High Speed Photography - Video - Rotating Mirror CCD

Rotating Mirror CCD

Rotating Mirror film camera technology has been adapted to take advantage of CCD imaging by putting an array of CCD cameras around a rotating mirror in place of film. The operating principals are substantially similar to those of rotating mirror film cameras, in that the image is relayed from an objective lens to a rotating mirror, and then back to each CCD camera, which are all essentially operating as a single shot cameras. Framing rate is determined by the speed of the mirror, not the read-out rate of the imaging chip, as in single chip CCD and CMOS systems. This means these cameras must necessarily work in a burst mode, as they only can capture as many frames as there are CCD devices (typically 50-100). They are also much more elaborate (and therefore costly) systems than single chip high-speed cameras. These systems do, however, achieve the maximum combination of speed and resolution, as they have no trade-off between speed and resolution. Typical speeds are in the millions of frames per second, and typical resolutions are 2 to 8 megapixels per image. These types of cameras were introduced by the beckman whitley company and later purchased and made by Cordin Company.