Casio demos 'world's fastest-shooting' digicam Casio has developed a digital SLR camera capable of capturing 60 shots every second. That's stills - it can capture 640 x 480 video at a stunning 300fps. The company heralded the device as the 'world's fastest-shooting' snapper. Casio's 'world's fastest' camera Casio's 'world's fastest' camera prototype Not that you'll be …
Of course its got to have a huge memory slot ! Else would remind me of UK Broadband Suppliers providing ever increasing speeds and ever increasing caps at 2Megs or such, with contention ratios and FUP to boot. Eat as much as you like, but only 2 slices for during lunch hour !
640x480....what kind of res is that for a "SLR"
I'll stick to the Canon EOS-1D Mark III with 110 full-resolution JPEG images rather than some res that more approriate for a Fisher Price Toy.
If you want the stats on shooting RAW, (A proper mans format) the
start-up time, maximum continuous shooting speed, and shutter release lag.
The fastest digital SLRs
1 Nikon D3 - start-up 0.12sec; 9fps; 37ms shutter release lag
2 Nikon D2HS - 0.2sec; 9fps; 37ms
3 Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 0.2sec; 10fps; 55ms
4 Nikon D300 - 0.13sec; 6fps; 45ms
5 Nikon D2XS - 0.2sec; 5fps; 37ms
There's no obvious reason why it's necessarily NOT an SLR.
SLR means single lens reflex, i.e. look through the viewfinder and you see through the lens. If you lock the mirror up, and happen to have a sensor that can capture video or lots of images together, it doesn't disqualify it from being an SLR. Indeed the new SLRs such as the D3 can do exactly that.
This is a fixed lens camera prototype.
SLR needs a mirror, reflector system and a real shutter. it is also considered to have interchangeable lenses, though this is not essential it would be quite stupid without.
It is a 'prosumer' point and shoot bridge camera!
But then I don't think the author would know the difference between a webcam and a 645.
Indeed. SLR doesn't technically mean an interchangeable lens camera (the usual way to spot an SLR). There are (rare) examples of fixed lens SLRs.
However it does look more like a prosumer non-SLR digital camera and to achieve the fast frame rates it's very unlikely it's doing that with a mechanical shutter in such a body which would be the norm with an SLR. Likely it's an electronic "shutter" (i.e. sample the sensor 60 or 300 times a second), though that's impressive as the lag on non-SLR digital cameras is usually their major let down and that's just taking one frame!
Plus the press release doesn't mention SLR.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0708/07083101casio300fps.asp
Even VGA at 300 fps is pretty good. You can capture high speed events like water dripping, etc. at that speed. Much higher res. and you won't be able to find media large enough to hold more than a few seconds with current technology. How about adding a USB 2.0 or Firewire link to a 1TB NAS device, using the flash memory as a buffer? That would be cool.
I agree that a Casio product is akin to a Fisher-Price toy. My Casio keyboard comes with a selection of preset children songs, although mine looks pretty professional - I've seen cheesier-looking keyboards from the company.
Then again, you get what you pay for I guess. I have never found a cheaper keyboard that has MIDI IO ports (got mine brand new at US$124). And since the keyboard's primary and only purpose is to serve as an input method into Rosegarden on my Linux box, which it does pretty well, everything works out in the end.
"My Z750 has a shutter lag of about 0.2s, and once focussed, takes a whole 10ms to shoot. SLR's are still busy getting their mirrors out of the way..."
Most SLRs have shutter lag measured in milliseconds, not 10ths of seconds (as your Casio or whatever it is), and can swing their mirror up in less than that. So I'm sorry, but you're clearly mistaken.
This is a fixed lens digicam with a 12x optical zoom. These are known as Superzooms. They're easy to use, popular and sell well but they're no more an SLR than an Escort XR3i is a Ferrari. The sensor will be pretty small and the quality of the glass (and thus the image) is lower than a real DSLR. As others have posted, try www.dpreview.com for a photographer's take on it.
Why 300fps? Can you even resolve that as a human? Even hardcore gamers are normally happy with a mere 60fps in-game and they're a tough crowd to please...
I can see some really good uses for a camera that can shoot at these speeds. It would be a great tool in school physics labs and would probably be quite fun for other things as well.
Maybe they could sidestep the problems of speed and capacity of memory cards by either having an unspeakable amount of cache or designing it to simultaneously accept several cards and write to the in sequence, i.e. say 5 cards put the first image on the first card the second image on the second card and so on then back to the first card for the sixth image. I could see this being prohibitively expensive for consumer use though.
An SLR is no guarantee of the quality of the glass. A bridge camera (as they've been called here), is more appropriate for the majority of people. It'll come with glass as good as the average bundled zoom lens, with a greater range and there will be less danger of getting dust on the sensor when changing lenses too. People will continue to buy SLRs because they think they're inherently better, will make them better photographers, or simply as a status symbol.
People are obsessed with numbers. An usually the big numbers too. 80mm beats 75 mm. 200mm beats 80mm. 12x beats 10x. They probably think f5.6 beats f2.8 too. For instantly better looking photos, they should get a 50mm prime lens that will open up to f1.4. (28mm or 35mm prime for APS sized sensors).
"They are crap and still are!"
Well, there speaks an expert, obviously. Dpreview, whose opinions on cameras count for rather more, concluded that "the Casio EX-Z750 [was] the best ultra-compact 7 megapixel on the market today for the serious photographer"
WRT the timing, I was quoting in milliseconds, too. That's what 'ms' is short for...
I notice the optical viewfinder (on the back), has no matching window on the front, which would suggest it either has a miniature LCD in there (why bother if you have the main back screen) or it IS an SLR.
It actually doesn't look that different to my own 1991 vintage Chinon Genesis III, which IS, I can assure you, a genuine 35mm SLR.
http://www.eastman.org/fm/mees/htmlsrc/mC54000003_ful.html
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