Raspberry Pi currently sell two types of camera board: an 8MP device and a 12MP High Quality (HQ) camera. The 8MP device is also available in NoIR form without an IR filter. The original 5MP device is no longer available from Raspberry Pi. The specifications of all the devices can be found here.
All Raspberry Pi cameras are capable of taking high-resolution photographs, along with full HD 1080p video, and can be fully controlled programmatically. This documentation describes how to use the camera in various scenarios, and how to use the various software tools.
For installation information, please see this page.
Once installed, there are various ways the cameras can be used. The simplest option is to use one of the provided camera applications. There are four Linux command-line applications installed by default (e.g. raspistill): using these is described on this page.
You can also programatically access the camera using the Python programming language, using the picamera library.
Advanced features, along with some hints and tips, are described in the following pages:
- Using RAW
- Long exposures
- Directly accessing sensors
- Using V4L2 to access the camera (e.g. Using Pi cameras as webcams)
- Removing the HQ camera IR filter
libcamera is a new Linux API for interfacing to cameras. Raspberry Pi have been involved with the development of libcamera and are now using this sophisticated system for new camera software. This means Raspberry Pi are moving away from the firmware-based camera image processing pipeline (ISP) to a more open system.