Charge-Coupled Device (CCD)

High resolution lenses for machine vision — standard and custom lens design

Charge-Coupled Device (CCD)

High Resolution Lenses for machine vision, instrumentation, inspection and vibration-sensitive applications. Standard and custom hi-res lens assemblies.

Charge-coupled devices can be found in anything from a digital camera to the Hubble space telescope. Lens manufacturer Universe Kogaku makes some of the best lenses for CCD assemblies for things such as video conferencing, surveillance, medical systems and machine vision. But what exactly are CCD’s and how do they work?

CCD stands for charge-coupled device. These devices control the electrical charge within the device and direct it to an area where it can be manipulated. We most commonly see this when we need to convert imaging into a digital form. These CCD’s are able to shift the signals between stages in the device one at a time allowing the charge to be transferred wherever it may need. These devices allow for light detection in order to transfer an electrical charge that is converted into voltages. These voltages are sampled, digitized, and stored into a memory like a hard drive or SD card for future use. This process happens each time you snap a photo with your digital camera or record a video on your digital camcorder.

CCD’s contains grids of pixels that are used in digital cameras, digital camcorders, and optical scanners. With CCD’s these light sensing devices commonly respond to 70% of incident light. This makes digital imaging far superior to photographic film which only allows about 2% of the incident light.

The most common CCD’s give us the ability to see near infrared light. These CCD’s are much more sensitive than the ones we see in digital cameras. These ultra-sensitive CCD’s give us the possibility of infrared photography and night-vision.

CCD’s give the Hubble Telescope, one of the largest and most versatile telescoped in the world the ability to convert raw data into awe-inspiring images of our galaxy. These devices also give us amazing video and photographic detail. These devices are found in most professional camera and video cameras and are very popular for things such as video conferencing and surveillance.