A high-speed camera is a device used for recording fast-moving objects as a photographic image(s) onto a storage medium. After recording, the images stored on the medium can be played back in slow-motion. Early high speed cameras used film to record the high-speed events, but today high-speed cameras are entirely electronic using either a charge-coupled device (CCD) or a CMOS active pixel sensor, recording typically over 1,000 frames per second into DRAM and playing images back slowly to study the motion for scientific study of transient phenomena.

A high-speed camera can be classified as (1) a high-speed film camera that records to film, (2) a high-speed framing camera that records a short burst of images to film/digital still camera, a high-speed streak camera that records to film/digital memory or (3) a high-speed video camera recording to digital memory.

A normal motion picture is filmed and played back at 24 frames per second, while television uses 25 frames/s (PAL) or 29.97 frames/s (NTSC). High speed cameras can film up to a quarter of a million frames per second by running the film over a rotating prism or mirror instead of using a shutter, thus reducing the need for stopping and starting the film behind a shutter which would tear the film stock at such speeds. Using this technique one can stretch one second to more than ten minutes of playback time (super slow motion).

The fastest cameras are generally in use in scientific research, military test and evaluation, and industry. Examples of industrial applications are filming a manufacturing line to better tune the machine, or in the car industry the crash testing to better document the crash and what happens to the automobile and passengers during a crash. Today, the digital high speed dome camera has replaced the film camera used for Vehicle Impact Testing.

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