2. Electronic camera

An electronic camera is generally presented to the user as a compact unit or, at most, two blocks (camera head and electronic block). Functionally, it consists of several assembled subsystems, which may be separable (Figure 2 ):

• an O2 optical block, removable and adaptable to the experiment to be carried out;

• a tube block, supporting the TCI image converter tube (active component of the camera) and the electronic control circuits;

• an image recording unit equipped with a photographic film loader or, preferably, a scientific CCD camera (a cooled, low-noise sensor connected to a microcomputer...