THERE are a number of manufacturers of quality megapixel cameras in the market – one or two spring immediately to mind – and it appears there will soon be another – Lumenera, which will be distributed locally by surveillance specialist, C.R. Kennedy.
Just to whet the appetite, the Le11059 we’re discussing here hustles a resolution of 11MP and employs an image stabilised 35mm lens. These powerful cameras are designed for serious applications with extreme resolutions. There’s a price to pay for such resolution and the Le11059 captures a resolution of 4000 x 2656 pixels at 3 fps or you can shake out 8.5 fps at a resolution of 4000 x 640 pixels. Handling optics is an SLR Canon EF Bayonet-Mount giving you the flexibility to use high end lenses.
Supporting the awesome resolution of this camera’s 10.6MP (43.3mm diagonal) progressive scan CCD sensor are remote focus control as well as auto iris and remote iris control over IP (via HTTP, XML-RPC, Telnet or Microsoft COM) if you go with a Canon lens. Lumenera cameras use latest generation image sensors providing higher signal to noise and 10-bit image processing (30-bit color) in producing better facial and object detail as a result of high dynamic range—up to 120dB depending on the model.
Meanwhile, camera functions include auto white balance and auto exposure, day/night settings and a configurable compression ratio. Lighting conditions present one of the greatest challenges in capturing quality images. Lumenera cameras include advanced on board image processing to address this. Advanced algorithms for auto exposure control (AEC), auto white balance (AWB), auto gain (AGC), and DC iris control provide intelligent self-sufficient operation over wide varying lighting conditions.
Lumenera offers NiteBrite for enhanced low light performance and a true day/night option. A mechanical sliding window provides an IR-cut filter for accurate color rendition in daylight conditions — while a non-coated optical filter enhances night time performance, especially when combined with NIR illuminators. As an added benefit, all Lumenera camera sensors are uniquely sensitive to NIR lighting, with many models offering monochrome variants for X2 sensitivity versus the equivalent color sensor.
There’s also I/O control of alarms, strobe, PTZ, lighting or other peripherals, with image transfer via HTTP, FTP, RTP, or Email, security/password protection, a dynamic range greater than 60dB, and sensitivity of 0.1 lux at F1.0. There’s also an operating temperature between -10 and 50C, compact dimensions of approximate 8 x 7 x 20cm and a weight of 1kg. Power draw is 12V DC at 15 Watts and interface is RJ45 Cat 5e twisted pair cable giving compression-adjustable JPEG and MJPEG compressed still-images or streaming video over 10/100BaseT Ethernet.
Lumenera has simplified IP camera installation with a straightforward plug-and-play process and there’s an intuitive user interface viewed with most web browsers that provides standard camera control. Features include e-mail or UDP alarm notification, on-board memory buffers supply still images that precede and follow alarm events, while programmable privacy zones ensure compatibility with all regulations, optional, programmable day/night settings that automatically switch to enhanced low-light mode.
Lumenera partnered with ObjectVideo to install its powerful video analytics technology onto a DSP within each Lumenera camera. The company is now the World’s first ObjectVideo-ready camera integration partner. When it comes to managing smarts, set-up and rule creation is user-friendly and easy via the intuitive software interface. New capabilities and features can be added to the cameras with software updates as they become available—providing for a future-proof system.
Standard analytics features include adjustable motion detection, privacy zones, alarms, strobe synchronization, among others. Reliable internal self healing processes. On-board image buffer memory provides up to 1,000 pre-event images. DC iris and RS-232 port for control of peripheral PTZ systems are also standard.
There’s also image cropping to minimize bandwidth and storage requirements with software selectable region of interest. Aspect ratios of 4:3 are standard, but can be modified to 16:9, 1:1 or any desired combination of video height and width. The new camera from Lumenera is a strong addition to a quality lineup and it gives integrators and security managers a powerful solution for applications requiring large fields of view and serious depths of field.
