High speed video is rapidly getting more accessible. In late 2006 a camera which could do 500FPS would set you back US$8800 (or $350/day rental). Now, the newest addition to the high-speed-cameras-for-normal-people - the Casio EX-F1 is shooting at up to 1200FPS, for $1000.

Of course, it’s a still camera as well, and it records 1080i and 720p footage, but I didn’t put “slow motion” up there in the title of this post to talk about boring old 30FPS.

The EX-F1 encodes straight to H264, so none of the shoot-wait-shoot behavior of my Sony tape-based HVR-V1P, and it doesn’t seem to have the same 3/6/12 second real-time limit. Like the Sony, slow-motion causes a loss of frame size: 300FPS gives you a reasonable 512×384 (considerably better than the effective resolution I tested from the HVR-V1P), 600FPS drops you to a youtube-esq 432×192, and 1200FPS gives you 336×96.

As seen in the above video, a little creative framing and editing will let you work with this limitation, but it looks like we still have a while to wait before we can mix full-frame slow motion video in to our projects. 512×384 is definitely useable though, and can give some beautiful results:

More Videos and Information:
Spud Gun destroying Eggs on Gizmodo.
Tomato Violence on Gizmodo.
Casio EX-F1 on Youtube.
Full Review on Gizmodo.

(not surprisingly, via Gizmodo Video)

To distract from their intensely repetitive subject matter, skateboarding videos have used a variety of techniques, from blooper reels showing people hurting themselves, to Spike Jonze post-producing the decks to invisibility.

The latest iteration of this process I will let speak for itself:

Updated: Lakai had the video removed from Youtube. Does anybody understand why a company would do this? The video went seriously viral last week. I encountered it via Dooce (which, if you’re not in to reading about Mormonism and constipation, is one of the most popular blogs on the whole internets), and when I added it to CDMo it had well over 1 million views. The actual video was released in November, so any initial buzz has long faded. Suddenly there is a resurgence of interest in the video, and by association the company, and they respond by removing the video which is causing all of this positive publicity?

After my last slow motion tests with my Sony HVR-V1P, CDMo reader FANF gave me some quick tips on how to run a resolution test.

Now here is a little protocol for definition testing: Get his first: http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/ISO_12233-reschart.pdf
Print it 350 dpi min, 600 recommended.

Place it in a well lit spot, in the sun for example, fixed to the wall. Use a spirit level. Place your camera with the optical axis perpendicular to the plane of the testchart (measure hight, use spirit level).
You should not see the white triangles on the underscanned image. No white triangle pointing into the image, the black triangles should ideally be pointing to the perfect edge of the screen.

To test the resolution/definition on the full breadth of the lens, do a test at wide angle, mid, and full tele, placing camera/testchart at the right distance for the scale to be right.
It would be equally important to test each focal at iris values 1.6, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11 to have a good idea of how definition rises and falls when you stop down.
To do this, use the “aperture prioriy” or “Av” program mode on your camera for correct exposure.

The definition of your camera, horizontal & vertical being distinct, is read by following the lines along the higher numbers ; the number where you cannot distinguish them from one another is your definition, in n x 100 lines. (Make sure you zoom into digitalised footage to measure the image, and not your screen !)

Now I have to admit that I didn’t quite go through with all of the different angles and apertures, and I’m not entirely certain that the resolution chart was printed to the correct size, but it doesn’t matter, as the difference between different shooting modes is obvious, even without meticulous shooting and calibration.

The images created by this process are reasonably large (1920×1080 to be precise), so I’m going to offer some small crops to discuss, and then offer up the full size images for download and examination at the end of the piece, if the mood takes you.

First up, a couple of 1:1 crops taken from the uncompressed HDMI output of the camera. This is with no HDV compression, so apart from JPG compression for the web these are the pixels as seen by the sensor. Obviously the lighting is a little low, but you can see that the resolution goes down to around 800 lines before it starts getting difficult to distinguish. All of the numbers and markings are easy to distinguish, and there aren’t any hugely obvious compression artifacts.

Since my last little slow motion test I’ve had plenty of quality time with my HVR-V1P, and while I wish it had a slightly more memorable model name - or even that it was printed somewhere on the unit, so I can tell people what it is when asked - I’m having a great time with this camera, enjoying the capabilities HD resolution gives me, and still loving Sony’s Smooth Slow Record feature.

With the last batch of slow-mo clips I had some requests to further slow down the motion in post-processing. I don’t currently have any 3rd party retiming plugins, but it turns out that the 200FPS (240 for NTSC regions) is shot interlaced, so my previous tests were only displaying 100FPS progressive. To get the full motion from 200FPS on a progressive monitor I needed to slow the footage to 50% speed and de-interlace, a trivial task in any editor.

