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Technology

Click! Ultra-High-Speed Digital Camera 102

Posted by timothy from the tim-eating-an-eclaire dept.
Polo writes: "Remember looking at those photos of bullets going through lightbulbs, apples and playing cards? Well, here is a fascinating digital camera from Visible Solutions that can capture images at over 1000 frames per second (with reduced resolutions up to 32000 fps!) The standard camera has 256M of memory to capture a whopping 2 seconds of video upgradeable to 1G to capture 8 seconds. You can also daisy-chain several cameras with firewire to capture an "event" from many angles. Here is the only slow-motion sequence on their site. What would you capture?" 1GB to capture 8 seconds -- sheesh! I'd like to see real slo-mo a little more affordable, but it takes extremes to create nice middles, eh?
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Click! Ultra-High-Speed Digital Camera More

Click! Ultra-High-Speed Digital Camera

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  • Re:Astronomy ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This would be impossible since the issue with Astronomy is that you need more time to gather enough light to make up an image. Doing so in milliseconds would only give you a very black picture so you could get rid of the atmospheric distortion by take photos in the dark.

  • admit it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You'll do anything to rationalize your porn addiction.

  • Astronomy ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How about home-brew software adaptive optics for astronomy ? Take video at the millisecond/frame speed, and each frame should be atmospheric distortion smear-free (of course it will still be distorted, but it won't have many different distortions superposed) Or is this just rubbish ? Is phase an important issue ?

  • Solution: glasses (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    keeping jism out of the pornstarlets' eyes

    You know what. There's a real high-tech invention for that: glasses.

    Ok, ok, I've got a glass fetish. I probably got it from watching too much the early 90210 with the sexy but delightfully geeky Andrea. My world collapsed when she gave up her glasses later on in the series.

  • Re:Money Shots (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh please. Women in porn love to fuck and suck on camera. That is why they do it. *You* do more damage to women by standing them up on a pedestal. You could be mother teresa and still enjoy dick, you know.

  • Re:Astronomy ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't forget that to get those bullet-through-an-apple shots, they must flood the scene with 10,000W of lighting to get enough photons per frame. Now to get the equivalent amount of light coming from NGC 4321, you'll need a very huge telescope aperture!

  • Re:Woohoo! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Remember one thing, there are two things which determine maximum resolution, one of them affects film, and both affect digital cameras.

    First, there is the question of size of tiny moments of the photograph. In traditional photography this is regulated by the size of the silver grain's on the paper, and on the optical precision of the lenses involved in the camera and development process. In digital photography it is controled by the ability to make a CDC (or similar technology) very small. Infact, the size of the little parts in a CDC are changing in a rapid manner similar to the transistor.

    Digital photography has one downfall, we will soon be able to make a CDC which will get more points per inch than the data enclosed in a traditional photograph, yet, we can't store all of that information easily. Storing information digitally for an image is not very efficient, and requires much memory to store, where an analog signal can store either no information or tons of information in the same short wave. There is no theoretical limit to how much information can be encoded into an analog signal, but there are practical limits to how much information can be extracted from an analog signal.

    There is not going to be much of a difference between digital photography and traditional photography in the near future.

    Don't say I didn't warn you.
  • It's fine that it can take up to 32000 frames pr. second, but it also needs to write thoose 32000 frames, and correct me if i'm wrong but a digicam today spends a few secs saving each frame....so if the camera needs to save the images anywhere it will only be able to take a picture or two each second..... Then the remaining 29998 won't do any good when they aren't saved...

    And even if you could save them you still don't have a harddrive which can save 256 megabytes in a second.... NO harddrive in the world is so fast...Even flashmemory etc. arent that fast....
  • Are you sure? Classifying an Intercontinetal Ballistic Missile as an assault weapon seems a stretch of imagination to me.
  • what nation is that?

    _assault weapons_??

    switzerland!
  • As long as women choose this over even the most dignified forms of poverty it will continue.

