Like a camera, most spectrometers allow the user to select the exposure time and quantity of samples to be collected. Setting the integration time and the number of scans is an important step. Too long of an integration time can cause saturation. (In a camera photo this could appear as a large white spot, where as in a spectrometer it can appear as a dip, or cut off peak) Too short an integration time can generate noisy results (In a camera photo this would be a dark or blurry area, where as in a spectrometer this may appear are spiky or unstable readings).
The exposure time is the time the light falls on the sensor during a measurement. Adjusting this parameter changes the overall sensitivity of the instrument, as changing the exposure time does for a camera. The minimum integration time varies by instrument with a minimum of .5 msec and a maximum of about 10 minutes per scan. A practical setting is in the range of 3 to 999 ms depending on the light intensity.
The integration time should be adjusted for a signal which does not exceed the maximum counts (16-bit CCD has 65,536, 14-bit CCD has 16,384). Saturation occurs when the integration time is set too high. Typically, a peak signal of about 85% of the maximum is a good target and yields a good S/N ratio. (ex: 60K counts or 16K counts respectively)
The number of scans indicates how many measurements will be averaged. Other things being equal, the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the collected spectra improves by the square root of the number N of scans averaged. For example, if 16 spectral scans are averaged, the SNR is improved by a factor of 4 over that of a single scan.
S/N ratio is measured at the input light level which reaches the full scale of the spectrometer. It is the ratio of signal counts Cs (usually at full scale) to RMS (root mean square) noise at this light level. This noise includes the dark noise Nd, the shot noise Ns related to the counts generated by the input light and read out noise. This is the best S/N ratio one can get from the spectrometer for light measurements.