Exposure Settings

Changing the Brightness parameter will adjust the entire image area.

Notes:

• Configure the Exposure Windows first (see below). This is usually sufficient to achieve good image exposure control.
• If setting the exposure windows alone does not produce satisfying results, you may want to use the Brightness parameter for fine tuning.
• Selecting high values for this parameter that are too high may lead to overexposure of bright image areas.

This parameter also is used for adjusting the brightness of an image. However, it only affects the darker portions of an image.

Notes:

• Start by configuring the Exposure Mode and the Exposure Windows (see below). This is usually sufficient to achieve good image exposure control.
• If setting the exposure windows alone does not produce satisfying results, you may want to use the Backlight Correction parameter for fine tuning.

Full Image Area: The full image of the sensor (i.e. the 1x Zoom, no lens correction on cameras which have this feature) is used to determine the proper exposure. The following parameters for exposure windows, exposure weighting and white balance weighting are used to set the appearance of the image.
This is the preferred mode when using Full Image Recording in the background. This mode guarantees that the recording channel always keeps its exposure.

Visible Image Area: This mode optimizes exposure control for the visible image section. Other parameters are not used, i.e. the settings of the exposure windows, exposure weighting and white balance weighting parameters are ignored.
Note: If the camera uses Full Image Recording, this setting could render the recorded images unusable (e.g. when zooming into very dark or very bright areas of the image, the rest of the image will be overexposed or underexposed, respectively).

Exposure windows are defined image areas that are used for exposure and color adjustment. To facilitate exposure window positioning, you can select from a number of pre-defined exposure windows.

Notes:

• This setting is only relevant in the Full Image Area exposure mode.
• If your camera is a dual lens model, you can define different exposure windows for each lens.
• You may also use the exposure windows to perform the automatic White Balance adjustment.

Predefined exposure windows:

Using this parameter, you can define how much the exposure windows are to be considered for exposure control—relative to the remainder of the image.
Values: Total .. 0% .. 100%

The factory default setting is 100% which means that only the exposure windows are used for exposure control.

Using this parameter, you can define how much the exposure windows are to be considered for white balancing—relative to the remainder of the image.
Values: Total .. 0% .. 100%

The factory default setting is Total which means that the entire image is used for white balance.

on: Shows the defined exposure window(s) as green box(es) within the image.
The Histogram option shows additional parameters of specific image processing features in the image.

This parameter of exposure control (default is 40%) specifies the average brightness of the image pixels considered for exposure control (→ exposure windows) that the camera tries to reach; it is thus the target value for the finished image's brightness. In order to reach this value, the camera first tries to change the exposure time within the limits set by the minimum and maximum exposure time and adjusts the hardware amplification within the internally defined limits.

If the brightness continues to decrease, the camera extends the exposure time and increases the hardware amplification to maintain the specified average brightness, until the maximum exposure time has been reached.

If it still gets darker, the image brightness drops below the value of the average brightness and approaches the value of the minimum average brightness. If the image brightness drops below this value, the camera will activate the software amplification to maintain the minimum average brightness for as longs as possible.

When setting this parameter, the following rules apply:

• A lower value produces images with higher quality, which may become darker and thus constitute a more natural reflection of reality. The default value of 20% results in a largely lifelike behavior.
• A higher value increases the brightness of the images, but it can produce images with lower quality due to increased image noise.

This feature improves the contrast of dark images.

These parameters influence the balance between an exposure time that is as short as possible and hardware amplification that is as low as possible. The objective is to reach a fair compromise between clear images of moving objects (short exposure time, high amplification) and as little image noise as possible (long exposure time, low amplification).

When using the camera in a web application, a positive value would create images with little amplification (i.e. little image noise); moving objects would be displayed in a blurred manner. On the other hand, a security application would require a negative value to show moving objects as clearly as possible, even if this would mean higher image noise.