    What would you prefer to do with your life. Star in Porn flicks where you have sex with whatever the director sends in and pretend to enjoy it for $500 a day ( wild guess ) or clean bathrooms for $250 a weak ?

    These porn actresses have simply chosen one of the many forms of prostitution available pretty girls. Others exactly like them are standing on the corner all night or seducing the boss at work or marrying wealthy men they don't like.

    I don't feel much sympathy. Not while she has options other than starvation.

    BTW: What about the men in this business ? They are off whoring just like the women. Except that they make LESS. Reversing the trend that exists everywhere else.

  • That appears to be one use for it.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • This is kind of what was used during the filming of The Matrix. A cluster of high-speed digital cameras is placed around the perimeter of the object being filmed, in a semi-circle (or, hidden behind a green "blue screen", in a circle). It allowed them to "slow" time down, move the camera angle around 720 degrees, go "backwards" in time, etc. I suspect that's what this camera is designed for (especially considering the ability to daisy chain the cameras)...
  • hard drives capable of 20MB/sec sustained shouldn't be hard to find; I have several. So, in order to get 1,000 frames of 250kb each on disk in a second, we only need 12.5 drives in parallel. Since slower drives are cheaper, let's just go for the case, and put 24 IDE drives behind some nasty little multiplexer/RAID controller deal. After all, portability isn't really the primary goal here...

    I started writing that to be a smartass, but having given it a thought I bet it could be done, and cheaply enough to be feasible. Priced against RAM in those quantities, lots of stuff is cheap.

  • >I would...
    >...take a picture of a snail moving accross the >ground at 32,000 frames per second.

    How is this flamebait???!!?!

    Actually snail movement is quite interesting.
    But I don't think you would need 32,000 frames
    per second to image that.

    400 fps would be enough. The only problem is resolution however. The snail secreting its mucus
    would be extremely intresting to watch up close.
    Of course another thing that would be intresting to watch with snails is what they do on a hot frying pan.

    And if you thought that this was a troll post, it's not. It's actually a weak attempt at humor.
  • Just what one needs for tuning explosive configurations for compressing lumps of certain metals.

    The problem with conventional high-speed cameras is that they need protection gainst blast. If you don't mind losing the camera, you are only limited with electronic optics by the speed that you can get the image to remote storage!

  • There are pictures around of explosives going off.
    I have not seen any on the net, but I saw a bunch of frames in a mag a few years ago that were of a "pineapple" grenade.

    It was quite impressive, for the first few frames it just sits there (no pin, no paddle). Then the top of the grenade *dissapears* and it sits there for one or two frames more. Then the grenade body begins to expand and swell. The grenade actually becomes cylindrical, looking more like a can of soup than a grenade at this point. Then it fractures along the "pineapple" lines and begins to break up. There were no more frames than that. I would guess that the camera was destroyed at that point. (Or hopefully behind some VERY heavy glass).
  • Mr_Flibble:Heh, thats just what I need! An array of these cameras each with 1 GB of ram. Then you could fire bullets at me and I could have the movie pictures work just like the Matrix!!!
    Slashdot:That won't work Flibble you know that was just special effects...
    Mr_Flibble: Nonsense! I have a bunch of geeks here! ESR over there has one of his guns ready. We have the cameras up, this should rock!
    Slashdot: Flibble I don' think that...
    Mr_Flibble: Fire away Eric! (Make certain the cameras are rolling!
    Slashdot:Wait, Flib's STOP!
    ESR:BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG...
    Mr_Flibble Crazyidiot@AOL.com Connection reset by peer...
  • Why did they orient the faucet sideways in that demo gif? I couldn't help but think that the pr0n industry is going to benefit from this technology immensly.

    Ron Jeremy in slow mo:

    "Sqqqqqqqqquuuuuuuuuuuuiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrtttttttt t"
  • Finely ground pepper does tend to make me sneeze, if I inhale it gently. The pepper must be fine enough to float in the air, though, like a little dust cloud. Most pepper grinders produce far coarser particles.

