Autofocus on a Pi - ArduCam's new 16MP camera
ArduCam recently completed a successful crowdfunding campaign for a 16 megapixel Raspberry Pi camera with built-in autofocus.
The camera is on a board with the same footprint as the Pi Camera V2, but it has a Sony IMX519 image sensor with twice the resolution (16 Mpix vs 8 Mpix) and a larger image sensor (1/2.53" vs 1/4"), a slightly nicer lens, and the headline feature: a built-in autofocus motor.
Autofocus performance
Getting right into the meat of it: autofocus works, with some caveats.
First, the good. Autofocus is quick to acquire focus in many situations, especially in well-lit environments with one main subject. Using ArduCam's fork of libcamera-still
or libcamera-vid
, you only need to pass in --autofocus
and the camera will snap into focus immediately.