Les Pounder works with groups such as the Raspberry Pi Foundation to help boost people’s maker skills.
The Raspberry Pi camera was the first official add-on for our favourite single-board computer. Way back in 2013, the original 5MP model was released and over the years we have seen the megapixels increase, and even a model with interchangeable lenses. What has remained the same is a fixed focus. Though that’s not entirely true – v2 could be hacked with a little scalpel work for manual focus. Now in early 2023, we are greeted with the Camera Module 3. Coming in two versions – visible light (standard) and NOIR (No IR, used for low light) – and with two lens models (75° and a wide 120°), Camera Module 3 is impressive. All of the cameras come with autofocus, giving sharp images between 10cm and infinity. Another feature of the visible light lenses is HDR, high dynamic range, which uses a series of stacked images with varying exposures to produce a single, often stunning, final image.