VC45 is a high- performance monochrome video camera, based on a solid state image sensor. Its 'lens-on-chip' CCD sensor combined with an advanced electronics increases sensitivity by a factor of 4, compared with high standard video cameras. The VC45 is a pixelsyncronous high-resolution camera. An absolute blacklevel is achieved via special darkened reference pixels, yielding a perfect linear relation between light input and output signal.included