LI5040 CMOS Sensor
Evaluation Kit

Physical Dimensions (TBD)

Units in millimeters

Lens Selection

The Canon LI5040 Evaluation kit is provided without a lens in the box. As the lens plays a critical role in any imaging system, it is imperative that a suitable lens is selected to evaluate the sensor performance for your end application properly.

The LI5040 evaluation kit camera contains a C-Mount allowing a wide range of options for optics. When selecting an appropriate lens, there are several factors that must be considered: Lens Type, Lens Mount, Focal Length, Sensor Size, Resolving Power, and Aperture, to name a few of the more important ones. Some of these factors are associated with your application, and some are directly tied to how the Canon sensor will perform.

Based on your application and imaging environment, you will need to consider the following factors:

• The lens type (telecentric, entocentric, macro, fisheye, etc) will determine how you see the subject and what special features might be required in order to perform your analysis, testing, or meet your general imaging needs.
• Given the lighting conditions in your imaging environment, you will need to select a lens with an adequate Aperture or F-Stop. There are both positive and negative aspects to having either a very high or very low aperture. Care should be taken to select a lens with an optimal F number for your specific application.
• Depending on the distance from the subject to the lens, you will need to select a lens with the proper focal length to allow sharp, clean images.

In order to get the best performance from the Canon sensor, you will need to select a lens with the following minimum specifications:

• Since the evaluation kit camera is equipped with a C-Mount, you will need to look at available C-Mount lensing options.
• The lens must be rated for at least a 2/3” sensor size.  Larger lenses will also work, however, lenses rated for smaller sensor sizes will result in image projections that don’t cover the entire sensor surface.
• The resolving power of a lens directly correlates to how well the lens can transfer detail to each pixel of the image sensor.  On many C-Mount lens specification sheets, this is expressed in terms of Megapixels (MP).  Selecting a lens rated for at least 5 MP will result in the lens delivering enough information to the sensor to create a sharp 5 MP image.
• If you have purchased the LI5040 evaluation kit and you need to detect in the NIR wavelengths (typically 650nm – 1000nm), you will need to select a lens that allows the transmission of NIR light.  In typical commercial photography, these wavelengths are typically filtered out through coating on the lenses, coating on the image sensor cover glass, and filters in the optical path to produce more true-to-life color images.  Since these two Canon sensors are commonly used to also image in those wavelengths, selecting a lens suited for this application will produce the best results from the sensor.

We hope this brief explanation helps you in selecting the appropriate lens to get the best results from your Canon evaluation kit.  If you still have questions, please complete and submit the form here, and a Canon Sensor specialist will be able to assist you further.