    In my experience, the sneeze effect of inhaled pepper dust floating in the air is comparable to that of inhaled mustard flour floating similarly, and far greater than that of chalk dust.
  • Oh fuck off, nobody forces them to be porno stars.

    If i had a 6 pack and/or a giant 10" dick I'd be a pornstar myself. Why do you people insist that it's degrading? Are you so afraid of your own sexuality that you can't admit that people enjoy having sex, and a lot of people enjoy watching people enjoying having sex?

    Bloody holier-than-thou attitudes.

    Gfunk
  • couple the high speed cam with something that auto-detects microscopic changes in the facial expression and you have a super lie detector.... scary.
    i think it would be endlessly interesting just to capture people talking and replaying that in super-slomo. be it the debates between the candidates or whatever....
  • The higher-end cameras are coming out with some interesting features. Here [dpreview.com] is a review of the olympus E100RS digital camera. It captures at 15 frames per second, but the cool thing is that it features pre-capture. I guess it continuously takes pictures to a buffer, then dumps them when you press the shutter button. You can take photos backwards in time!
  • aren't you confusing frame rate and shutter speed?
  • Like This? [ctnews3d.com] (exploding grenade photo near bottom of page)

    Also interesting are These. [rit.edu] (several high-speed photos - playing cards and fruits being shot)

    These aren't video though - that would add an extra dimension.
  • Think of that X-Files simpsons episode...

    It's so hipnotic.

    Watch that blubber fly!
    --
    Laptop006 (RHCE: That means I know what I'm talking about! When talking about linux at least...)
  • Watch Independence day... the explosion of the city was done with gasoline-laden air, filmed at very slow speed

  • Here are a few things I would like to see at about 4000 fps (if that would be enough):

    1. A bullet being fired
    2. A hand grenade being detonated
    3. An underwater explosion (at high res, preferrably)
    4. A stone being crushed under a train (Think about it: It would be quite cool)
    5. CmdrTaco.
  • however, if it was a fairly predictable event, like a neighbor's sprinkler head getting blown off by water pressure (preferably while they work on it),

    Hmmm. "fairly predictable"? It sounds like you know more about this than you're willing to share. I'm glad I'm not your neighbor :-)
  • Coincidentally enough, that's exactly what their demo animation [visiblesolutions.com] looks like, only inoffensively, like how they always use blue liquid in diaper commercials. If any blue liquid ever emits from me or my loved ones we're going straight to the hospital, diaper or no diaper.

    --
  • Gonna get me some Glasers [5sigma.com] for my home defense rounds, or at least for the next drunken family reunion. That looked fun!

    --
  • I used one of these in a class at MIT, and the problem with the frame rates > 1000 is that the image is cut down proportionally. So at 3000 f/s, you only get 1/3 the image size (cut in third in one dimension). For 6000, thats 1/6!

    We were shooting a pencil breaking, and we could just barely see it clearly at 3000fps, and it was pretty challenging to fit it into the 1/3 screen size.

  • I'm assuming (I haven't done the math) that a hard drive probably couldn't keep up with the capture rate. Thus they have to stick to ram. Maybe some other in between memory might work (flash cards? how fast are they?)
  • There's a fair bit of Federal legislation banning this sort of thing, defining "assault weapon" as the combination of at least X out of Y listed characteristics. These characteristics include, if memory serves, things like ammo capacity (perhaps referring to the largest clip that fits?), whether or not it can take a bayonet, presumably whether it's semi-/full-auto, and so forth.

    Don't expect to be able to legally import, say, a full-auto Kalashnikov or FN-FAL. IIRC, you probably can't legally import a semi-auto AK variant, either, and likewise semi-auto shotguns (ala the "Street Sweeper") are also banned for importation if memory serves.
  • Apples and oranges, I know, but just imagine the possible implications for the gaming scene... Obsessives arguing over whether the human eye can tell the difference between 32,000 and 100,000 frames per second, full-screen anti-aliasing still causing a big performance hit -- down to 10,000 fps, the Voodoo7 criticized for only reaching 20,000 fps, the mind reels. Uh, sorry.
  • I wanna film a low b string on an electric bass
    being plucked at the 12th fret (and other harmonic nodes)from a view behind the bridge and low with the bridge at the bottom of frame and the nut at the top of frame.Watch the pythagorian groove.

