I already heard of High Speed Cameras. Anyone could easily and wrongly judge the meaning of this camera by the name. Let me share few things i know about this High Speed cameras. What we do with cameras? Of-Course Photography. Explaining this camera, high speed photography is termed as Science of taking picture in very fast phenomena. To be clear, our normal camera has 50-60fps (Frames Per Second) video capturing capability, which equally compatible for the eyes of the human beings called persistence of vision. But this camera is capable of capturing 200,000,000fps, I mean 200,000,000 pictures for 1 Second video clip. I couldn't believe either, But this is the top "fps" ever achieved in this camera up-to date.
The above picture is "Soap Bubble bursting", a snapshot of Discovery Channel's mind blowing program "Time Warp". One such camera powers "Time Warp". They use High Speed Camera named "FASTCAM SA1.1" manufactured by a Japan based "PHOTRON Inc." , a leading manufacturer of High Definition High Speed Cameras.
This High Speed Photography has its root from earliest 1878 by a British Photographer "Eadweard J. Muybridge". He was the first one to introduce High Speed Photography, for his research, to whether feet of horse were on the ground during a horse training practices. The picture he used to examine his research can be found on the Wiki's page on High Speed Photography.
There were lot more history until these years. The High Speed Photography was also described as Time-Lapse Photography, picture taken every few mins equally and stitch it to make a complete video. We came across such videos in television, showing sun rise to sun set with-in small clip of video. Of-course, a Camera and a Video stitching software is more than enough to make this video, But High Speed Camera uses specific technologies to achieve High Speed Photography.
High Speed Cameras has come across, five(5) Technologies, which were left behind with the one's incompatibility, filled by the other. Vidicon is the oldest and first technology used. This technology suffered "Ghosting effect" and thus with the introduction of CCD's vidicon lose its capability. CCD was the most amazing discovery of digital photographic technology. Then comes the IS-CCD, a corrective technology to former CCD. Then after the invention CMOS Technology, the Digital Photographic technology has pulled out all other technologies. Then recently invented that High Speed Photography is also possible using Infrared and still research are being done.
Taking on the Digital Photography, a normal video capturing is possible through electronic open and close of a shutter which is placed before the camera censor and which also includes the sensor's capture ability within the time, the shutter actually open and close for a period of 50 in a second. This issues makes the High Speed Cameras very difficult to design. Take a quick short look over my video blog to see a Soap Bubble bursting on Discovery Channel's Time Warp program. Cool program rite, the camera that makes cool video takes very tedious time to design and test itself before it came into existence.
Though many Television Network uses this camera for commercial like film making and advertisements. These cameras were specifically designed for Scientific Research, Analysis, add whatever scientific terms you want. Considering Automobile Industry, This camera is an effective tool for vehicle's damage analysis, by hitting the vehicle to a hard material before a camera and then analysis the damage by playing back the video in slow rate. Research Institutes use this camera for describing a scientific action and reaction of a process.
