There are occasions when we’ve all wished that we had our cameras handy to capture a moment that will never be repeated. Sometimes it’s for something as awesome as your child’s first steps, sometimes it’s a particularly jaw-dropping sunset, and sometimes it’s your father struggling to get out of the new hammock he just had to have. Even when you’re lucky enough to have your camera on hand, you have to be extremely fortunate to capture exactly the right moment. With the new, world’s fastest camera from Casio, you can be sure that you’ll get the right shot.

A typical camera takes one photograph per second; a semi-professional model that costs roughly $1000 will take three per second. Casio’s new F1 camera takes a whopping 60, six-megapixel photos per second. It also has an option for you to choose whether you want to keep all 60, discard all 60, or go through them and keep only the best.

So how does this snap-happy machine photograph time? It doesn’t, or not exactly. What it does do is slow time down enough for you to take exactly the right picture at exactly the right time. Half-press the shutter button when you’re anticipating an important event, such as a smile from a loved one you’re about to surprise, and the camera goes into prerecord mode. It starts taking 60 shots a second, repeatedly discarding the old for the new.

When you’re ready, click the shutter all the way down and the 60 most recent shots are saved. You have then captured your event, as well as all the moments leading up to it, which means that you can see the smile begin and grow into a fully-fledged, ear-to-ear beam of unbridled pleasure. Even if you depress the shutter a smidge too late, the perfect moment will still be caught thanks to all of the shots preceding the final click.

Another nifty device the F1 uses to get around time is a motion detector. Place the camera on a steady surface, press the shutter and then wait for your moment to occur. As David Pogue, who wrote the review for the New York Times, says, it’s ideal for wildlife moments, such as capturing a hummingbird hovering at a flower, or catching cookie thieves at home.

Being the pioneer in a new field of photography, it obviously has some issues that still need to be ironed out. It’s still very much an amateur camera, despite its $1000 price-tag. Some problems have been recognised and efforts made to overcome them, such as the problem of the tiny light sensor, which is compensated with a high powered flash and second steady flash above it.

With so many hi-tech features the F1 is also very complicated to operate. One shudders to think of the size of the instruction manual. But the point remains: it does what no other camera can do. With the foundations firmly laid, development and evolution will soon follow, probably at a rapid rate.

Being capable of operating outside of time doesn’t make the new Casio F1 model invincible. Like any other digital camera, its sensitive innards are still vulnerable to damage, corruption, water and fire. Fortunately, data recovery experts are able to perform miracle retrievals, ensuring that once captured, you never have to lose that moment captured in time.

Experimenting with high-speed motion capture is now out of the hands of the professionals and in the grasp of laymen. We too can capture high resolution pictures at once-in-a-lifetime events, especially in the lives of our children. Now, thanks to technology, we don’t need to miss that first football goal, or the first race won, even if we did press the button at the wrong time.