to make this type of visual analysis possible. It provides the standard types of illumination and is large enough to illuminate a whole table top scene. It allows remote control and the dimming of the lights from a PC using a USB interface.

In order to get a worldwide comparison between labs the lightSTUDIO comes with the entire interior shown on the picture above. Each object was carefully chosen based on our experience in camera testing and can provide you interesting information about your camera system.

The lightSTUDIO with its interior objects and the switchable light sources has developed to one of our top selling products for image quality analysis. It is well on the way to becoming the industry standard for a camera test scene that can be illuminated with different light sources at adjustable light levels.

Standard lightHEAD

The Standard lightHEAD, first and continously demanded lightHEAD option, offers six different light sources: four different fluorescent lightsources (D50, D65, F11, F12) and two halogen based ones (halogen, halogen with blue filter). Each light source can be dimmed between 1 and 100% intensity. For each light source an intensity preset can be stored. These options cover the main standard tpes of illumination.

The lightHEAD can be directly controlled by using the panel at the device itself or by using a software solution.

LED lightHEAD

The Standard lightHEAD can be exchanged for an LED based one that uses 20 narrow band LED channels and 2 white LED channels. It is spectrally programmable to match almost every standard light source. The LEDs are combined to units of 80 LEDs on a 10 x 10 cm area. Ten of these are combined to form the larger light source. One set of fluorescent tubes is also added to get the spiky spectral characteristic for these sources.