Early high-speed cameras used photographic film to record the high-speed events, but have been superseded by entirely electronic devices using an image sensor (e.g. a charge-coupled device (CCD) or a MOS active pixel sensor (APS)), typically recording over 1 000 frames per second onto DRAM, to be played back slowly to study the motion for scientific study of transient phenomena.
[2] A high-speed camera can be classified as: A normal motion picture film is played back at 24 frames per second, while television uses 25 frames/s (PAL) or 29.97 frames/s (NTSC).
[8] Television series such as MythBusters and Time Warp often use high-speed cameras to show their tests in slow motion.
High-speed cameras are frequently used in science in order to characterize events which happen too fast for traditional film speeds.
Biomechanics employs such cameras to capture high-speed animal movements, such as jumping by frogs and insects,[15] suction feeding in fish, the strikes of mantis shrimp, and the aerodynamic study of pigeons' helicopter-like movements [16] using motion analysis of the resulting sequences from one or more cameras to characterize the motion in either 2-D or 3-D.
Frame-by-frame analysis of a sodium/potassium alloy exploding in water, combined with molecular dynamic simulations, suggested that the initial expansion may be the result of a Coulomb explosion and not combustion of hydrogen gas as previously thought.
The imaging speed is mainly limited by the phosphor screen decay rate and intensity gain which has a direct relationship on the camera's exposure.
[20] In 1950 Morton Sultanoff, a physicist for the U.S. Army at Aberdeen Proving ground, invented a super high-speed camera that took frames at one-millionth of a second, and was fast enough to record the shock wave of a small explosion.
[21] High Speed digital cameras have been used to study how mines dropped from the air will deploy in near-shore regions,[22] including development of various weapon systems.