Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

The Coming "Highspeed Revolution"?

Personally I am in love with slow motion as well as time laps photography.
I start using it to capture acrobatics in Cirque, but not for disclosure of their technique, what was more intriguing is the emotions and expressions on artists faces.

http://vimeo.com/7102148

I am also using slight over-cranking in reaction shots in the narrative filming.
 
albert, speaking of that, your video is set to "Private"!
 
I don't think the high speed revolution is coming, it's already here. I see high-speed everywhere I look, some great, some bad, some truly remarkable.

I'm waiting for the green-light on a job for a London 2012 Olympic sponsor which I've written specifically for the Phantom - should be cool if it comes off.
 
Liam Hall said:
I don't think the high speed revolution is coming, it's already here. I see high-speed everywhere I look, some great, some bad, some truly remarkable.

I'm waiting for the green-light on a job for a London 2012 Olympic sponsor which I've written specifically for the Phantom - should be cool if it comes off.
Click to expand...

I agree. We are in the "heyday" now. People are shooting high speed as a gimmick without putting a lot of thought in to it. The novelty is going to wear off. As that happens, it is the people who find creatively interesting ways of using it that will be making imagery worth watching.

Let's remember - at one time this clip was "mindblowing" and had people running out of the theaters...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUEANKv964
 
I worked on the last season of "Time Warp" (which has just begun airing on Discovery this past Wednesday night). We had one Phantom and two Photrons. You would be amazed at the amount of light we needed in the studio for the shots we were getting. My first day on the set I was getting roasted by the lights. The Photrons could record higher speeds than the Phantom we had. Depending on the speed we could only record in small bursts to drives. The DIT on set has a pretty tough job managing all the data. There is a lot of set up for the Time Warp shots, even outside (where we often add big HMI's). Nothing like seeing a ton of bricks fall on a car in super slo mo though!
 
Dylan Macleod said:
I agree. We are in the "heyday" now. People are shooting high speed as a gimmick without putting a lot of thought in to it. The novelty is going to wear off. As that happens, it is the people who find creatively interesting ways of using it that will be making imagery worth watching.

Let's remember - at one time this clip was "mindblowing" and had people running out of the theaters...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUEANKv964
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I agree with that. We said the same thing about small shutter angles for action and that rap music would never stay. ;) Take small shutter angles for example. Sure it can be looked at as a stylistic thing but it does IMHO relate to the human experience of action/adrenaline. That is why it's use is still around I believe besides "it looks cool". I think high speed is the same way. In the human experience there are moments that just seem to last forever where time moves slowly. Sure it's more accessible now with cameras like the Phantom but it is here to stay. It's all a language and the vocabulary constantly expanding. Perhaps the less legitimate uses will diminish in time though. Kind of like how we were abusing the use of zoom in the 60-70's when they became legitimate lenses. So I guess perhaps I do agree with you Dylan!
 
Warren Kommers said:
I'm not sure I agree with that. We said the same thing about small shutter angles for action and that rap music would never stay. ;) Take small shutter angles for example. Sure it can be looked at as a stylistic thing but it does IMHO relate to the human experience of action/adrenaline. That is why it's use is still around I believe besides "it looks cool". I think high speed is the same way. In the human experience there are moments that just seem to last forever where time moves slowly. Sure it's more accessible now with cameras like the Phantom but it is here to stay. It's all a language and the vocabulary constantly expanding. Perhaps the less legitimate uses will diminish in time though. Kind of like how we were abusing the use of zoom in the 60-70's when they became legitimate lenses.
Click to expand...

But you illustrate my point. After Saving Private Ryan - everyone was shooting with a narrow shutter. It was an easy way of saying "look, we're doing something cool". It was everywhere. Now it is being used selectively - when you want to achieve a certain heightened visceral feel.

I am not saying that high speed itself is a gimmick that will go away after the novelty wears off. Just that - currently - it is being overused.
 
Dylan Macleod said:
But you illustrate my point. After Saving Private Ryan - everyone was shooting with a narrow shutter. It was an easy way of saying "look, we're doing something cool". It was everywhere. Now it is being used selectively - when you want to achieve a certain heightened visceral feel.

I am not saying that high speed itself is a gimmick that will go away after the novelty wears off. Just that - currently - it is being overused.
Click to expand...

yeah I updated my post! I guess it depends on what we define as "legitimate use" but defining too tightly could stifle some creative uses. That's ART for ya! Got to love it.
 
By "Highspeed Revolution" I mean putting these cameras in the hands of the many, not just the few.