  • I'm sure this camera is useful for science, but forget about it being used for movies (or even video). The "high" resolution images are only 512x512 pixels.

    I really wish that Sony and some of the other DV camera makers would add high frame rate captures to their cameras. Nothing NEAR this fast, but just 45 or 60 frames a second, just to enhance the motion a bit (lot's of movies and commercials use slightly slowed down images for emotional effect). I know that DV can handle that speed (you can 2x and 4x speed dub tapes), and I know the CCD's can capture that fast (they go up to 1000th's of a second).
  • Well even if it could, you would be limited by the refresh rate of your monitor.
  • We use 240 frame per second infrared cameras to track bats in the flight room. They're expensive....

    I happen to have an excess stock of high quality bats, and I could probably let them go for a pretty good rate assuming you buy the lot of them. I hate to think you're getting a raw deal on your bats after spending all that money on your camera. Contact me if you're interested.

  • The sensor for this camera was made by the Belgian company FillFactory [fillfactory.com], a recent spin-off of the micro-electronics research facility IMEC [www.imec.be]

    They have a range of sensor, but they can also design a sensor from scratch to your specifications
  • Not fast enough for WHAT?

    Sounds pretty fast to me.

  • Did you bother to read the accompanying text?

    I didn't think so.

    Go eat mud and leave us alone.
  • If I remember correctly, so long as it's not manufactured in the US, any American can buy an assault weapon built elsewhere.

    If I don't remember correctly (or if someone just has an ax to grind) I'm sure I'll hear about it.
  • I'm surprised that more observations of this nature have not appeared.

    I presume to make a suggestion for your .sig?

    unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;less;more ;less;more;less;more;yes;umount;sleep

  • read his post again, he said "for each 1GB shot, you can download the image to disk and shoot some more". This would be for after the first capture, before the second.
  • The traditional problem with ultra-high speed photography is getting the film to expose quickly enough--and the way you solve that problem is by using an obscene amount of lighting to get the shot. The intense heat produced by the lights actually puts a limit on the shots that can be taken--things which melt or distort when heated can't really be filmed in traditional slow-motion. Since digital removes the film exposure problem, perhaps this problem's days are numbered?

    Of course, the digital sensors might still need a lot of light to work at higher speeds. Does anyone know for sure?

  • You seem to be a bit disappointed that it can only hold 8 seconds with the one gig upgrade.. firstly, what benefit do you gain from watching 8 seconds of video at 32,000 frames _per_ second ? Probably none... But here is the fun part, play it back at a regular 24/30 fps and you've got 1000 seconds/16 minutes or so of playback time ..... Its HELLUVA fun watching the hummingbird's wings at that fps :> Its a helluva day to overuse the word helluva.
  • Is anyone else tired of all these people who talk about Beowulf clusters? They are nothing new and im still waiting on all the specs for Beowulf 2.

    Just my .02 cents

  • this is probably overkill for most of the stuff I'd like to do with high speed cameras, but here's my ideas:

    web cams that have high enough frame rate to act as input devices to games and other apps. Replacing a mouse with gestures.

    Sports simulations games where you actually use the real equipment, and the camera calculates precisely where the golf/tennis/baseball should go.
  • Eptesicus fuscus, Myotis septentrionalis, or Myotis lucifugus. I'll need a supply for my lab in England. (I did my dissertation on modeling bat behavior.)
  • He's using a fairly cheap Sony "Handycam" to do his filming, the model he names is the TR-101 hi8. Having problems finding that specific model online, so it may be discontinued.

    Yes. It is now discontinued, at least for several years. The CCD-TR101 is a Hi8 single CCD camcorder which was considered the best single chip (short of industrial) Hi8 camera ever made. They're great little cameras with excellent picture quality.

