What type of light will help when capturing in poor or low lighting conditions?
Incandescent quartz-tungsten-halogen lamps, or metal halide overshadowed with halogen, spread evenly across the line. Ordinary AC lighting puts dark bars on the image; PLC and LuxBoost are camera options that help.
Incandescent quartz-tungsten-halogen lamps, or metal halide overshadowed with halogen, give better light without creating "striations" or "bars" on the image. LED lighting is promising and may be the future for photo-finish lighting. Depending on the camera's speed, aim for 150 to 300 foot-candles spread evenly across the finish line.
Why the bars? Artificial light on an AC circuit cycles on and off 50 to 60 times a second. A camera at 1,000 frames per second captures some frames during the part of the cycle when the light is off.
5L300 cameras can be bought with Phased Light Compensation (PLC), which samples frames before and after a dark line and blends pixels to hide the effect. 5L500 Vision cameras can be bought with LuxBoost, which dramatically improves image quality in low light. Contact sales for a quote on either.
For the camera settings that help before any extra light, see The image is too dark at dusk or under lights.
Goes deeper
- Too dark at dusk or under lights — Troubleshoot · Camera · EtherLynx Camera · Image & Focus
Related questions
- The image is too dark at dusk or under lights. Which settings help? — Set Gain Method to AGC with Auto Iris, open a manual iris toward the smaller f-numbers, raise AGC Brightness, add light at the line, then lower the frame rate a little. LuxBoost helps once gain passes 150.
- What factors affect the quality of my FinishLynx images? — Five things: the light source and where it comes from, the lens type, the frame rate for the speed of the athletes, depth of field (raise the camera), and lens speed (open the iris at higher frame rates).