How the camera “ sees” the Image

A presentation on …
A typical analog camcorder contains two basic parts:

•A camera section, consisting of a CCD, lens and motors to

handle the zoom, focus and aperture .

•A VCR section, in which a typical TV VCR is shrunk down to

fit in a much smaller space.

The camera component's function is to receive visual information and

interpret it as an electronic video signal. The VCR component is
exactly like the VCR connected to your television. It receives an
electronic video signal and records it on video tape as magnetic
patterns.

These two sections are easily seen in the following photos:

                                                                                                                                        

                   

Camcorder with the

outer shell removed
The camcorder's VCR unit
The camcorder's camera unit
The camcorder's Charge
Coupled Device (CCD)
The CCD

Like a film camera, a camcorder "sees" the world through lens.

In a film camera, the lens serves to focus the light from a scene
onto film treated with chemicals that have a controlled reaction
to light. In this way, camera film records the scene in front of
it: It picks up greater amounts of light from brighter parts of
the scene, and lower amounts of light from darker parts of the
scene. The lens in a camcorder also serves to focus light, but
instead of focusing it onto film, it shines the light onto a small
semiconductor image sensor. This sensor, a charge-coupled
device (CCD), measures light with a half-inch (about 1 cm)
panel of 300,000 to 500,000 tiny light-sensitive diodes called
photo sites.
Each photo site measures the amount of light (photons) that
hits a particular point, and translates this information into
electrons (electrical charges): A brighter image is represented
by a higher electrical charge, and a darker image is
represented by a lower electrical charge. Just as an artist
sketches a scene by contrasting dark areas with light areas, a
CCD creates a video picture by recording light intensity.
During playback, this information directs the intensity of a
television's electron beam as it passes over the screen.
Of course, measuring light intensity only gives us a
black-and-white image. To create a color image, a
camcorder has to detect not only the total light levels,
but also the levels of each color of light. Since you
can produce the full spectrum of colors by combining
the three colors red, green and blue, a camcorder
actually only needs to measure the levels of these
three colors to be able to reproduce a full-color
picture.
In some high-end camcorders, a beam splitter separates a signal into
three different versions of the same image -- one showing the level of red
light, one showing the level of green light and one showing the level of
blue light. Each of these images is captured by its own chip -- the chips
operate as described above, but each measures the intensity of only one
color of light. The camera then overlays these three images and the
intensities of the different primary colors blend to produce a full-color
image. A camcorder that uses this method is often referred to as a three-
chip camcorder.
Original Image

How an image is split through a beam splitter

This simple method produces a rich, high-resolution picture.
CCDs are expensive and eat lots of power, however, so using
three of them adds considerably to the manufacturing costs of a
camcorder. Most camcorders get by with only one CCD by
fitting permanent color filters to individual photosites. A certain
percentage of photosites measures only levels of red light,
another percentage measures only green light and the rest of the
photosites measure only blue light. The color designations are
spread out in a sort of grid (the Bayer filter is a common
configuration), so that the video camera computer can get a
sense of the color levels in all parts of the screen. This method
requires the computer to interpolate the true color of light
arriving at each photosite by analyzing the information received
by the other photosites in the vicinity.
A more economical and practical way to record the primary colors
is to permanently place a filter called a color filter array over
each individual photosite. By breaking up the sensor into a variety
of red, blue and green pixels, it is possible to get enough
information in the general vicinity of each sensor to make very
accurate guesses about the true color at that location. This process
of looking at the other pixels in the neighborhood of a sensor and
making an educated guess is called interpolation.
• The most common pattern of
filters is the Bayer filter pattern.
This pattern alternates a row of red
and green filters with a row of
blue and green filters. The pixels
are not evenly divided -- there are
as many green pixels as there are
blue and red combined. This is
because the human eye is not
equally sensitive to all three
colors. It's necessary to include
more information from the green
pixels in order to create an image
that the eye will perceive as a
"true color."
The advantages of this method are that only one sensor is
required, and all the color information (red, green and blue) is
recorded at the same moment. That means the camera can be
smaller, cheaper, and useful in a wider variety of situations. The
raw output from a sensor with a Bayer filter is a mosaic of red,
green and blue pixels of different intensity.
As camcorders produce moving images, their CCDs have some additional
pieces that aren’t found in digital camera CCDs. To create a video signal, a
camcorder CCD must take many pictures every second, which the camera then
combines to give the impression of movement.

