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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

It's not the Red, but...

Amazingly beautiful shots, Phil.

Can you tell me how the recording, workflow and post work with this camera?
 
Tom said:
Amazingly beautiful shots, Phil.

Can you tell me how the recording, workflow and post work with this camera?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback.

Here is how it worked for us.

The camera has to be used with a nearby laptop computer with an attached raid. The shots can be triggered from a button on the camera or a mouse click on the computer (the computer is running custom capture/conversion software). Since the camera is constantly running and buffering frames, the trigger can be set to capture what you have already seen, so you can catch action that is unplanned (like a whale breach, etc.)

You are shooting basically RAW at 14bit. There are only minimal gamma adjustments that can be made, that are somewhat worthless, except for previewing. However, you HAVE to do a "black balance" periodically to eliminate vertical artifacts.

The camera stores the frames in onboard RAM. At 1000fps our model held about 4 seconds or about 2 minutes of 30fps. There are no memory cards (there may be an optional drive available now...), so any shots must be downloaded to the laptop which can take 5 to 15 minutes depending on how much of the shot you want to keep.

You can preview the shot only while it is in the camera's RAM (via HD SDI out). Once copied onto the raid, it cannot be viewed again until after post.

Since there is a large time lag between shots you are careful to pick only the best shots, and only the section of the shot you want to keep. (we typically picked 600 to 900 frames in the sweet spot). You are fortunate to get 20 shots in one day.

The shots are stored on the local RAID as a proprietary flavor of Cineon file. It cannot be accessed by anything but the Phantom capture/conversion utility which can convert the file into sequential 16bit TIFFs. Storage is an issue since these files are BIG. There is always the nagging question of how much do we archive?

We then import the TIFF files into After Effects for color correction. Since they are RAW, the shots typically look dull and dark (nothing like the HD preview). They require a pretty aggressive gamma curve which means they are log or linear --I always get confused which term applies. It is always a challenge to get the shots to look as vibrant as you remember seeing on the preview which always puzzled me.

Regardless of the workflow hassles, it is an amazing camera and I'm sure we'll be using it again.

Thanks again for the comments.

Phil
www.artbeats.com
 
Did you use the camera for non-high-speed shots? Can it record regular 24p footage efficiently? What media does it record regular footage to? Does it record sound?

thanks
 
Tom said:
Did you use the camera for non-high-speed shots? Can it record regular 24p footage efficiently? What media does it record regular footage to? Does it record sound?

thanks
Click to expand...

We didn't use the camera for anything lower than 300fps.

It can shoot as low as 1fps so it is versatile in that sense. However, since you can only capture one shot at a time (you can't put multiple shots in ram), it seems like a lot of hassle for standard speed shots.

The media is always RAM no matter what the speed. There is an external solution they call hot-swappable stolid state CineMags. I never used them so can't comment on how they might improve the work flow. It looks to me like they merely give you storage for longer shots.

However, there is another option. With the HD SDI preview out, you could conceivably record from that source. We never did that because the image quality wasn't reliable, we commonly saw vertical artifacts. I am sure that for live broadcast instant replay shots, this is what they do.

The Phantom HD does not record sound.

My guess is that because of the high cost and workflow limitations, this camera is best used in its high speed niche. (I think we paid over 20K per month.)

Phil
www.artbeats.com
 
Very Nice Phil thanks for posting.
I do not know of any Live sporting events that use the Phantom, it's not a live camera and can't turnaround replays quickly.
Sony has the lead for slow-mo replays for live TV, Phillips also has a slow-mo model used for live sports.

Dave
 
David Birdy said:
Very Nice Phil thanks for posting.
I do not know of any Live sporting events that use the Phantom, it's not a live camera and can't turnaround replays quickly.
Click to expand...

I am sure Mitch Gross will step in here, but they have used the Phantom for many sporting events. You just use the HDSDI straight out of the camera. It plays back instantly.

We have had ours for over 1 year already, and have over 50 commercials shot with it already, special effects shots for features and MOW's. This camera is truly amazing.
 
Phil Bates said:
However, there is another option. With the HD SDI preview out, you could conceivably record from that source. We never did that because the image quality wasn't reliable, we commonly saw vertical artifacts. I am sure that for live broadcast instant replay shots, this is what they do

Phil
www.artbeats.com
Click to expand...

Phil:

We have found the HDSDI output quality varies from camera body to camera body. We have shot over 50 commercials this past year using the HDSDI output almost exclusively.

For feature work, however, we recommend the download method.

And yes, $20,000 per month is probably the going rate world wide.....but its alot cheaper than high speed film.....
 
John,

I agree that it is an amazing camera. And what a relief after struggling with some of the other brands that are plagued with vertical artifacts or low resolution. What kinds of subjects are you shooting mostly?

Phil
www.artbeats.com
 
JDB said:
I am sure Mitch Gross will step in here, but they have used the Phantom for many sporting events. You just use the HDSDI straight out of the camera. It plays back instantly.

We have had ours for over 1 year already, and have over 50 commercials shot with it already, special effects shots for features and MOW's. This camera is truly amazing.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it was used for sporting events, but not "Live events".

Dave
 
Hey all, we use over 100 Phantoms every day for crash footage at a major automotive lab. We use everything from the Miro's (512 x 512) up to a V9 (1600 x 1200) usually at 1000 fps but sometimes up to 5000 fps with reduced resolution.
They are really the best looking high speed cameras we have tested as far as picture quality and lack of artifacts, some of our shots have actually made it into national spots, looked really nice.
Workflow in the lab is, capture to Phantom Cine format then render to AVI for engineers to view.
Wish I could post some of the footage, it can be pretty wild at times, but they frown on that sort of thing.
 
Truly masterful footage, Phil.

Amazingly amazing.
 
Phil thank you for sharing and Tom thanks for asking the good questions.

The footage was simply stunning.
 
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