Where can I find a High-Speed camera for crash tests and other interesting things?

Question

I was watching a toy car fall onto some foam and realized, "hey, that would be awesome in slow-mo!" And I see a lot of car crashes and it would be awesome if I can see those in Slow-Mo too!

K any help would be awesome.

10 points to best answer!

Answer 1

stills are easy. buy an electronic flash unit and hotwire it to the shortest possible setting, which is a few microseconds. certain vivitar models are particularly easy to work with (e.g. model 283, an old favourite).

to make movies you either shoot the phenomenon at varying delays then string the stills together, or spend major money on a high speed camera.

Answer 2

If you want to do this in a way that DOESN'T cost thousands of dollars, you can pick up a web camera that runs at 90fps, this isn't suuuper fast (commercial units can see up to 4000fps!, typical camcorders record at 30fps), but its good enough for most things.  I use the Phillips SPC900NC which can be purchased for under $50.  You'll probably need a better capture software than what comes with the camera, I use K3CCD tools.  You'll also need to keep the thing you're imaging very well lit.  Use some spot lights or something. :)

Good luck!

Answer 3

a camera store

Answer 4

Real high speed cameras are specialized, scientific pieces of equipment that are very expensive. Some regular cameras can take slightly slow motion movies, but the special ones used for crash tests cost many thousands of dollars.

Answer 5

Just look for a camera that does more than 30 fps (frames per second).   Keep in mind, with cheaper cameras there's a tradeoff between resolution and frame rate.  If you want high resolution and high frame rate, you'll spend a lot of money.  

Answer 6

They are readily available from professional camera supply companies. Prices start at around $6,000.