I am looking to make some video involving high speed camera and testing of a certain athletic helmet padding and my own product.
I know we have some RPI students in here and some of you photo geeks may have something that can shoot a high enough frame rate for what I need
nope
My junk only does 30fps at 1080P resolution.
New GoPros do 60fps but that’s still not fast enough if you want that high speed camera look. You can slow it down in editing and blend the frames with “optical flow” in Final Cut Pro X but if there is lots of movement it makes it look like shit is melting and ruins the footage. I’d say at least 120fps or more for what you want.
I need to show deflection and rebound of a number of helmet padding products when stuck with a force
I’d look for something at 120fps or more. 1000fps would really do it.
You can slow the frame rate down with a Twixtor plug in too, but it acts the same as Optical Flow and can create some weird effects that won’t really show the deflection since its digitally replacing/repairing/blending frames that aren’t there to begin with.
I used Optical Flow on the video I did of my car last year, you can see how it distorts certain parts of the footage. Notice her inner thighs as she’s walking towards the car, it looks like liquid. I think I slowed this down to about 5 or 6% of its original speed too: [ame]http://youtu.be/eFAzQiuwn_A[/ame]
rip R888s 
My GoPro Hero3 does 120fps at 720p. Go buy a couple of those and then return them :lol.
Casio EX-F1 from a few years ago did decent high-speed video.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/casio-exf1.shtml
Depending on how much resolution you need, it’ll burst 6 megapixel still shots at 60fps, do 300fps video at 512X384, 600fps at 423X192, and 1200fps at 336X96. It also can do anything between 30 and 300fps at higher resolutions.
Its a few years old, so I’d imagine there’s a new version out that’s even better.
[ame=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH3JTAf16Xc”]Casio EX-F1 High Speed Video Test - YouTube[/ame]