Line Scan Camera Fun - Cars

Line Scan cameras may appear to be less then their 2D sensor type siblings, but this is definitely not the case - they just need a bit more care. 

Line scan cameras like the ral2048-48gm from Basler have only a single line of 2048 pixels, but this line can be read out at up to 51kHz speed. In an ideal case this is equivalent to a 24frames per second on a 2048x2048 pixel sensor. 

This is basically nothing but a scanner which can be used to scan anything. To use it in a conventional way (2D photos), you will need to rotate it at a given speed to capture the whole scene. This is usually not an obvious task, especially if would have to combine it with triggering the camera, but there are a few solutions, my favourite is the Syrp Genie Mini.

The other method of using the camera is when the background and the camera is kept in one position and the objects are moving through the scene. In this case the moving objects are easily distinguished from the background.

To make the objects look like the same dimensions as in reality, one would have to measure the speed of the object at every frame and resample the image according to the exposure time per pixel line. This is probably not an obvious task to do and I personally like when the photos look less like their real selfs.

This is for instance a standard size bus:

There is a Hungarian guy Adam Magyar who did some really good photos with his portable line scan camera in the underground. Really nice photos. 

Here are a few more cars for a start. If you want to get into this, contact us for more information / advice and check out our store. (There are usually used line scan cameras for sale.)