    Calum

  • Yeah, I must stand still and wait for the acquisition for nearly a full second with my good not-so-old Fujifilm FinePix 1700 Z if I want to have a non-null chance to get an acceptable still image.... So I'm eargerly waiting for this high-speed capture components to be available for normal still digital cameras...
  • Thanks for the lucid explanation.
  • I remember one day long ago wathcing a thing on TV about filming a golf club hitting a golf ball. If I remember corectly, they were filming at 10,000 fps. Do they make film cameras that go that fast, or did it have to be digital?
  • I'd film one of those deadlines, which make a wooshing sound as they fly by. Everyones talking about them, but I aint never sene one!
  • We've done the "shooting the card sideways" shot just recently.

    What, MIT has guns in school? How come the Mass. legislature lets that continue? Don't they know that some deranged engineer might climb into the clock tower and start picking off his fellow students?



    </SARCASM>

  • I'd like to capture a vmstat on a server getting slashdotted
    --------
  • keep in mind that 1 second of 32,000 fps video is equivilent to 16 minutes of 32 fps...so, even if they compressed it with mpg, 1 dv tape would hold at most 3.5 seconds...maybe 7 seconds with mpg4? im not sure of the ratio of mpg1 to mpg4. :-) i think im in love with a camera!
  • people where complaining it would only hold several seconds in gigabytes of memory....my point is that it was actually holding many minutes of normal playback...so if they were compressing all the frames, you would still have a MASSIVE amount of information
  • TRIPOD! The worst thing that can possibly happen to a slow-motion capture is a bad case of monkey-cam. Get those tripods, use them often!
  • Ah, but the video would be worthless in a forensic sense. Since the reference points are in motion, you can't take an accurate velocity reading.

  • couple the high speed cam with something that auto-detects microscopic changes in the facial expression and you have a super lie detector.... scary.

    That wouldn't work very well with politicians. You'd need about two to three orders of magnitude more memory than a mere 1G, and have to design a filter that could repeatedly dump at high speed the more subtle lies to leave enough room for all the others.

  • With Extensive use of the 1gb feature it would make it self affordable, they use large ammounts of film for 8 seconds of slow motion, coupled with the ease of transfering digital media it makes this quite the nifty little tool. Car companies and the like will now have even faster tools when doing safty tests and such which will with out a doubt help (even if a little bit) the price of things.
  • We popped water balloons, bounced water balloons and bounced balls off the ground.

    Hmm... let me guess.. this MIT outreach program was for special education students??

    CoRkEy LoVEs To BouNCe a BaLL!! YaY!!!!

  • Go here [masdroperscientific.com] to see cameras capable of 20,000 fps, and others with up to 2k by 2k pixel resolution.
  • I think xmorph wouldn't be able to do a very good job of figuring out the motion vectors of the objects (or rather of the cameras in relation to the objects) and you'd get a very fuzzy morph.

    If you talk to Timeslice Films or Snell & Wilcox you might be able to license their software for a few grand for film-quality results.

  • It would be cool if these could accept a square wave input were able to take shots off phase. That way, you could have a master camera sending out a square wave and the other three taking shots at 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 off phase effectively quadrupling your sample rate with four cameras or N-rupling your sample rate with N cameras.
  • Did anyone find a pricetag for these things?
    Also is seem to remember reading about Steve Mann having a highspeed camera attached to his wearable. Supposedly it allowed him to read the writing on the tires of passing cars. Anyone got a link?
  • Also is seem to remember reading about Steve Mann having a highspeed camera attached to his wearable. Supposedly it allowed him to read the writing on the tires of passing cars.

    All you need for that is a fast shutter (and a wide open lens, or lots and lots of light). A $300 film camera can do that, and $500 or $1000 digitals ought to be able to do that (the $500 if it happens to pick a fast shutter speed, the $1000 if you set to shutter priority and pick a fast shutter).

  • What's neat about this though is it gives you unlimited amounts of trials without worrying about having to set up your recording equipment every time, and spend shitloads on film. Say someone wants to observe a split second phenomenon in nature, they could use this camera to do their trials and get data to work with, then their 'master' version of the recording can be done on super high quality (expensive) film.

