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I have a quick question here when I started wondering how they made slo-mo cameras: What is the part that most limits frame rates in average smartphone cameras? Is it the CCD chip, or a component in the phone that stores the image that limits the frame rate the most? Or something else entirely?

Thanks for any answers!

Keychain1
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    You need to balance a lens and sensor with sufficient light-gathering capability with memory throughput. By way of example, the Phantom V2511 records at 26.2 gigapixels/second, requiring an extremely sensitive detector (to get down to 1 µs exposures) and extremely high sensor throughput (314 Gbps). – Nick T Mar 30 '15 at 04:25
  • The size of the pocket the phone is kept in and the balance on the credit card in the other pocket. – Scott Mar 30 '15 at 06:10
  • As Scott says - the size ofthe $ available is a or the major limit. | That said, for a given megapixel size increasing fram e rate gets increasingly expensive whereas fast and large memory is liable to be a lesser expense, within reason. Taken to extremes this starts to 'break'. eg a Sony 7S camera outputs 4K video from its 35mm full frame sensor at somewhere under 12 megapixel per frame. It does NOT store 4K video in the camera. Even at 30 frames per second a 3rd party entry level 4K video recorder costs about $US2000 - about the same as the cost of the whole camera. ... – Russell McMahon Mar 30 '15 at 07:03
  • ... Data rate is in the low Gb/s rate - about as fast as 3 top end SSD's, one per colour. – Russell McMahon Mar 30 '15 at 07:03

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I would think it would be image sensor and shutter speed. The challenge of capturing enough light at those speeds is not trivial. Whatever speed you could get the sensor to run at you could always throw more and more hardware at it to be able to process the data. Storage mediums would be a similar story you could put as many in parallel as you wanted to get the performance you needed.

Now if you set constraints for power, size, cost etc, then that could change things.

Some Hardware Guy
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