Lighting inspiration

Machine vision case studies in magazines and on web sites invariably show beautifully lit subjects with great contrast between features of interest and the background. Yet when I get in the lab I find it’s much, much harder – well nigh impossible in fact – to get that kind of perfect image. So, assuming that I’m not alone in this, let’s talk about where to go for advice.

There’s a company in upstate New York that specializes in solving machine vision lighting challenges. This is Illumination Technologies Inc. They sell a range of lighting products, but more importantly, for a fee, they will work on your lighting problem.

But how do you know they are any good?

Well I suggest you take a look at their Support page. Here you’ll find links to Application Notes and White Papers that cover a large number of problems. In fact they may help prompt some ideas to try yourself, thus solving your problem free of charge. If however, your particular issue is so unusual that it doesn’t figure on their Support pages, the various case studies should at least convince you that Illumination Technologies will give it their best shot.

Turning that around, I believe that if IT can’t solve your lighting challenge, then perhaps there is no machine vision solution to what you want to do.