Spiff, I don't understand how a CMOS chip could record 5000 fps. I know that the fastest I have seen a CMOS camera capture frames is at 8fps, but I'm not sure if that is because of the buffer or the chip that is causing that, or maybey it is because of the mirror. Care to elaborate?
The frame rate has to do with the clocking speed of the chip, and the bandwidth to the chip. CMOS chips are, by merit of their construction, easily clocked. If you simply do a google search on "High speed digital video", you'll come across specialized camera companies and articles like these ones:
http://www.photron.com/cameras.cfm (up to 10000 fps)
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000547038068/ (up to 1000000 fps)
The main limitation of these cameras is how rapidly you can store data - so the sensible way to do this is with insanely high-speed RAM buffers, recording to other media at less-than realtime rates.
-Spiff