Digital cameras

Jim Busby jim_busby@byu.edu
Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:10:04 -0700


Stephen,

Thanks for the great info. Ironically, a member our engineering
department met with us yesterday and is collaborating with us (BYU
techs) on some projects. What speed (fps), in your opinion, is best for
piano action/string analysis? 

Thanks.
Jim Busby BYU

-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf Of
Stephen Birkett
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 9:23 AM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: RE: Digital cameras

Don wrote:
>The recent Kawai digital films have still been done with high speed
>film, not with digital cameras.  Digital CCDs are still very slow
>compared to the special films.  13,500 frames per second is still
beyond
>digital, as far as I know.

Speed isn't an issue now for high speed digital imaging. For $50K 
you can get a camera system that will do imaging up to 16,000fps in 
greyscale. For $150K you can get a maximum 100,000fps in colour.

Resolution and field of view are more significant issues than fps if 
you're using these for data collection, as we are in our 
experimentation. Basic CCD resolution is of course fixed, and seems 
to be typically 1280x1024 pixels [market pressure went in the higher 
speed, moderate resolution direction]. This can be distributed over 
the field of view any way that your optics permits. Data is 
transferred in real time to a PCI buffer that is as big as your 
memory budget $ allows, but tends to fill up fast with megapixel 
frames coming in at ms rates. As the buffer fills it flushes the 
earlier data. You can choose what you capture according to whatever 
type of trigger system is best. There is a maximum data transfer rate 
which restricts field of view after some cutoff fps value. After 
that, each time you double fps you halve field of view to keep the 
pixels per frame the same. Being digital is nice because you can sync 
with actuation devices and other data collection signals, e.g. from 
force detectors, even add that information to the frames if you like.

For qualitative observation of piano action behaviour 1000fps is 
generally ok  - much of our imaging is done at that frame rate. Gives 
you one image per ms. Moving parts at 1m/s translate to 1mm/ms, so 
1mm change per frame.

My grad student has posted some cool movies of bubbles and droplets 
he took while learning how to use the camera.... 
http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~martinh/

>I had no idea. Are the Kawai tapes "top
>secret", for Kawai use only, is there any access to them by
technicians,
>or do we get a chance to see them in Tennessee?

What do you want to know?

Stephen


-- 
Dr Stephen Birkett
Associate Professor
Department of Systems Design Engineering
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1

Davis Building Room 2617
tel: 519-888-4567 Ext. 3792
PianoTech Lab Ext. 7115
mailto: sbirkett[at]real.uwaterloo.ca
http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~sbirkett
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