What is high-speed imaging?
High speed imaging is a tool used to help you see what you can not see with the naked eye.
Most standard television broadcasts are recorded at 30 frames per second (60 half frames to be exact)
or 24 frames per second for motion picture film. High-speed begins anywhere from 60 frames per-second
up to 100,000 frames per-second. Beyond 100,000 fps is considered ultra-high speed.
What is the difference between frames per-second and shutter speed?
Frames per-second, also known as fps, is the frequency that the images are captured at. Shutter speed
is the duration of time that the imaging sensor is exposed to light. Your shutter speed will always be
at least your framerate (1/framerate).
What video output options do I have?
All of our high-speed cameras offer a NTSC/PAL output that can be contoled with the keypad.
Other options include SDI, HDSDI, or playback over the ethernet to a Windows-based PC.
What type of lighting is needed for high-speed video?
When the subject is in direct sunlight, frame-rates can typically exceed 10,000 frames per-second.
Much more beyond this requires artificial lighting.
What format can the images be downloaded in?
The Photron FASTCAM Viewer software supports most image formats. These include bmp, tiff, jpeg, png, Photron RAW, Photron RAWW, avi, ftif, and *mov.
*QuickTime is required for mov compression
What are the PC requirments to run a Photron product?
All of our high-speed cameras we offer are compatible with Windows 2000*, XP, Vista, and 7, both in 32-bit and 64-bit** variations.
Gigabit ethernet is required, a jumbo-frame enabled ethernet card is strongly recomended.
*Microsoft will no longer support Windows 2000 as of July 13, 2010.
**Legacy FireWire (IEEE 1394) cameras are NOT supported by any version of 64-bit.
**IDP-Express R2000/R200-F and LabVIEW is ONLY supported under 32-bit, this is a LabVIEW limitation.
***Tech Imaging recomends Professional editions of Windows or higher.
Why arent there more questions and answers here??
We are currently in the process of adding more Q/A here. If you need a question answered, feel free to call
us in the office. We are here to answer any questions Monday to Friday 9AM - 5PM Eastern Time. 1-800-613-8180
or visit our contact page.