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Was just about to say the same thing - as far as I know they use a different chip (PCO and Andor both use the same chip, but Hamamatsu wasn't part of that consortium and decided to go it alone). The Gen I vs Gen II is probably mostly marketing hype ... In addition to QE I'd also pay attention to hot pixels and pixel to pixel gain/noise variations, as these tend to be the limiting features of sCMOS technology at the moment (you might get a mean read noise of ~ 1 e-, but a handful of pixels have much larger read noises). The manufacturers tend to offer soft/firmware solutions to mask these noisy pixels (often replacing the value by interpolation from neighbouring pixels), but whether this is desirable or not will depend on the application (it's one of the major concerns when evaluating sCMOS for PALM/STORM applications).
cheers,
David
________________________________
From: Julio Vazquez <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, 27 June 2012 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: CMOS Camera
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Hi Prabhakar,
Do you know for a fact they use the same chip? The Andor sCMOS camera's spec sheet reports 5.5 MP (2,560 x 2,160 pixels) while Hamamatsu reports 2,048 x 2,048 effective pixels for the Flash 4. Could still be the same chip but why would Hamamatsu waste 1.5 MP? Also, the QE curve of the Andor resembles the QE curves of what Hamamatsu calls "Generation I" sCMOS, while the Flash 4 uses a "Gen II" chip with higher QE.... I'd suggest asking the respective reps. Maybe Andor is just a bit behind and will release an sCMOS with 70% QE in the next few months, or they chose a different chip for some other reason...
--
Julio Vazquez
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Seattle, WA 98109-1024
http://www.fhcrc.org/
On Jun 26, 2012, at 2:17 PM, B. Prabhakar Pandian wrote:
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> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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>
> Hello All,
> We are planning on purchasing a CMOS camera from either Andor (Neo) or Hamamatsu (ORCA Flash 4). We are going to be demo them
> before deciding. However, looking at the specs, ORCA claims 70% QE vs 55% for Neo. Since both of them have the same chip, is this information accurate.
> Any help in resolving this question is appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Prabhakar
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