At first glance, it looks like a good library for starting out with Vision. It's a very Pythonic library. I especially like some of the blatant honesty in their docstrings.
https://github.com/ingenuitas/SimpleCV/blob/master/SimpleCV/...
> def _makeCodebook(self,data,ncodes=128):
> """
> Do the k-means ... this is slow as as shit
> """
It certainly looks easier than starting with OpenCV alone.
Moreover, Ingenuitas looks like an interesting company. Open source solutions for manufacturing is certainly nothing I've heard of before. Definitely something to keep an eye on.