CCD Shutter question

I apologize for the bandwidth on this question, and the crossposting.
I'm stuck on a question which seemed to me at first to be
straightforward. I am guessing now that it may be a bit esoteric in
the eyes of many.

Any light will be gratefully appreciated. The following is a single,
simple question. All the words are to be perfectly clear.

------

I will go through the IIDC spec which I have, and see what it says, but
perhaps someone here know from experience. As the CCD is passing the
pixel information down the line to Coriander, or whatever app, is there
a blank time analogous to the flyback period of analog video? That is,
if I am flashing a strobe, say, 100 times during a frame interval (1/30
of a frame, for example), will the image for that frame contain all 100
flashes, or will it lose some.
 
To go back to the mechanical shutters of Film, there is a time at which
the shutter opens, and then a time when the shutter is closed while
the film is advanced to the next frame. The interval is the shutter
speed, and it is not uncommon for a shutter to be open for only a small
fraction of the 1/24th second frame interval. In this film example, I
might only capture 25% of the strobes, with the other 75% occuring
during the time when the shutter is closed. This would suck, for my
purposes.

I know that CCDs require some time to recharge, and that there are
exposure settings to play with in the IIDC spec, which would seem to be
analogous to the shutter speed of a mechanical camera. I have also
read about the differences between a rolling shutter and a global
shutter, which also seems to pertain to the question I have.

What I really hope to know is this: If I am triggering a single event
which strobes a flash six times at millisecond intervals (for a total of
5/1000 - start to end), with no trigger, nor syncing mechanism - just
capturing steadily off the 1394 bus while the event is being waited for
- then what is the liklihood that some or all of that 5/1000 interval
will occur during a time when the CCD is not capturing? How long may I
keep the camera capturing, out of every frame interval. It's
possibly/probably camera dependent, but is it reasonable to hope that a
cheap camera (IIDC compliant) will capture all six flashes - either on
a single frame, or accross two.

I set my cameras to 3.75 FPS, and I set the exposure to 511 in
Coriander, and I seem to miss capturing the flashes much more often
then when I'm running at 30 FPS. This is not what I would have guessed.

Whatever anyone can tell me about this, I'll be grateful. Please feel
free to be much less wordy in the answer than I was in the question. :-)

Thanks!

-caleb

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
 Caleb J. Howard - calebh@adelphia.net (home) - caleb@rhythm.com (work)
      http://howards.vigilante.net/Caleb/Personal/CalebMain.html
      'It was for this you were called, created, formed and made.'
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Received on Sun Jan 9 09:02:24 2005