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).

Comments

I've actually thought about this...

[pushing-robot]

...and how eventually cameras will not have a "shutter" as we know it but will simply keep track of how each pixel was illuminated at each moment in time. Of course, shutterless sensors are already in widespread use; we call them "eyes", and they have the same benefits that TFA describes: Your brain can observe low-detail fast-moving objects and high-detail static objects at the same time without having to reconfigure anything. Consequentially, shutterless cameras would have the side benefit of better approximating biological vision.

The ultimate dream would be a truly holographic sensor that records exactly where, when, and at what angle each photon hit the sensor, so that the zoom, exposure time, and focus can be changed in post-processing (as well as a lot of other cool stuff).