15th
Off-the-shelf camera hacked to grab high-speed video.
Temporal Pixel Multiplexing sends each frame to a different set or pixels on a large sensor using a chip of mirrors, enabling high-resolution images to be reconstructed from frames. This approach is a lot cheaper than professional high-speed cameras. There are more details here.
A simpler, portable, out-of-the-box (but more constrained) solution could be a Casio EX-F1 consumer digital camera for ~£500. These can shoot up to 512 × 384 (300 fps), 432 × 192 (600 fps), 336 × 96 (1200 fps). Newer Casio models can also do high-speed but at lower resolutions. There are lots of high-speed examples of the EX-F1 on youtube, and a good 300fps one below.
New York 2008 from Vicente Sahuc and Sara Fernandez on Vimeo.
(via New Scientist)
