Taking the art of photography a notch higher, researchers at Sweden’s Lund University developed a camera, which can capture five trillion images in a second or moments as short as 0.2 trillionths of a second.
These extraordinary capabilities of the new camera dubbed FRAME or Frequency Recognition Algorithm for Multiple Exposures, has earned it the title of the fastest camera in the world.
However, the camera is not a DSLR or Digital Single Lens Reflex one, but a film camera. Nevertheless its super-fast capabilities will assist scientists in recording rapid processes, which occur during experiments in biomedicine, chemistry, physics, and biology.
FRAME: Fastest Camera In the World
The FRAME camera uses what scientists call “coded light” instead of regular light used normal cameras deploy. This coded light is basically a flash, which is provided to the camera in the form of an encryption.
Therefore, every time the coded light falls on the picture’s subject — for instance a chemical reaction in a burning flame — the subject will emit a response signal in the exact same coding.
The light flashes that follow the first one have different codes embedded. These signals are then captured in a single picture. The image signals — in the form of codes — are later separated from each other with the help of an encryption key on the computer.
Interested users will be able to get this unique technology within two years as a German company has already developed a prototype of the camera.
The Technology Behind The Fastest Camera In The World
FRAME’s technology has been developed based on an original algorithm. This algorithm helps the camera capture many coded images in a single photograph rather than clicking pictures one by one, sequentially. Once the coded images are taken, the camera seperates them into a video sequence later.
In layman terms, the object that is being filmed or photographed has be exposed to laser flashes of light. Each of these laser flashes define a unique code and as the filmed object reflects the light, the signals are collected to form a single photograph.
Uses Of The Fastest Camera in The World
Scientists will be the first to initially use the fastest film camera in the world to get an in-depth understanding of many of nature’s quickest processes. Many of these moments occur on femtosecond and picosecond scales, which are the minuscule parts of a time second.
“This does not apply to all processes in nature, but quite a few, for example, explosions, plasma flashes, turbulent combustion, brain activity in animals and chemical reactions. We are now able to film such extremely short processes. In the long term, the technology can also be used by industry and others,” Elias Kristensson, the co-author of the study, asserted.
To illustrate the same, Kristensson and team succeeded in filming how light, which is a collection of photos, travels a distance equivalent to a paper’s thickness. In the real world, the process takes just picoseconds. However, in the film the FRAM camera captured, the process was slowed down a trillion times.
The study’s findings have been published in the journal Light: Science and Applications.
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