CAM0015 is a powerful WDR and 3D DNR ultra high-resolution 600 TVL dome shaped camera.

• Utilises the WDXV7 DSP.
• Delivers a powerful wide dynamic range (WDR) for images that incorporate low and high illumination areas.
• Features an anti-ghosting digital noise reduction (DNR), which removes a snowing effect in the lowest illumination situations, without creating a ghosting effect on a moving object.
• Digital image stabilisation (DIS) mechanism, for use in outdoor situations to combat shaking by external influences such as vibration or wind.
• Eclipse mode to block un-necessary light, useful when attempting to obtain a vehicle's number plate at night.

What is WDR?

WDR stands for Wide Dynamic Range and is a function often contained in high end, high value cameras. Understanding WDR is actually quite simple. The camera concentrates on two areas: 1) high illumination and 2) low illumination. Often you're scene can contain both. CAM0015 scans the scene twice and separates off the high illumination areas from the low illumination areas. Once scanned the iris is adjusted toning down the high illumination area and bringing up the low illumination to remove shadows. The two scans are brought together as one image, thus neutralising the effect of under and over exposure, giving a more accurate representation of what a human eye would see.

The image depicted on the far left shows a camera with the WDR function set to on and clearly demonstrates the capabilities described above. The sky outside the building can clearly be seen as blue and is not over exposed, the spacial area inside the building can also clearly be seen with a limited shadowing effect and is clearly not under exposed as in the image depicted near left.

What is 3D DNR?

3D DNR stands for 3 dimensional Digital Noise Reduction and is the latest technical advance dealing with a night scene where there is little or no illumination available and where an image contains motion. Explaining how it works is a little more difficult and for this we need to separate the word 3D from the word DNR.

We will begin by explaining DNR. Noise on a picture usually occurs when the camera iris is working at it's extreme in very difficult, low illumination scenes. For example, where the only light available is from star light. You will see noise in a camera that does not have the DNR function available, or set to off, as a snowing effect or coloured specs/dots super-imposing themselves over the scene. Setting the DNR function to on removes the noise at night, allowing a scene containing little or no motion to be viewed normally.

Now turning our attention to the word 3D. 3D works alongside DNR and is more complex to understand. Simply put, a camera works in three dimensions or three time-zones: Past, almost present and present. 1) An image is taken of the scene, this is called the reference image and contains no noise. 2) Further dimensional images are taken, building motion contained in the image. 3) The present is recorded , including motion. The three are knitted together and presented as the image you see. The effect of this is that noise is reduced or eliminated and motion is built and referenced in the last two dimensions to prevent, reduce and eliminate the effect of ghosting. This process takes milliseconds.

The image depicted far left shows a camera with 3D DNR function set to on and clearly demonstrates the capabilities described above. In this picture the car is reversing, there is no noise and the 3D capability has eliminated the ghosting making the number plate clearly visible. The image depicted near left shows a camera with older DNR technology. There is no noise around areas of the image without motion, however without the 3D capability the motion areas cannot be handled, resulting in a ghosting effect.

What is Eclipse Mode?

Eclipse mode is a function specific to the Camera 0015 and enables the camera to tone down the effect of light bursting specifically relating to the hallogen headlights of a motor vehicle. As a vehicle with dip or full beam headlights approaches a standard camera without this function the headlights of the vehicle will obscure the number plate from view due to the iris being unable to adapt to the over-exposure. A flare or bursting of light emitting from the centre outwards prevents the camera from having clear visibility of the number plate usually positioned beneath centre or to one side of the vehicle.

Applying or switching on eclipse mode allows the camera to actively and specifically work on the bursting effect whilst not eliminating it entirely reducing the effect whereby the number plate of the vehicle is clearly visible.

The image depicted far left shows a camera with the clipse function set to on clearly demonstrates the capabilities described above. The image near left depicts a camera without the eclipse mode function and demonstrates how light bursting would effect the visibility of a number plate.