Omega’s photo finish camera, which shoots at 40,000 frames per second, helped American track and field athlete Noah Lyles win Olympic gold in the 100-meter final. His competitor, Kishan Thompson of Jamaica, was only five thousandths of a second late.
For another 30 seconds after the finish, the confused athletes stared at the screen until the judges reviewed the images captured by the Omega camera.
Omega has been the official timekeeper of the Olympic Games for decades, and this year it introduced a new camera that takes four times as many pictures per second (40,000 FPS) as the previous system, and has a higher resolution.
Both Lyles and Thompson covered 100 meters in 9.78 seconds — the red lines in the picture show which body part «was» first to finish:
The camera is called Omega Scan ‘O’ Vision Ultimate and is a significantly upgraded version of the 10,000 FPS Scan ‘O’ Vision Myria camera.
In total, the company has brought 350 tons of equipment to the Olympics, including 200 km of cable and 550 timekeepers (55 of which are dedicated to athletics — more than any other event). In addition to high-definition cameras, Omega uses artificial intelligence models to track athletes and equipment in real time, providing detailed performance metrics across sports.
Source: PetaPixel