Ken-A-Vision Mfg. Co. Inc.
Abbe Condenser (see Condenser) Achromat Lens (see lens) Adapter – See Power Supply – note all digital-only cameras (microscope or flexible-necked camera are powered by the USB connection. Eyepiece Adapter – For attaching Ken-A-Vision Cameras with a microscope – accessory supplied with all KAV cameras, which allow our cameras to be closely aligned with the eyepiece of the microscope. Analog Output – (see also Composite Video). Analog signals are continuous electrical signals that vary over time.
Blooming – This is an image artifact that can affect the quality of the image (Smear is another artifact – see below)). Blooming is an overflow of photodiode charge into neighboring pixels. It can occur when trying to image a very bright spot. It results in a distorted image but can be avoided by using correct lighting, Box Dimension – Dimensions of the packaging carton in which a KAV item is shipped, expressed in inches and centimeters (international).
Cable – KAV supplies various cables with its products. These include USB cables (usually 5 ft. - 1.5 m.), Composite (12 ft.- 3.6 m.), S-video (12 ft-3.6 m). Cable length – (see Cable) Cat. 5 Cable – (see connectors) CCD Camera - a Charge-Coupled Device. The specific technical detail is that in a CCD sensor, every pixel's charge is transferred through a very limited number (often one) of output nodes to be converted to voltage, buffered, and sent off-chip as an analog (video) signal.
Planetary - Coaxial coarse and fine focusing, with planetary reduction gear system, is a more advanced version of the basic rack and pinion system. This is found on the 1900, 2700, 2800 and 3300 series compound microscopes. Coaxial Controls – (see coarse/fine adjust) Composite Video - composite Video signal combines luminance and chrominance in a single signal. Differentiated from S-Video, where the two signals (brightness and color) are carried separately.
RJ-45 – Plug and connector. Used by Ken-A-Vision only on the Ceiling DocCam II, it is the connectors on either end of the Cat. 5 cable provided with this camera, and provides S-video, composite video, power and RS-232 control, between the camera and the wall plate. RS-232 – (DE-9 connector for as RS-232 interface) Found on the wall plate of the Ceiling DocCam II and is used to connect the camera to control systems for monitoring such as Crestron or AMX.
brightness or luminance of the picture. U and V between them carry the color information]. Usually the plug and jack are colored coded yellow. CMOS Camera – Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor - In a CMOS sensor, each pixel has its own charge-to-voltage conversion, and the sensor often also includes digitization circuits, so that the chip outputs digital bits which may reduce the area available for light capture. The capture chip requires less off-chip circuitry for basic operation.
CoreScope – The proper name of our T-1200 series of microscopes both non-digital and digital. These microscopes are designed primarily for use in Elementary and Middle School, and have a Singlet (see Coarse/Fine Adjust) knob for focus adjustment.
(Digital microscopes) by the user because the camera is at a different focal length then is the camera position. Discovery Scope Kit – An accessory for Video Flex and MVP cameras which allows for hands-free observation of specimens by placing the specimen right in front of the camera lens at a short distance to allow magnification to occur.
Flexible Flexible Neck (KAV) – includes the Video Flex, Vision Viewer and MVP lines of Ken-A-Vision cameras. Flexible Neck (by KAV) – includes the flexible necked cameras now manufactured and sold by Ken-A-Vision, that were formerly made and sold by ClearOne (Video Labs) – (acquired by Ken-A-Vision in 2006). Flip – is a property of some Ken-A-Vision camera drivers, not of Applied Vision ™ for Windows Software.
Fluorescent (light source for microscopes) – Source illuminator on some models of microscopes. At Ken-A-Vision fluorescence illumination is now optional on a limited number of microscopes. Primary benefit of a fluorescent light source is that the amount of heat generated by the illuminator is severely reduced from a traditional incandescent or tungsten filament light.
Halogen light (see Light sources) Hanover Bars – (see Video Standards-PAL) Head (Cameras) Ball and socket - literally a ball, which rotates in a socket allows camera head to be maneuvered over a 90° range of motion. Found in all Video Flex and Vision Viewer Cameras except the 2100 (Explorer), 5500 (ClipCam), 7811 (BookCam), 7821 (ShopCam), 7870 (PhysicsCam), and 910-171066 (Ceiling DocCam II). With the exception of the DocCamPro™ AV (910-171-010) none of the FlexCams by Ken-A-Vision are ball and socket.
Tucked Reverse – In a compound microscope, the objectives are placed such that they are positioned back towards the arm of the microscope allowing for ease of inserting or removing slides from the stage. Vertical binocular – Only the Ken-A-Vision T-2400 has this feature. The binocular lens are placed vertically, directly above the objective lenses. 45° Angle - All Ken-A-Vision microscopes are position with a 45° angled head, allowing for an ergomatically comfortable position for the average microscope user.
Kensington (lock and slot) - A Kensington Security Slot (also called a K-Slot or Kensington lock) is a small hole found in the base of Ken-A-Vision cameras. It is used for attaching a lock, in particular those from Kensington Technology Group. The locks are generally secured in place with a key or some mechanical pin device and attached with a strong metal cable to some permanent object, such as a heavy table or other similar equipment. Provides limited security.
Halogen – Incandescent bulb in which the filament is tungsten, but the gas filling the glass envelope is halogen (iodine or bromine generally). The presence of the halogen increases the length of the bulb’s life. Halogen lamps tend to be run at higher temperatures which allows higher luminous efficacy, apparent brightness, and whiter color temperature (see Color Temperature).
Manual Focus – any operation where the user or operator must change the focal length by adjusting the coarse/fine adjust of a microscope, or rotate the focusing ring of a camera. Materials – What a thing is or made of. Isotropic – having physical properties, as conductivity, elasticity or light transmittance that is the same in all directions. Anisotropic – NOT having physical properties, as conductivity, elasticity or light transmittance that is the same in all directions.
