103 Why High-Speed Imaging?

High-Speed Imaging is a diagnostic tool that enables engineers and technicians to analyze high-speed processes. It is a sequential series of images that are recorded at very high frame rates and played back in slow motion capture to allow the viewer to see, measure, and understand events that happen too fast to see with the unaided eye.

Understanding high-speed motion is absolutely critical in today's fast-paced manufacturing and research environments. Using slow-motion video is one of the easiest and most cost effective tools to use in these important applications.

Standard camcorders can only record at 30 frames per second and, as a result, usually miss most of the action in fast-moving events. However, if we use high-speed cameras to record these events at hundreds or even thousands of frames per second, it is a different story. When we play the images back in slow motion, or even stop and examine a single frame, we can see details that go unnoticed at standard video speeds (30 fps).

We can learn a great deal about motion sequences if we record them with High-Speed Imaging Equipment and then study the recordings in slow motion capture - or even as individual frames. We have all seen the slow motion capture images of automobile crash testing on TV commercials that illustrate seat belt safety. Trying to capture and view these images at 30 fps would have far less impact and would be difficult, if not impossible, to analyze in any meaningful way.

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