[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

I had a chance to test drive a new camera from Point Grey Research, the Dragonfly2. This camera was introduced a few months ago, and it's specs have made me curious to try it for myself.

The PGR people were kind enough to send me an eval unit, and after trying it for myself I've decided to buy one :-)

This camera uses the Sony ICX424AL ccd, the same one as in the Lumenera LU075M. This ccd is known to be low noise and high sensitivity.

In addition, this camera has 16 bit data output, giving much more accurate data when used with a short shutter, and also the non-standard "format7" modes that allow you to roll up arbitrary framerate and shutter settings.

The only downside that I found is that the gain maxes out at 24db, meaning that the image is not as bright as my Dragonfly Express camera that has a max gain of 30db.

In side-by-side tests the Dragonfly2 clearly beats my DMK21AF04 in image quality, likely due to the 16 bit data mode.

Here is a set of three raw frames from one of my test sessions that show the relative images from the three cameras. Please ignore the image quality itself, these tests were done from suburban Canberra and the seeing was not very good :-(

However it is useful to compare the relative brightness and noise present in each image. I think that gives a good idea of the relative merits of each camera.

I hope you don't mind the image dimensions, it's actually a small image so that ok :-)

Pricewise the Dragonfly2 is about $750 US, and the Dragonfly Express is $1100 US. The DMK21AF04 is something like $390 US.

regards, Bird