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High-Speed Video Free With High-Def Photography
bugzappy notes a development out of the University of Oxford, where scientists have developed a technology capable of capturing a high-resolution still image alongside very high-speed video. The researchers started out trying to capture images of biological processes, such as the behavior of heart tissue under various circumstances. They combined off-the-shelf technologies found in standard cameras and digital movie projectors. What's new is that the picture and the video are captured at the same time on the same sensor. This is done by allowing the camera's pixels to act as if they were part of tens, or even hundreds, of individual cameras taking pictures in rapid succession during a single normal exposure. The trick is that the pattern of pixel exposures keeps the high-resolution content of the overall image, which can then be used as-is, to form a regular high-res picture, or be decoded into a high-speed movie. The research is detailed in the journal Nature Methods (abstract only without subscription).
The technology they're using, which can derive high resolution frames by comparing several successive frames, or analyzing the rolling shutter effect of CMOS cameras is actually already well established in film visual effects.
Visual effects technology company 'The Foundry' have done quite a lot of research into this area already.
Their Furnace F_SmartZoom tool uses motion estimation techniques to analyse successive film frames to derive single frames of higher resolution than any one of the moving frames. And their Rolling Shutter tool uses local motion estimation algorthithms to analyze the staggered frames output by CMOS cameras to reconstruct them into complete un-staggered frames.
It's very interesting that the scientists in Oxford are exploiting this side effect of CMOS cameras by combining both these technologies to derive high resolution, un-blurred frames from multiple CMOS images.
As a side-note, District 9 was shot on the Red camera (a CMOS camera that exhibits this rolling shutter efffect), and a lot of Image Engine's post-production work that film required this sort of analysis so that staggered frames could be reconstructed to enable 3-D motion tracking for the insertion of CG into live action plates.
It's of massive value in astronomy. And it's exactly whatsuperconducting image sensors do.