Scientists Build World's Fastest Camera

[superdorf]

Found this on Slashdot...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/29/1944244&from=rss

This is the interesting part:
Researchers have developed a camera that snaps images less than a half a billionth of a second long and can capture over six million images in a second (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8025211.stm) continuously. Dubbed Serial Time-Encoded Amplified imaging, or Steam, the technique depends on carefully manipulating so-called 'supercontinuum' laser pulses.

[TheLaird]

There must be lots of use for this. It could be used to capture ....

the flapping of a humming bird's wings
does a horse have all 4 feet off the ground when running
a shot of a bullet going through a piece of fruit
the speed at which the word pandemic is used (which is faster than the actual virus spreading)
the time it takes for my wife to spend my salary each month
the time for a football (soccer) team to release a new strip

any other ideas ??

[brit84]

will this be in the 1ds iv?

[asysin2leads]

will this be in the 1ds iv?

Nope, it will probably be in a Nikon first. NOW, let the flaming begin.;)

[NickSimcheck]

Blah, who wants to process all those photos in post...

[bjordan]

Another imaging system known as a streak camera can capture images with an even shorter shutter speed, but they can only capture a fixed number of images and must be triggered to do so for a given event.

The Steam camera, by contrast, can capture images continuously, making it ideal for random events that cannot be triggered.

So the Steam camera is better for shooting streakers than the Streak camera? Something's wrong with this picture.

[sapearl]

Best commentary yet Nick :lol::lol::lol:. And if they're all RAW.......

Blah, who wants to process all those photos in post...

[Karl Johnston]

6 million photos in one second?

So...? Now we need sandisk to come out with a 1000 terabyte CF card to make this usable in our DSLRs! :D

[Jethro790]

Great, so instead of 500 or so crap images I have after a shoot, now I'd have a few bazillion of them. Forget a bigger hard drive, I'd need a bigger recycle bin.

[neliconcept]

mise well call it a video camera then

[xxloverxx]

And one day you import your images only to find you have specks of sensor dust on every single one of them...and you planned to print them!

Have fun post processing =D

[FlyingPhotog]

And one day you import your images only to find you have specks of sensor dust on every single one of them...and you planned to print them!

Have fun post processing =D

Batch Sync "Develop Settings" in LR FTW...! :lol:

[robtek]

The sensor's effective pixels count mentioned was only 2500, which is an image 50x50 or so. Not going to be useful for most applications except a rare few.

[superdorf]

I imagine that this technology would look something like this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/8040687.stm

[nuffi]

The sensor's effective pixels count mentioned was only 2500, which is an image 50x50 or so. Not going to be useful for most applications except a rare few.


So based on moore's law, in about 20 years it will be able to take 6 million one megapixel images in a second.

Big enough to show detail for a wide range of purposes.

And if they figure out how to quadrupel the number of pixels by quartering the number of shots per second, then that would give it a huge range

[Thalagyrt]

Are you guys kidding about this not being useful? This has so many scientific applications it's ridiculous.

[Fast Guy]

I'd imagine it'd be useful for crash testing and impact testing like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7eI4vvlupY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPEAWY8AEX8

[Thalagyrt]

More useful for medical purposes such as watching cells mutate in an irradiated lab sample, etc. This is not for taking pictures or video in any traditional sense.

[Jam71868]

Sure... 6 million shots per second.... but does it have 58 focus points? If not... worthless camera.

[JasonRussell]

Im gonna need a bigger computer :(