IMO, highspeed is unconquered territory. It's wide open. It's the new wild west. There are a small handful of people shooting on these very expensive cameras. How many people can take a Phantom HD Gold and head out into the woods for a year to try to break new ground with it? I know dozens of personal friends who do this with still cameras, film, and even timelapse. But I don't personally know anyone who is really pushing the boundaries of highspeed in this manner. (That doesn't mean there are not any.) I think most people feel lucky just to work with the camera on a commercial or music video, for example. I know I would jump at any chance to work with one!
 
Tom L said:
By "Highspeed Revolution" I mean putting these cameras in the hands of the many, not just the few.

IMO, highspeed is unconquered territory. It's wide open. It's the new wild west. There are a small handful of people shooting on these very expensive cameras. How many people can take a Phantom HD Gold and head out into the woods for a year to try to break new ground with it? I know dozens of personal friends who do this with still cameras, and even timelapse. But I don't personally know anyone who is really pushing the boundaries of highspeed in this manner. (That doesn't mean there are not any.) I think most people feel lucky just to work with the camera on a commercial or music video, for example. I know I would jump at any chance to work with one!
Click to expand...

Again here is a Phantom very deep in the woods and mounted to a doggicam bodymount! I love thinking of new ways to use high speed as well Tom.

http://www.vimeo.com/5180816
 
Dylan Macleod said:
...and I've always been curious to see what this camera does...

http://www.casio-usa.com/products/Cameras/High_Speed_EXILIM/EX-F1/

1200 frames at 336x96 - CHUNKY!
Click to expand...

That's a surprisingly capable little beast. Indeed, it is absurdly chunky (though I've seen some clever artistic uses by creating an array of parallel vertical strips), but it's a great cheap science tool, every high school ought to own one or two. It's certainly good enough for lab work where image quality is of secondary importance.
 
don't forget about weisscam too, it's a major competitor to the phantom. workflow might be a bit tougher, haven't worked with it personally, but it can give u 1,500 fps at 2k. and 2,000 fps at 1080p. u can get dual raw and HD recording on it, and global shutter. lot of people might opt it over phantom cause it offers more, once they work out all the workflow kinks of course
 
You know that Casio might be really great just for practicing and envisioning new types of highspeed shots. I might try to get one of those.

Warren, you know what is interesting is that once again I see a parallel between timelapse and highspeed when it comes to these in-motion shots, like the ones you posted. For example, adding dolly moves to a timelapse really can make for amazing sequences. Well, I was talking to a DP yesterday who told me, "You know, one really cool thing to do at 1000fps is to run the camera really fast down a dolly." To me, timelapse and highspeed are two sides of the same coin.

Maybe part of the "poetry" and "awe" that we feel watching timelapse and highspeed is that we are suddenly being shown the world from an almost detached, existential perspective. It makes us understand how we are all just moving parts in a much, much grander picture.
 
Tom L said:
IMO, highspeed is unconquered territory. It's wide open. It's the new wild west.
Click to expand...

To do what though? I assume you mean for artistic rather than scientific purposes, but while it would be awesome to have affordable and good slo-mo (one reason I have been interested in Scarlet for so long), it's very much a special FX thing. Like, it would also be awesome to have microscopy options and thermal options and so on, but the fact is the market for all these is quite limited and so there's not much commercial pressure to bring out products at a low price point.

(EDIT: you answered a lot of this just above)

The Casio EX was mentioned above, there's a ton of cool amateur footage shot with that on YouTube (it does 300fps at 640-480 which is really quite amazing for the price) and I think every VFX professional ought to own one but it hasn't exactly conquered major territory...although if they would make one that shot high speed HD resolution I'd be willing to forgive a LOT of image quality flaws...

Now what would be very cool down the line (and in 5-10 years, might be widespread because there are other non-film commercial pressures driving the underlying technology forward) would be a camera that shot high speed all the time, eg at 600 fps, and allowed you to play with the playback speed and apparent shutter speed in post (slow shutter and blur could easy be resolved by frame blending).

Then again, there are tons of cool possibilities down the line...like microlens arrays which sit in front of the sensor and allow you to selectively alter your focus in post, largely eliminating the need to get it correct during production. This exists now, it just hasn't been fully commercialized yet, nor applied to video that I'm aware of.
 
Speaking of high-speed, Gizmodo has a piece and video today about BBC's new "Life" series using 2000fps cameras to capture lizards walking on water. Very cool stuff:

http://gizmodo.com/5383301/life-think-of-it-as-planet-earth-part-ii

The key to these digital cameras vs high-speed film is that the digital cams can pre-record on a loop, meaning that you can push the record button even after a split-second event suddenly happens.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top