We’ve been asked by several people what the benefits are of having a camera system with good low-light capability.
The principal benefit is that you can operate using natural light in more situations. You can spot objects at longer ranges, beyond the range of the lights. For close-in objects, there is no backscatter from the lights to spoil the imagery.
If you do choose to use the lights, less power will be required to obtain the desired imagery with the camera.
Here’s an example of finding a target in the distance, using natural lighting:
To gather some comparative data, we recently performed a series of dives in Lake Tahoe on a sunken boat in 100m of water. Three different cameras were used, the Blue Robotics HD camera, our standard camera, and our advanced camera. We recorded video using different lighting conditions, including natural light. The two screenshots below show the remarkable difference between the Blue Robotics HD camera and our camera upgrade, under natural light.
BlueROV 2 Low Light HD USB Camera
Mission Robotics Camera Upgrade
