Canon Confuses Us All With The Announcement Of The M15P-CL

Canon Japan left us all scratching our heads with the announcement of the M15P-CL - A 15MP monochromatic industrial camera. Designed for the high accuracy of the manufacturing industry, the M15P-CL is not a camera shape or size you're familiar with, as it's designed for the Camera Link system. Whats weird about this? Perhaps the fact that it sports a Nikon F Mount.

While the press release doesn't say Nikon F Mount directly, the photo supplied with the press release shows that it is infact an F mount. Press Release Translated by DicaHub (and tried to be fixed by me)--

Key Features

This new product is a test for a camera's suitable quality and high accuracy required in the manufacturing industry, the quality inspection of optical components such as solar panels and a liquid crystal panel, the digital single-lens reflex camera. The inspection process which has prior to now, been done by the human eye, shifted to test using the cameras are detected in the high resolution, the market is increased more and more in the future growth is expected. Canon entered the industrial camera market as a new business to capture these market trends, by applying the technical skills gained in the existing business.

It is equipped with a CMOS sensor for low noise and high pixel

It is equipped with a newly developed CMOS sensor with high sensitivity that has been cultivated in the interchangeable lens camera EOS series, the black-and-white CMOS sensor of 15 million pixels. This helps to achieve a low noise over a wide dynamic range, and enables the inspection in high contrast. You can then, even test environment at low contrast under reflections the high-definition tone white / black, and to accurately detect defects such as foreign matter and fine scratches that can not be easily confirmed by the human eye.

Setting function contributing to the wide range of inspection power improvement

Brightness gain of the captured image when capturing the (sensitivity), and the like may be analog gain of the low noise (1 to 16 times) digital gain (1 to 16 times), 256 times the maximum to improve low noise It is equipped with a variety of configuration features that I made use of performance.

Compatible with Camera Link interface

It is widely used in the industrial camera market, with the highest-speed transfer as possible and the output of the image is compatible with standard interface standard Camera Link.

Market trends industrial camera (sensor area)

The total world market for image input camera inspection of equipment, we have estimated to be about 18 billion yen in 2013. The market for industrial cameras of the number of pixels in excess of 10 million pixels, in response to the increased demand, such as television and high-definition smartphone, significant growth is expected in the future, among others. Canon plans to capture the market trends, by launching products with high added value, low-noise, multi-pixel, and then entered the industrial camera market. (Canon research)

Whether that made much sense to you is unknown, but that's the best translations could do. The untranslated press release is available here.

While Canon provided cameras with Nikon mounts in the early days for their industrial cameras, this is the first we've seen with it for a while. So is this a mark of Canon and Nikon coming together to provide the absolute best for the industry, or just a strange anomaly that we'll never see again?

[via CanonWatch]