What is an industrial camera?
Industrial cameras are found nowadays in a variety of areas, especially in production monitoring and a range of complicated measurement tasks. Quality control is another field that relies strongly on industrial image processing. Digital industrial cameras are generally more robust than the standard digital cameras used for vacation snapshots. For starters, they must be capable of handling an entirely different set of external influences, such as applications in areas with high ambient temperatures.
There are other differences as well: The image quality in industrial cameras is often higher than that found on a "normal" camera, since highly detailed images are frequently required for specialized measurement tasks. The familiar elements of a digital camera — such as a viewfinder, shutter release and flash — are nowhere to be found on industrial cameras. These cameras are connected to the computer using an interface. The camera is triggered using an I/O (input/output) cable. Software on the connected PC sends the signal to capture the image. In a figurative sense, this could be called the "shutter release."