Image Processing Basics: Illumination

We are at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the "century of the photon." Machine vision is an accepted technology on the factory floor in virtually all manufacturing industries and in a number of important non-industrial areas. But where are the groundbreaking innovations, the spectacular developments, the awesome achievements leading into new, unheard-of regions of knowledge and business?
In the past 10 years, we neither saw the equivalent of the landing on the moon nor of the flight over the Atlantic Ocean, and the invention of the Laser celebrated its already 50th anniversary this year. Instead of picking a single highlight, this article focuses upon a continuous development within the last decade, which seems to be quite unspectacular at first sight: the growing awareness of the fundamental relevance of lighting for machine vision.