A high-speed camera is a device capable of image exposures in excess of 1/1,000 or frame rates in excess of 250 frames per second. It is 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 which records to film,
2. A high-speed video camera which records to electronic memory,
3. A high-speed framing camera which records a short burst of high frame rate images to film or a network of CCD cameras,
4. A high-speed streak camera which records a series of line-sized images to film or electronic memory.