Does all the hi-tech equipment used on the CSI series actually exist?

It exists, but the time it takes to process and get results is ridiculously shortened. It can take days, or even weeks, to get some of the results.

no it doesnt, im currently going for my bachelors in criminal justice and csi is extremely inaccurate, take for example the “ camera zoom and clear image” they use that all the time, its b.s., pixels are pixels, its impossible to do that.

It’s not entirely accurate.

Yes, its all modern technology now, nd it really is used…

To an extent yes, but they shorten the time it takes to process information and exaggerated some of the information they can get. Especially the whole “zone and enhance” pictures. There are some VERY good enlarging algorithms, that can enlarge an image and still keep a lot of the clarity by extrapolating out where new pixels should be and what color they should be. But they don’t work nearly was well as shown on TV :P. Most security cameras don’t have very high resolution to being with. and so you don’t have a very clear image to start with.

In HS (about 6yrs ago :P) we got to play with some of the newest photo enlarging plugins for Photoshop for free :D (gota love educational licensees :D). Someone had broke a window at the school and was caught on one of the b/w security cams. Even with the best plugin we had to play with we couldn’t tell more than he was a white male wearing a hoodie, and on a BMX style bike. Couldn’t even read the manufacture of the bike or the logo on his hoodie.

There maybe only a handful of police departments that have all the equipment depicted in CSI. My hometown’s (pop 75,000) forensic lab is a trailer no bigger than a roach coach and utilizes an old 5 gallon fish tank to conduct some of their “analysis”. I wouldnt be surprized if their microscopes were donated by the highschool biology classroom.