What about iCCD Andor Istar?

I think it fits to your plasma studies and the different delay times..

Take a look to the link.

(Unfortunately, I couldn't find the price in the internet, I have no idea how does it cost).

http://www.andor.com/pdfs/literature/Andor_iStar_ICCD_Brochure.pdf

It depends also on what time resolution you need.

time resolution doesn't matter, it would be integrated over the whole life of plasma, just at different start point with different delays.

Thank you

Yeah, Andor has a reasonable choice of ICCDs. The one I have in a spectrometer (relatively old IStar) works ok.

You can also look at something like that - Stanfor Computer Optics

http://www.stanfordcomputeroptics.com/products/nanosecond-iccd.html

Dear Domagoj,

From what you say, it looks like normal (good) cameras like Nikon could achieve what you want. But of course, the question is, what do you want to investigate exactly?

@Domagoj

without having numbers there, nobody can give valid advice. Don't forget: natural sciences are quantitative in nature!

As people suggested above, Andore, Stanford Computer Optics, princeton instruments gives very good ICCDs for fast imaging of laser produced plasma. Any of these can be used to take images with 5 ns gate width which is very good resolution for ns pulsed laser produced plasma. But these are very costly around, 40,000 to 50,000 USD (I don't have exact idea, only I am providing the rough estimate, it depends on your country and other things also). One cannot suggest cheap camera for the fast imaging of a laser produced plasma. Because they will have an exposure time in the range of micro seconds, but the total life time of the laser produced plasma itself in the range of few micro seconds. So, it is not possible to synchronize with the laser pulse and even if we synchronize also, they will give only integrated information of the plasma, not time resolved, which is not much useful.

Than you very much. I am aware of the problem with integrated intensity with slow cameras.

My idea was not for fast imaging, but exactly for integrated intensity, so the pictures would complement the spectra taken with small spectrometer that has minimum exposition time in ms range.

By changing the delay time between laser and spectrometer/camera, I could see what happens from that point onward. I thought it a good way to anything without 40 000 USD budget.

Well, please correct me if I'm wrong, but for me it seems that you're looking for a cheap CCD/CMOS camera with no need of a short frame but with a precise, low-jitter triggering in sub us range. I never used a commercial system like that, but if I remember well, I've read that it may be possible.

If I were in your shoes - I would contact, say, hamamatsu and asked them if they had something like that.

Yes, as Pawel Gasior said, these ccds are cheap and cameras provide external triggering also. But the minimum possible exposure time is in micro seconds. Example, that I know is High speed cameras by pco. You can see

http://www.pco.de/categories/high-speed-cameras/

Point Grey Research cameras.

http://www.ptgrey.com

Rather inexpensive (many between the 200-500$ range), those camera are generally made for machine vision application, so they offer great control on triggering, integration time, gain, gamma, and other parameters. They offer drivers, applications and SDK.

I think that should definitely work with your application.

Just so you know, I'm not affiliated with PGR; I'm just a satisfied customer, and give well deserved hat-tip.

I would suggest a camera suited for particle imaging velocimetry. They are capable of exposing two images in a very short sequence, down to as quick as 200 ns. This comes close to the capabilities of image intensifiers.

And then just throw away the first pic if not needed. Cum grano salis the first pic contains the integrated info until the trigger pulse arrives and the second pic contains the integrated info after the trigger pulse (within certain temporal limits of course).

For ms range you can use the casio exilim camera, I use it sometimes at pulsotron tests, it takes up to 1000 frames per second and they are easy to use. There are different models

http://www.casio-europe.com/euro/exilim/exilimhighspeed/exzr200/specifications/

If you want a really cheap camera systems, you could buy DSLR cameras and triggered them externally. For instance, Canon Rebel T5 is capable of 1/4000 segs shutter speed (~250us) and it could be externally trigerred using a simple relay. We use these kind of cameras in laser-produced plasmas and Z-pinches BUT as detectors for laser probing (interferometry or schlieren) of a frequency-doubled Nd:Yag laser (the same we use for the laser-produced plasma) The DSLR cameras are properly filtered using both neutral density and line interference filters; and the temporal resolution is given by the FWHM of the laser itself

Than you for your answer, that was the kind of thing I was interested in

Thank you Felipe, but I should recommend to use a mosfet instead of a relay to switch the camera because the mechanical relays have delays of some milliseconds

I agree Javier. Mosfet (or similars) will be much faster than almost any relay. In our case, we leave the shutter open for times much longer than the discharge time (several seconds). Our temporal resolution is given by the laser FWHM (~10ns), since both background and plasma light is filtered out using spatial filtering, NDs and line filters.

There is an old solution accordingly it was said by Rolf Bombach that consist on a cheap camera and a very high speed flash: you open the camera diafragm and then shoot the flash in the moment that you want, then close the camera diafragm.

If you make two flash shots you could take two (or more) photos as it is said by Felipe Veloso, you could measure particle speed by divide the distance of the particle by the time between the two flashes.

Till date we could not locate PCO camera alternative. PCO-Pixelfly works well for us specially for laser related experiments.