Tech Update: Introducing the Super Camera

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Jasper Fields

Great news arrives for lovers of swift-moving sports like table tennis, ping-pong, and racquetball. According to the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory’s website, Japanese engineers have stepped up camera innovation with a camera system that can follow subjects that move extremely fast. Unfortunately, it won’t be utilized during the current Olympic Games but may make its debut in 2016.

No price has been put on the head of this new technology yet, so you college students aspiring to be filmmakers may want to hold your horses. Scientists at Tokyo University say that the system uses small mirrors and high speed motors that follow a subject based on its color. The camera records the moving action at 1000 frames per second and does a far better job at high speed, close-up following than is possible with a regular camera.

Scientists hope to be able to film anything that moves faster than what the eyes can follow. The camera tracking system also has the ability to change the fast video in to extremely slow motion. In table tennis – one of the fastest ball sports in the world – the players repeatedly hit the ball at high speeds making it particularly difficult for cameramen to follow the action of the ball itself during live table tennis or ping-pong battles.

The cameramen focus on the players instead of the ball because it simply moves too quickly. With the newly innovated Japanese technology, this will no longer be a problem in the future.

According to Hiromasa Oku, a University of Tokyo assistant professor and doctor of engineering, color plays a vital role in the system. “In general as long as there is some sort of difference in color, then it can be tracked. So we can track something like a yellow tennis ball, and in the future we hold to be able to track soccer balls and the like as well.” he said.