ORCA-R² "Rapid Readout" Digital CCD Camera

Hamamatsu has launched the new ORCA-R² "Rapid Readout" digital CCD camera. Building on the success of the established, market-leading ORCA AG and based on the same exclusive ER-150 progressive scan interline 1344 x 1024 pixel CCD, the new ORCA-R² is designed to maintain Hamamatsu's competitive edge for demanding, non-EM CCD applications in the visible to NIR. Hamamatsu will be exhibiting this new camera on Stand I2 at MICROSCIENCE 2008 from 23 to 26 June at ExCeL in London.

The ORCA-R² has two scan speeds; a normal scan speed of 14MHz and a rapid scan speed of 28MHz which deliver full resolution 1.37M pixel images at 8.5 frames/second and 16.2 frames/second respectively. With binning, the ORCA-R2 has a maximum frame rate of 64.3 frames/second. Data output is via Firewire IEEE 1394b.

The ER-150 CCD is enclosed in a hermetic vacuum-sealed head, the same as the previous ORCA-AG, but air-cooling has been improved to -35°C and the ORCA-R2 also comes with water-cooling connections as standard, for operation at -40°C for applications where low-level signals mean a tighter control of thermal noise is required.

Digitisation can be carried out in either 12 or 16 bit A-D converters, and image enhancement is possible using analogue gain and offset controls.

All this improved ORCA-R² performance has been squeezed into the familiar ORCA-AG camera head size, including an extended range of programmable trigger signal (edge, level, start, synchronous, cyclic) output options.

The ORCA-R² is the camera of choice for a range of applications, such as fluorescence microscopy, where a balance of speed, sensitivity and resolution are essential.