High-speed digital photography
4 October 2006
Opto-Electronics
Information from Measuring Instruments Technology
High-speed photography has many applications today. It can be used to measure shells emerging from barrels of any calibre weapon, it can be used to study high speed machinery, and it can be used in biometrics. Other applications include its use in the study of vehicle impact testing, seat-belt effectiveness, and studying the expansion of car air-bags.
The big advantage of digital high-speed cameras over the traditional film camera is that what has been recorded can be viewed within minutes of the test. And should the event not have been recorded correctly, another test can immediately be made after altering say, the exposure time of the camera if the previous imagery was too dark.
The recently-released Photron Fastcam APX-RS high speed digital camera is capable of imaging at 3000 fps with a resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels. This imagery can be produced in full colour or monochrome. At higher speeds, the number of pixels used decreases, but at 512 x 512 pixels the frame rate is 10 000 fps. This can be pushed to 250 000 fps for 128 x 16 pixels resolution.
These pictures from a video show a softdrink can being pierced by an arrow. This was photographed by the APX camera (2000 fps at 1028 x 1028 pixels). Only half of the screen is being used
The standard memory supplied with the camera is 2 GB, expandable to 16 GB, allowing 4,1 seconds to be recorded full frame at 3000 frames per second. As the camera operates continuously, the trigger button can, in most cases, be pushed after the event has visually happened and it will still be recorded.
With digital imagery, the analysis after the event is also much easier to study. There are many software programmes available to make calculations. Film cameras of course, are still the answer where very high framing rates (up to several million) are required at high resolution.
The Fastcam APX-RS is easy to deploy and as it runs continuously, alignment with the object under test is simple. Photron manufactures a full range of digital cameras with varying operating speeds and number of pixels. Some are made with PCI cards so that one's own computer can be used to directly record the imagery.
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