    I'd love to film a sneeze with this thing :)
  • Actually what you said struck a note with what this article had me thinking. They're only capturing 512x512 images, in greyscale, with the use of a strobe system that can keep up with that kind of frame rate.

    I wonder how fast you could reprogram an off-the shelf camera to capture super low resolution greyscale...pretty damn fast I'm betting if you can get one of those things to run MAME [slashdot.org]. If you can take over the camera at a low enough level you could probably get it to go very fast at 512x512.

    Then just hook up your strobe system and go. I haven't finished exploring their site but it really sounds like nothing more than the strobe doing the freezing (unlike in straight high-speed film where the shutter speed alone does the freezing) and then the digital camera just having to be able to write captures to disk as fast as the strobe can go.

    And even if you can't hack the cameras that deep, with the crazy stuff PIC hackers are doing it can't be too long before some nutcase decides to create a do it yourself digital camera. Probably using the guts of a disposable camera. Hmmm....I need some napkins, I feel an idea coming on.

    Seriously though I need to crunch some numbers and see just how much time it would take to do a stripped down streamlined capture at that resolution with an off the shelf CCD. I need to go find some spec sheets and my calculator.

  • Same here. In 1996 I used something very similar as part of an MIT highschool outrech program. We popped water balloons, bounced water balloons and bounced balls off the ground.

    One thing we found was that a billiard ball bouncing off of industrial plastic tial flooring spends less than 1/6000 seconds on the ground and pulls many thousand Gs :-)

    --Ben

  • But does it play well with Linux?

    These fast cameras have been around for quite a while. For a long time (>10years) they were very expensive and did not improve much. We used an old Kodak Ektapro for a long time which apparently cost about $100k or so many years ago. Recently the market has heated up and we got the Kodak Motion Corder [masdkodak.com] for a mere $30k a couple years ago. It has finally hit a price point where a lot of people doing research can afford them. I know quite a few people who have one in fact. Now that people can afford them, there is a significant market for them and they are quickly getting better and cheaper.

    ** LINUX **

    I've been doing remote control and video download from Kodak Motion Corders(up to 10,000 frames/sec at reduced resolution) under Linux for almost two years. I wrote the serial communications and SCSI data transfer myself, including a GTK front end, which means it is fully functional, but just barely ;) You can download it here [sourceforge.net].

    Interestingly, almost every person I've met who owns a Motion Corder is using my software under Linux instead of the DOS/Windows based software it ships with. In fact, the availability of Linux-based software was the reason a number of them chose this camera over the competitors.

    Dan

  • The also used a very fast movie camera at the end (for instance, in the shot of neo dodging, right from behind him) because the camera "view" stays there. I think there were only something like 320fps or something like that

  • The true geek will set up stop motion photography Web Cams in his home office, record himself coding, add in a cool techno soundtrack and stream it out to the world.

    Maybe enchance it a litte and have his fingers dodge virtual bullets as they dance across the keyboard...
  • I wonder if OSHA has a standard for this...

    --
  • I always wanted to see the flash point of any explosion, this will finally give me the ability to see it. The fact that it requires so much RAM is insane, but it makes sense 1000fps X 8 seconds = 8000images (depending on quality). I think it should come with a 40GB drive. That way for each 1GB shot, you can download the image to disk and shoot some more.
  • 32000fps is not fast enough?
  • Their camera can handle up to 1000 frames per second, now lets see if their web site can handle 1000 hits per second.

    acm
  • I think it would be more realistic to imagine a Kodak Kluster of these things.
  • A toy for anyone who ever blows stuff up.. Potato cannons, grit trucks, exploding pumpkins.. All would be far cooler in ultraslomo :)

    --
    It's a .88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
  • Since the porn industry is usually an early adopter of new technologies, I can just imagine the type of slow motion money shots that are gojng to start showing up in porns now. Eww.