NiMH Batteries (Nickel Metal Hydride) - Ken-A-Vision batteries for cordless microscopes are specially made batteries of the NiMH type. Technically A nickel metal hydride battery, abbreviated NiMH, is similar to a nickel-cadmium (NiCd) battery but has a hydrogen-absorbing alloy for the anode instead of cadmium. Like in NiCd batteries, nickel is the cathode. A NiMH battery can have two to three times the capacity of an equivalent size NiCd.
Output – Video Resolutions Expressed in Pixels VGA - 640 X 480 SVGA - 800 X 600 XGA - 1024 X 768 SXGA+ - 1400 X 1050; 1280 X 960 also in some sources UXGA - 1600 X 1200 QXGA - 2048 X 1536 QSXGA+ - 2800 X 2100 QUXGA - 3200 X 2400 PAL – see Video Standards Pixel - A single picture element. The smallest element in a graphic image. Pixels are combined with other pixels to make up a graphic image. Picture quality increases as the number of pixels increase in a measured area of an image.
Resolution (See Appendix A for more exhaustive detail on video resolution) Image Resolution - A measurement of the quality of a video image based on the number of pixels that make up the image. Microscope - is the ability to tell two points apart as separate points. If the resolving power of your lens is 2um that means two points that are 2um apart can be seen as separate points. If they are closer together then that, they will blend together into one point.
Stage Clips – Ken-A-Vision patented spring loaded clips provided as standard on all Ken-A-Vision microscopes. (Except ESH models) Stage Manipulator (See Mechanical Stage) Standards – see Video Standards S-Video (output) – (see also connectors) - Separate video, also known as Y/C (or erroneously, S-VHS and "super video") is an analog video signal that carries the video data as two separate signals (brightness and color), unlike composite video which carries the entire set of signals in one signal line.
Video Standards NTSC - is the analog television system in use in Canada, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, the United States and a few other countries in the Americas. It is named for the National Television System(s) Committee, the U.S. standardization body that adopted it. In 1941 the committee settled on a 525-line transmission standard, with a frame rate of 30 frames per second, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, which is still basically the United States Standard to this day.
(R-Y and B-Y) is stronger than that of green (G-Y). SECAM differs from the other color systems by the way the R-Y and B-Y signals are carried. First, SECAM uses frequency modulation to encode chrominance information on the sub carrier. Second, instead of transmitting the red and blue information together, it only sends one of them at a time, and uses the information about the other color from the preceding line. It uses a delay, an analog memory device, for storing one line of color information.
Zoom - On a camera, to change the focal length to/from wide-angle and telephoto.
APPENDIX A – Detailed descriptions of Microscope and Video Resolution Microscope Resolution Resolution is the ability to tell two points apart as separate points. If the resolving power of your lens is 2um that means two points that are 2um apart can be seen as separate points. If they are closer together than that, they will blend together into one point. Magnification is something different-the ability to make an object larger.
All of this contributes to the final measure of resolution, what you see in terms of Venetian blinds, picket fences, or polka dot clothing. Resolution Factoids,. While all (NTSC) TV sets and program material (broadcasts, tapes, disks, etc.) use the same 525 scan lines, the advertised resolution (240, 425, 500, etc.) refers to the horizontal resolution which is the number of side by side dots that can be reproduced within any one line.
Loss of resolution Resolution may be lost by any one or combination of the following factors: 1. During capture of the picture information by the camera and electronic processing of the fresh video signal, 2. In the process of storing the picture information on disk or tape, or transmitting it over the air on via satellite or "cable", 3. During playback, in the TV set, also in VCR and disk player electronics.
The conglomeration of all those dots and dashes on all the scan lines equals the picture. Since the electron beam "paints" the screen at a constant speed, the finer the horizontal detail (smaller dots), the faster the changes must be. The faster the changes, the higher the frequency the video signal must be able to attain. Since signal frequency is one of the limiting factors for video information storage and transmission, horizontal resolution is the first to be affected.
cannot make spots small enough, what should be individual closely spaced dots will be a continuous blur.. Published Resolution is for Black and White (Applies to transmission and storage and also to displaying of video) All horizontal resolution figures published for video, if not otherwise qualified, apply to blacks, grays, and whites only. All of this has to do with maximum signal frequency and limits on what will fit into the broadcast channel or on VHS tape, etc.
scan lines are drawn as follows: 240* odd lines of picture information, 22* black lines, 240* even lines of picture information, 23* black lines. This is all repeated 30+ times a second. The "black" lines contain information to keep the TV set scanning in synchronism with the broadcast and allow time to get the electron beam back to the top of the screen. They also contain coded information for closed caption text, commercial identification and tracking, etc.
* Numbers marked with an asterisk are approximate. These numbers and also the exact location of the 525'th line may vary slightly depending on the subject matter and with the make and model of equipment used. + To make this text clearer, numbers marked with a plus sign have been rounded from actual precise values that have lots of decimal places. For NTSC interlaced video, the horizontal resolution is 80 (79) times the video circuitry bandwidth in megahertz, for example 3.
APPENDIX B – Detailed descriptions White Balance Parts of this Appendix are taken from the web site http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_white-balance.html If you come from the world of films or single lens reflex cameras, you may remember using filters to correct for incandescent or fluorescent lighting. Most people don't bother and their indoors pictures invariably come out with a yellow/orange or bluish cast.
Some Ken-A-Vision cameras also allow the user to adjust the White Balance using the Applied Vision Software This is accessed by clicking on the three tools icon (on the live image screen), then within the ‘Video’ box that appears, click on the camera icon in left corner of box. The tab which will give the user access to the White Balance button varies among different cameras.
