I am testing a oCamS-1CGN-U camera. For my application, good visual image quality is important. Unfortunately, the images I am getting so far have artifacts that are too severe for my purpose. I think the problem is there is a lot of "read noise" forming vertical red lines (not completely red 255,0,0, but the pixel value is heavily biased). I understand that it is normal for image sensors to have some read noise. Usually read noise can be calibrated by collecting several images with the lens cap on, to measure the noise in a case where the sensor is not receiving any photons. The problem with this camera is that the pattern of read noise changes between when I put the lens cap on and when I take it off. Some of the stronger lines corrupting the image there in images without the lens cap, but disappear as soon as I put the lens cap on. This means it is not possible to do a standard color calibration with bias subtraction to fix these artifacts.

Questions about this:

Is there anything that can be done about this?

Could this be a bug in firmware or FPGA instead of an electrical issue with read noise?

Is this particular unit worse than most? if so can I return it for an exchange?

Thanks.