Let's get to know the camera again

The popularity of broadband networks has made seemingly insignificant cameras the most popular digital product nowadays. As long as you visit the market, you will find that cameras with various brands and different appearances are flooding the market. For users who do not know much about cameras, it is not easy to find a camera with a proper price and excellent quality among the dazzling products. No matter how fancy and cute the camera looks, it is most important to understand the nature of the camera. A good camera product is not just about high performance parameters. We also need to pay attention to its packaging, technology, service and other aspects. These are all elements that reflect whether a brand is reliable. In addition, if we are lucky, we will have some product promotions or prices to save money.

What is the essence of a camera? The most important thing is the combination of the DSP chip and sensor of the camera and the lens. Let's get to know the camera head from "core!

DSP chip

From the perspective of the DSP chip, including the 301 P/301L, EM2800/2710, Sonics102P/120, and so on, among them, the most widely used are the 301P of xingwei and the EM2710 chip of henia.

SUNPLUS561: this chip is a 0.1 million-pixel hardware chip. It can still reach 0.3 million pixels after software interpolation. It is a single-chip product solution. Both sensors and DSPs are integrated into one chip, the cost-effectiveness is high, but the effect is not very good. Currently, many low-cost cameras on the market use this chip.

VIMICRO301L: it is a replacement product of 301P. It is optimized at a controlled cost. At present, this product is rarely seen on the market. The success and experience accumulated by xingwei in 301P Products, the performance of this chip should be quite good.

EM2800/2710: The EM2800 is a hardware 1.3 million pixel DSP of heria. EM2800 is mainly used as a video card acquisition chip, but some large camera manufacturers in China have made him a camera product, this product is about twice the speed of a common camera. EM2710 is mainly used as a camera product. Its product performance is equivalent to that of EM2800 in camera applications. These two chips support both high-speed USB interfaces, and the product performance and speed will be excellent, it is mainly used for high-end cameras. For example, Moxi electronic night e PC1300ID camera uses the EM2700 chip, in order to meet the excellent video effect, the transmission speed is also well guaranteed.

Sonics102P.

Sensor

We all know that sensors are divided into CCD and CMOS. Why do most cameras use CMOS instead of CCD sensors with better performance? The cost for cameras using CCD lenses is high, and CCD for Network Cameras cannot meet the cost-effectiveness requirements. In addition, advanced image control, including automatic gain reinforcement technology, automatic brightness, white balance control technology, color saturation, contrast, edge enhancement, and Gamma Correction, is adopted, the camera with CMOS as the photosensitive component is completely comparable to the CCD camera.

In terms of COMS sensors, the most widely used are the modern hy7da-e (discontinued)/HY7131R and Micron Micro360. In actual use, the effects of the two CMOS Sensors are not very different, and users do not have to deliberately pursue the recognition of CMOS Sensors.

Combination Scheme

 

DSP + CMOS combination of cameras

Common MI360 + 301P Solutions

There are many combinations of DSP + CMOS for mainstream cameras on the market. Mid-and low-end products on the market share the highest among the micro-VIMICRO301P of the Chinese star. The most common products are MI360 + 301 P, HYNIX7131R + VIMICRO301P, such as PC390ID of the mose night e series. EM2800/2710 is mainly used for higher-end products, such as PC1300ID of Mose night e series.

EM2710 supports 1.3 million pixels of hardware. With a CMOS sensor, EM2710 can reach a resolution of 1280x960. You can easily reach 35FPS at a VGA (640x480) Resolution, such a high frame rate can ensure smooth speed in both video recording and video chat, completely eliminating the sense of hops and making full use of the network transmission bandwidth, completely solves the image delay caused by hardware. EM2710 hardware supports USB and ensures smooth video transmission. Taking the CIF (352 × 288) and RGB24 image formats as examples, the data traffic per second is 13 Mb. After compression, it is about 10 Mb/second when the USB port is transferred to the computer, the maximum transmission rate of the USB interface is about 12 Mb/s, which is why some camera instructions indicate that the maximum video transmission frame number is 30, however, the reason for testing at a resolution of 640x480 is that there are only about 10 frames. The latest CMOS photosensitive chip, HYNIX7131R, has improved the traditional CMOS photosensitive chip to produce images that are not clear enough, and the colors are not real and bright. This makes the generated images and colors more colorful, more clear, so many applications on high-end products. For example, the EM2710 + HYNIX7131R combination scheme adopted by Mose night e PC1300ID not only takes into account the high quality needs of the EM2710 camera effect, but also solves the cost-effective problem of high configuration price, is a very mature solution.

Lens

 

Lens

The components that affect camera clarity also include lenses. Currently, the lenses used by different cameras are also varied. There are four layers of optical glass lenses and one layer of glass and one layer of plastic lenses, the worst is only a plastic lens. Therefore, we need to pay special attention to what kind of lens the product uses when purchasing a camera. However, it is very difficult for users to determine which camera is used in the splitting process. There is no direct method. In addition to the seller's introduction, you can find the cheapest camera for careful observation and comparison.

Generally, the longer the lens, the more lenses it uses, and the better the optical effect. Currently, better camera products all adopt five-layer full glass coated lenses, which can make the captured images more delicate and clear, and reduce the deformation of the images. 3cm ~ Infinite physical focus function, so that we can manually adjust the camera focal length and try to get the clearest image. In addition, through the improved design of the control circuit, the focus adjustment speed can be faster, the use of such a lens basically does not feel obvious beat. The cost difference between a five-layer full glass coating lens and other lenses is not very large, and the price is acceptable, and the image effect brought by it has a qualitative leap.

In addition to superior performance chips and lenses, the quality of components and the rational design of peripheral circuits are also closely related to the camera's imaging effect. As long as we understand the camera's components, choosing a good camera is much easier. Compared with mainstream cameras of more than yuan, high-end products such as Mose night e PC1300ID have more advantages in using these main components. Whether it is EM2710 + HYNIX7131R combination or five-layer full glass coated lens, including automatic gain reinforcement technology and other image control technology and infrared night vision functions, all should have. The price of PC1300ID is on the left and right of $190, which is acceptable for players.

Brand Strength

 

Branded cameras

Nowadays, the homogenization of camera products is very serious, and more is the demand difference from the product appearance and packaging. Therefore, it doesn't make much sense to blindly pursue a large brand. It makes no sense to distinguish the camera from high or low levels based on whether the camera looks good or not. The same DSP chip + CMOS sensor solution and the same lens have little difference in effect. For the sake of quality, the peripheral components such as capacitors and Resistors of famous brand products will be better and the repair rate will be low. In addition, for camera products with low profits, the after-sales service of the miscellaneous brand products is limited or even unavailable, obviously there is still a certain gap with the large factory. When the price is basically the same, we still need to consider selecting famous brand products. We do not want to figure 5 pieces of 10 pieces of cheap products and lose after-sales support.

After introducing the above camera knowledge, do you have a new understanding of the current camera products? We hope this will help you purchase camera products in the market.