On the Table

Photographers often rely on tabletop photography to take product photos for advertising campaigns or illustrations for magazines. Even a digital camera or smartphone is up to this task, but you have good reasons to look into USB and web cameras, as well. Armed with a 4K USB camera, a focus distance of 3cm, an integrated zoom function, and a Raspberry Pi with USB 3.0 ports, tabletop photographers can embark on their mission.

Raspberry Pi Cameras

Currently, the Raspberry Pi Foundation officially supports the V2 camera module (also available in the NoIR variant) and the Pi High Quality (Pi HQ) camera. The V2 module was introduced as the successor to the V1 module in 2016. The predecessor was based on an OmniVision 5647 sensor with a resolution of 5 megapixels (Mpx). In contrast, a Sony IMX219 sensor with 8Mpx is used in the V2 camera [1]. In contrast to the regular module, the NoIR camera lacks an infrared filter but otherwise has the same features [2].

The cameras have a fixed focus starting at a distance of about 70cm to the subject and with a fixed focal length. They are connected to the computer with a ribbon cable via the camera serial interface (CSI). The multimedia abstraction layer (MMAL) and Video4Linux (V4L) APIs are then used for access. You can control the cameras directly with console commands, and you have an extensive Python library for camera control with the picamera package [3].

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