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 unit). Functionally, it is made up of several assembled subsystems, which may be dissociable (figure 2 ):

• an O2 optical unit, which can be dismantled and adapted to the experiment to be carried out;

• a tube block, supporting the TCI image converter tube (the camera's active component) and the control electronics;

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