Super fast exposure time - BBC News

[comsense]

Interesting...sounds almost like a reverse ray-tracing rendering!
[/quote]
Final part is more like scanline rendering if you like computational graphics lingo. The maths for first part is quite old and solid, its just tech catching up. Google TCSPC (time correlated single photon counting). This is the principle behind extraction of time information.

 

[comsense]

Pretty sure you can use any light, since its quite literally capturing a photo of light. You just adjust the exposure to compensate for the amount of light like we already do.

Right, so at 1 billionth of the current max shutter speed of 1/8000 s, to 'just adjust the exposure to compensate for the amount of light like we already do,' you'd need to go 36 stops higher than ISO 100. Know any cameras that can set ISO 6,871,947,673,600? :

Actually you both are wrong. You cant use any light. You need femtosecond pulsed laser source to illuminate the scene.

Ok, but I was being facetious.

FWIW, many years ago I used femtosecond laser time-resolved resonance Raman spectroscopy to study reaction intermediates of visual pigments (rhodopsin, etc.). Nd:YAG flashlamps, beamlines running across massive air tables decorated with mirrors and dichroics, fun times. I currently use a femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser (pumped with a frequency-doubled Nd:YVO4 laser) in fluorescent imaging applications.

I could see your humor; just wanted to make it geeky accurate with hand holdable Ti:sapphire ;D :'( ;D
Good to know you are spectroscopist and have used it; you can visualize very well what I mean.
Also, how many LP6 batteries would it take?
The around the corner image reconstruction from this group is pretty cool. Laser tech is developing so fast and people are already working on solid state femtosecond pulse lasers. If high pulse power is not required, its possible to have hand holdable version in near future.