As we know a television "paints" images in horizontal lines across a screen, starting

at the top and working downward. TVs actually paint every other line in one pass
(this is called a "field") and then paint the alternate lines in the next pass. To create a
video signal, a camcorder captures a frame of video from the CCD and records it as
the two fields. The CCD actually has another sensor layer behind the image sensor.
For every field of video, the CCD transfers all the photosite charges to this second
layer, which then transmits the electric charges at each photosite, one by one. In an
analog camcorder, this signal goes to the VCR, which records the electric charges
(along with color information) as a magnetic pattern on videotape. While the second
layer is transmitting the video signal, the first layer has refreshed itself and is
capturing another image.
A digital camcorder works in basically the same way, except that at this
last stage an analog-to-digital converter samples the analog signal and
turns the information into bytes of data (1s and 0s). The camcorder records
these bytes on a storage medium, which could be, among other things, a
tape, a hard disk or a DVD. Most of the digital camcorders in the market
today actually use tapes (because they are less expensive), so they have a
VCR component much like an analog camcorder's VCR. Instead of
recording analog magnetic patterns, however, the tape head records binary
code. Interlaced digital camcorders record each frame as two fields, just
as analog camcorders do. Progressive digital camcorders record video as
an entire still frame, which they then break up into two fields when you
output the video as an analog signal.
SCANNING
SCANNING
The act of systematically moving a finely focused beam of light or electrons over a
surface in order to produce an image of it for analysis or transmission.
The process of translating photographs into a digital form that can be recognized by a
computer .
Pictures displayed on television screens sold today, are made up of a series of
horizontal lines. These lines are comprised of tiny dots, called pixels. The number of
these lines and dots determine the "resolution" of the picture we see. The higher the
resolution, the sharper the picture.
Television pictures are thus created by a sequence of lines of resolution scanned
and displayed in one of two different ways. One is called progressive scanning and
the other is interlaced scanning.
Progressive scanning creates an image by scanning horizontal lines made up of tiny
dots. These lines are scanned starting with the first line then the second, third, fourth,
fifth, and so on until the entire frame is scanned. Thirty of these frames are scanned in
one second. These frames, like the frames of a motion picture, when played back one
after the other create the look of motion. Whereas in Interlaced scanning the display
alternates between drawing the even-numbered lines and the odd-numbered lines of
each frame. It is a method of storing or transmitting video in which the odd and even
fields are separated.

Look at how scanning is done through these slides

INTERLACED SCANNING
It is a scanning technique in which all odd-numbered scanning lines are first traced
in succession, followed by the tracing of the even-numbered scanning lines in
succession, each of which is traced between a pair of odd-numbered scanning lines. The
pattern created by tracing the odd-numbered scanning lines is called the odd field, and
the pattern created by tracing the even-numbered scanning lines is called the even field.
Each field contains half the information content, i.e., pixels, of the complete video
frame. Because of persistence of vision pairs of fields are perceived at the same time,
giving the appearance of a full frame
Our current analog interlaced picture is achieved by scanning 525 horizontal lines. The
total number of lines scanned to produce an image is the resolution of the system, i.e.
525i meaning, 525 lines scanned using the interlaced method. A single frame of an
interlaced picture is made up by scanning the 525 lines, but not at the same time. First,
the 262.5 odd numbered lines are scanned.. Then the 262.5 even numbered lines are
scanned.
An advantage of interlaced scanning is that Image flicker is less apparent in an
interlaced display than in a noninterlaced display, because the rate at which successive
fields occur in an interlaced display is twice that at which successive frames would
occur in a noninterlaced display containing the same number of scanning lines and
having the same frame refresh rate.
Scanning one frame of Video

Click for scanning animation

In an interlaced system, lines are drawn at a very slight diagonal slope such that the right
end of each line is two lines lower than the left end. The offset between the two fields is
then produced by having both an odd number of overall lines and vertical flyback
between the odd and even fields occur halfway through one line. For example, in PAL,
the blanking period starts after 292.5 lines of the odd field have been transmitted, and
lasts for 20 lines. When scanning begins again at the top of the screen, the scanning
beam is still halfway across the picture. Because of the slant, the centre top of the picture
is one line above the line begun at the top left corner.

Interlacing is used by all the analogue TV broadcast systems in current use:

PAL: 50 fields per second, 625 lines, even field drawn first

SECAM: 50 fields per second, 625 lines

NTSC: 59.94 fields per second, 525 lines, even field drawn first