    Then again, perhaps they'll use this technology to examine the physics of a money shot so they can develop new techniques for keeping jism out of the pornstarlets' eyes.

    Just another case of technology making the world a better place.

  • Now I can take bad vacation videos of my family at disney world and post them online - but the videos will have a super-high framerate!!! Sweet!!!

    But seriously, high-speed digital videos aren't as useful as high-speed film because film is at such a high resolution that the digital-ness of the new camera cannot offset it.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Possibly true, the prototyping nature of this camera would be sweet for something random and usually repeatable like a sneeze (even though that pepper trick in cartoons doesn't work). However, if it was a fairly predictable event, like a neighbor's sprinkler head getting blown off by water pressure (preferably while they work on it), film would be nice to have the extra resolution to capture every particle of dirt flying up from the ground and sandblasting their face.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Know what would be sweet - if you could get these cameras, then blow up a crappy computer (I won't start a holy war), and post the video on your website. But, that whole plan requires insane amounts of money. Therefore, you can just type out a fabrication for almost nothing.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • We use 240 frame per second infrared cameras to track bats in the flight room. They're expensive, and memory is the big issue, not just for the frame count, but also for the picture resolution. This looks interesting.
  • It seems that people are always amazed at the quality of digital, but then it only points out the glaring short-comings of the media. The pictures of bullets going through apples, etc, we're shot with conventional film, at a much faster speed that 1/1000 of a second.

    In fact, they've used electro-magneto shutters, to capture atomic bomb tests at a shutter speed of 1/1,000,000 of a sec.

    I'm all for digital. It processes quicker, and is enviromentally clean, but whenever it hits a milestone, those who have never used the traditional media compare the two, and make us all look bad.

  • Feminists who oppose porn are hypocrits. The women in porn CHOOSE to do what they do for a living, and are VERY well compensated for it (they make much more than the men, by the way). Why does having sex reduce a women to a piece of meat? Perhaps your the one reducing her.
  • I saw this on TV (or HBO?)

    These (or such like) cameras can be arranged to circumference the action scene and then the images from consecutive cameras can be put in a timeline to make a movie of a bullet slicing a playing card while the viewer goes "around" the scene. Also it may be possible to super slow the instance where the bullet starts piercing and as the viewer goes around at 30 fps, take the bullet out super fast! a la Trinity doing that kick.

  • Have you ever noticed subliminally very fleeting expressions on the faces of people who've just been surprised? For instance, consider the expression on the face of a guy who is suddenly surprised with the news that his expensive imported sports car has just been towed and accidentally sent to the crusher, where large bags of white powder spurted out their contents just before the huge metal lid crashed down on the car once and for all. A camera like this could get that expression.

    It could also get the fleeting expression on the face of a man who comes home late and is suddenly shocked by his suspicious wife who has just returned early from a business trip, and who abruptly asks him where's he's been. A camera like this could capture a very brief, but weird expression that could upon later, leisurely (but not loving, no indeed) attention prove to be very incriminating.

    Personally, I'd like to see this used to capture really cool candid expressions on the faces of political candidates, when they think they're off camera. Heh-heh ....

  • Or imagine how well you'll be able to capture the fear and grief in the woman's eyes as she gets pounded and pounded, her lids fluttering and her pupils growing, dilating, her world coming down about her ears as she is converted into raw flesh, flesh made raw by friction, oh the friction, youth liquefied and sold to the highest or lowest bidder, exploding and fading, left to die inside but patted and reassured with a fist of twenties. Just imagine.
  • At 1G of ram, how long until someone slaps on an lcd screen and ports MAME [mame.net] to it? Digdug never had it so good.
  • Actually, anything you shoot at 1000fps or more, even handheld, will look pretty damn smooth and rock steady. Even if your camera POV moved a little or changed direction a few degrees during a five-second timelapse shoot, at 5,000 frames - that motion would at 30 frames per second take nearly 3 minutes to play back, with virtually imperceptible change from frame to frame. It would be sort of like trying to determine the sky darkening near dusk by staring at it continuously. A stable tripod is nice, but not all that important in HS photography. Lighting is an entirely different matter. If the camera is to record so many frames per second, and the CCD or whatever is used, has to clear and re-acquire each in turn, a lot of light must be available on the scene to ensure each of those frames get enough exposure. On my Sony camera, I can only reliably use 1/1000 shutterspeed in bright unfiltered daylight. And we're talking something ten times faster.

