do you see this what's happening here that's a hint that the photo finish system at the Olympics isn't actually giving us a photo and that's why it looks a little weird so these two Runners Cain Thompson and Noah ly both finished the 100 meter race with an official time of 9.79 seconds the announcer had called it for Thompson but it turned out his torso crossed that line 5,000th of a second after ly how do they know that well Omega which is the official timekeeper for the Olympics has a Finish Line camera that can capture 40,000 frames per second but instead of a normal camera it scans one vertical slice so this photo finish picture isn't capturing a moment in time it's capturing a place the finish line and what each body part of each Runner looked like as they were crossing it those vertical slices are then spread out horizontally by their time code so that the operator can mark their chests with a red line the ground is white because this camera is only capturing the finish line and the logos come from a billboard that only the Finish Line camera can read subscribe for more