make.darkmask1

Usage

Overview

The QuickCam CCD suffers from "dark current"; that is, some of the CCD pixels will leak current under long exposures, even if they're in the dark, and this shows up as ugly speckling on images taken in low light.

Fortunately, the leaky pixels are the same from shot to shot. So, we can figure out which pixels are leaky by taking some establishing shots in the dark, and try to fix those pixels on subsequent shots. The dark establishing shots need only be done once per camera.

This is what make.darkmask does. This program, which must be run when the QuickCam is in darkness, figures out which pixels are leaky, and writes a mask to /etc/qcam.darkfile which lists those pixels.

Files

/etc/qcam.conf Configuration file /etc/qcam.darkfile Dark mask file