    W/r/t tripods and stability, you may be thinking of timelapse photography, where the opposite applies. Tripods are absolutely required for timelapse photography.

  • Yeah! (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @01:47PM (#705717) Homepage Journal
    Since you can daisy chain the cameras, you could do those effects were the camera seems to rotate around a still image. Just arrange your cameras around the image, set them to fire at once (Or near once) and you could probably use a morphing program (like xmorph) to get the in between frames. Cool!

  • This is nothing new (Score:3)

    by BobandMax ( 95054 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @11:26AM (#705718)
    In 1988, I used a Kodak EktaPro system to capture 6,000 frames/second of high-speed video while developing weapons systems. The base speed of the machine was 1,000 frames/second and could be bumped to 6,000 split frames/second if you used the LASER strobe for illumination. Resolution was 192 X 240 with gate limits as low as 10sec.

    We were able to capture reasonably detailed images of transient events with up to thirty seconds in the buffer. The system cost $65k at the time. Maybe this one is cheaper.

    The EktaPro was developed in San Diego at a company later purchased by Kodak.

    "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

  • Poor man's slow-mo movies: (Score:3)

    by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@tr u 7 h . o rg> on Saturday October 14, 2000 @02:44PM (#705719) Homepage
    Check out the work some fellow has done over at this website [5sigma.com].

    He's using a fairly cheap Sony "Handycam" to do his filming, the model he names is the TR-101 hi8. Having problems finding that specific model online, so it may be discontinued. But the Sony cam line runs from anywhere between $500 and $5000. Check out this link [5sigma.com] to get a pretty detailed explanation of how he makes his movies.

    If nothing else, click around on the dude's movies. A ton of fun to watch. :) These aren't superior quality movies, but you can see what happens to stuff when it gets shot with a high power weapon, which is rather entertaining.

  • Re:Matrix like effects (Score:3)

    by bonzoesc ( 155812 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @11:25AM (#705720) Homepage
    The Matrix used a bunch of still cameras arranged in the correct shape to pull that one off. The cameras had their positions selected by a computer, fired by a computer, and they used a computer to do the background and interpolation between the still images. They really don't need a bunch of movie cameras because they already knew what path the viewer would follow.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Money Shots (Score:3)

    by merchant_x ( 165931 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @11:19AM (#705721)
    Since the porn industry is usually an early adopter of new technologies, I can just imagine the type of slow motion money shots that are gojng to start showing up in porns now. Eww.

  • My friend tried this once (Score:3)

    by 3prong ( 241218 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @12:30PM (#705722)
    A long time ago, my friend hacked together a high-speed film camera using school equipment and tried to film a firecracker (small explosive) blowing up a plastic army man. I seem to recall the film went something like this in playback:

    frames 0 to 5000: Static shot of army man with firecracker strapped to it
    frame 5001 to end: nothing in picture

    Speed was nowhere near high enough.

  • there is another way (Score:4)

    by Bullschmidt ( 69408 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @12:51PM (#705723)
    I am currently taking a class in high speed photography at MIT (6.163, or strobe lab), and the cheaper, but not necessarily easier, way is to use a strobe light to flash the event so that it is frozen in time.

    The idea is that your strobe needs to be about 10x brighter than the ambient light (at least). The other alternative is to be in the dark. Then you open the shutter, flash the strobe when you want it, and then close the shutter. The event will be "frozen" when ever you flashed the strobe.

    This, of course, requires a camera with a "bulb" setting so you can leave the shutter open. But its pretty neat. We've done the "shooting the card sideways" shot just recently. Its pretty cool to actually see the event (not just on a photograph!)

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