Camera Control Dialog — Capture Controls

Image-Pro with Capture Module Only

The Capture Controls group is a section of the Camera Control dialog.  This group of controls allows you to manually adjust your camera's shutter.  It also gives you access to binning and bit depth options.  These settings can be applied to the live preview, captured images, or both.

Exposure Controls:  The exposure controls are the slider and text boxes at the top of the Capture Controls dialog box. These controls allow you to manually set the shutter speed of the camera, thereby manually controlling the brightness of the image.

Auto Exposure: Clicking this button tells Image-Pro to find the optimal exposure for the current live image.  The optimal exposure provides the optimal level of brightness for the current scene appearing in the Capture Preview window.

White Balance: This button allows you to have Image-Pro automatically calculate the white balance values for image. Simply click the White Balance button, and then left-click and drag an ROI on the image in a “white” region of the image. When the area is finished being drawn the White Balance will be calculated automatically. If you don't like the results of the white balance, then you can draw it again to overwrite the current white balance.

Saturation: Turns the Saturation warning feature on and off. This is the same as clicking the Saturation Warning tool in the Intensity group on the Capture ribbon.

Adjust Exposure for Binning: Check this box to automatically adjust the exposure times and the zoom factor to keep the image size and brightness consistent whenever the binning value is changed. Both the preview and the acquire exposure times will be adjusted whenever a binning value or preview exposure value changes. Note that the zoom factor adjustment may be limited by the number of zoom factors available for your camera driver.  Also note that the image brightness may not be maintained perfectly depending on your specific camera.

Binning:The option selected from this pull-down list box sets the binning routine to be used on the live image coming from the camera.  As the binning is increased, the brightness of the image is increased and the resolution of the image is decreased.  Binning is often used for dark scenes so you can decrease the exposure time required to view the live image with adequate illumination.  In this case, a decrease in resolution (and an increase in noise) is allowed so that the shutter speed can be significantly increased.  

Bit-Depth: From this list box, select the bit depth value you want to use for your acquired images.  

Lock: The "Lock" icons determine whether the associated setting should be applied to both captures and the live preview window ("Locked"), or whether the setting should be able to be set independently on the "Preview" tab and "Capture" tab and be applied independently for captures and the live preview window ("Unlocked").   Note that the lock icons only appear if the Display Advanced Capture Settings checkbox is selected at the bottom of the Camera Controls dialog box.