In our group we use a few Andor EMCCD cameras for spectroscopy which seem to be a match with your requirements. The cameras themselves are robust and the software makes it easy to work with them, including plenty of options for various binning modes. If you are planning on using the camera as a spectrometer (together with a spectrograph), the software offers options for wavelength calibration etc.

The only aspect I am not sure about is the digital resolution, which might be 12 or 14 bits in the case of our cameras. I can recommend these cameras in general, but check out their website for the exact digital resolutions available.

Thanks Jorick! Yes, I need a camera for imaging spectroscopy. I will have a look at Andor CCDs, probably 14bit resolution is fine - need to estimate expected S/N.

Andor has EMCCD cameras for spectrocopy. CCD's for spectroscopy have 16-bit resolution. I do not remember the chip dimension, but this you can find on web page of Andor Technology http://www.andor.com.

Thanks Paweł!

Hi Andrej, we've had success with the Hamamatsu ImageEM line of EMCCD cameras as well. 16-bit resolution also. http://hamamatsucameras.com/imagem/ Best of luck!

Hi Andrej, we use Andor cameras for CXRS systems on the TCV since May 2010.

Two "AndorTM iXonEM+ DU897D-CSO-BV, iXonEM+ DU 897 BI Electron multiplying CCD Cameras" used for active CXRS measurement. The new one (AndorTM iXonEM+ Ultra DU897U-CSO-BV, iXonEM+ DU 897 BV BI Electron multiplying CCD Camera) is now tested by my PhD student for passive CXRS with direct imaging. The performance of iXon Ultra 897 looked better than the X3 one. You can fond some additional information in my EPS'2012 paper, see "A.N.Karpushov, Y.Andrebe, B.P.Duval, L.Federspiel; Charge Exchange Recombination Spectroscopy Measurement of Ion Temperature, Rotation and Impurity Density Profiles on the TCV Tokamak; 39th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics, 16th International Congress on Plasma Physics, Stockholm, Sweden, 2-6 July 2012, Poster P2.037" . The X3 have "True 14 bit @ 10, 5, 3 & 1 MHz readout rate", which probably is not enough, the Ultra is 16bit at max 17MHz.

Thanks Alexander, that's very helpful! I have bookmarked the Andor already. Regarding the readout speed, the problem is, the fastest CCD in a class of low-noise scientific cameras is not fast enough to a give a resolution of at least several frames within our 5ms at GDT.

We use Andor iXon X3 in vertical binning mode 512pix x 20zones with fastest acquisition of 1.6ms, the Andor iXon Ultra should be faster (up to 1ms in the same setup). For details see http://www.andor.com/pdfs/literature/Andor_iXon3_EMCCD_Brochure.pdf (pages 34-35)