How To Adjust The Exposure Time Of The Industrial Camera ?

Have you ever encountered the images captured by the industrial camera with a noticeable trail? But why does this happen and how it can be avoided? This brings up a key parameter, exposure time, which is also called shutter time. Industrial cameras can achieve exposure times as short as 1/1,000,000 second.

• What’s exposure time?

Think of exposure time as a "valve" controlling the amount of light entering the sensor. If the valve opens too long, excessive light floods in, causing overexposure, the image will be too white. If the object is moving rapidly, this also results in noticeable trail.

Conversely, a very short exposure time restricts light intake, darkening the image. While reducing exposure time minimizes blur for fast-moving objects, it can also make the image too dark.

Next, we’ll share practical methods to optimize exposure time.

• Solutions from hardware

• Use a Large-Aperture Lens

A wider aperture allows more light to enter, compensating for shorter exposure times.

• Choose a Camera with Larger Pixels

Larger sensor pixels (higher photosite size) improve light sensitivity. For the same exposure time, images from such cameras appear brighter.

• Employ High-Brightness Machine Vision Lighting

High-intensity lights (e.g., strobes) use brief voltage spikes to boost brightness momentarily.  These lights cannot operate continuously (risk of burnout) and are typically triggered in short pulses (e.g., tens of milliseconds).

Hardware adjustment is the best, there are without other side effects. If it’s not enough, then solutions from software could be considered.

• Solutions from software

    Adjust Gamma Values

Increasing gamma can brighten the image, but overdoing it creates a hazy, washed-out effect.

• Increase Gain

Boosting gain amplifies sensor signals to brighten the image, but this introduces noticeable noise.

• Pixel Binning

Combining adjacent pixels improves brightness but directly reduces the camera’s effective resolution.

It could balance these methods based on your application’s speed, lighting conditions, and image quality requirements, they will help you achieve optimal results.