Butterfly Slow-Motion 200FPS

Even this low-tech retiming gives you an idea of how powerful 200FPS can be. I actually had an ND filter in place to keep the shutter speed relatively low and keep a bit of a dreamy look for this shoot (the minimum allowed, of course, being faster than 1/200). With full sunlight you’d have no trouble getting up past 1/1000, which would result in very little motion blur and allow very accurate motion tracking, and some exciting retiming opportunities.

200 frames per second: that’s the “smooth slow motion capture” speed of Sony’s rather affordable HVR-V1P HDV camera. It really makes slow-motion capture accessible to the rest of us. Jaymis has been testing this mode on his new camera. Here are some early results (all the more impressive if you watch through to the full-motion versions at the end):

Sony Smooth Slow Motion test from Jaymis and Vimeo.

Of course, I’m ready to go even slower, and see what happens if you edit the footage in Final Cut Studio 2 using the new slow motion options. Starting with 200 frames should help.

More on the HVR-V1P soon; consider this a teaser.

Previously: First Impressions: Sony HVR-V1P HDV Camera

After asking CDMo readers for advice and promising various parties that I’d never buy another Sony product, I walked into my local VideoPro with a definite plan of attack: Compare and contrast the Canon XH-A1 and Panasonic HVX-200, and then buy one of them.

What followed is still a little hazy in my mind, but it seems there was a sales guy who actually knew his stuff, listened to my requirements and was able to suggest an alternative which was not only better suited to my needs, but also considerably cheaper. That this alternative was a Sony - a brand I’d sworn never to purchase again - just adds to the confusion. I’m still trying to figure out what happened.

The XH-A1 and HVX-200 are both great cameras, they look good, feel good, and by most accounts shoot exceptional video, generally on par with each other’s performance. Why, then, did I walk out of there with an HVR-V1P?:

• Physically smaller and lighter
• 200FPS “Smooth Slow Record” slow motion mode
• Uncompressed HDMI output
• Good quality Sony shotgun mic included
• External battery bay (as opposed to the XH-A1’s internal one) which is compatible with Sony’s NP-F range, including the batteries I still have from my 10 year old DCR-TRV9.
• AU$1500-3000 cheaper than the Canon and Panasonic offerings

I haven’t had the time to really get to know this camera, but initial impressions are very positive.

From CDMo reader and forum member Grigori:

Piksel 06 (thats in Norway) has just been and gone and they have left tons of great info and resouces for people to check out..
 
http://www.piksel.no/piksel06/talks.html
 
http://bekstation.bek.no/piksel/piksel06/video/arduino.ogg
 
Just scroll down through heap of stuff on talks.html page and pick your faves. I highly recomend to
see the stuff by Thomas Vriet and Aymeric Mansoux (those guys are rockstars of geek world 4 sure)

I’ve got to admit, the video and audio quality is terrible, the videos are rather long (Arduino one is 2.5 hours) and boring in places, but there’s some fascinating material in there, and if that’s not enough for you, check out the opening slide from Arduino Co-Creator David Cuartielles’ talk:

Arduino: Just like drugs.

I just, like, spent $100 on my Arduino habit today, buying extra breadboard sections, 555 timers, resistor and capacitor packs, 240v relays… Or as the police will surely come to refer to them: Paraphernalia.

CamcorderInfo have posted a review on the new Sony HRD-SR1 tapeless HD camcorder. It records AVCHD (MPEG-4/H.264 based) format to an internal 30GB drive, which will apparently give you 4 hours of recording.

Sounds great! I’m completely sick of buying, labelling and especially rewinding tapes - it feels so ridiculous - and while the computer based capture options are impressive, the ability to just grab your camera and run will mean you get more video over time.

The HDD Downside: Support for AVCHD is currently weaktastic. Sony have a little link on their Vegas 7 Workflow page, which takes you to a little page which admits:

Note Regarding AVCHD camcorder support in Sony Vegas 7 software
Sony Vegas 7 does not currently support the AVCHD camcorder format.

In Spring 2007, AVCHD camcorder support will be included in a free update for all registered Vegas 7 users.

That’s slightly annoying, but it will change quickly enough as users start clamouring for support, and down the bottom of the review they have hidden something rather exciting for visualists:

Smooth Slow Record - Smooth Slow Record is one of the cooler features included on consumer camcorders this year. It’s a Sony technology made possible by the data transfer rate of CMOS sensors, and records footage in slow-motion that can be viewed nearly instantaneously – after 12 seconds of processing time – in the case of the HDR-SR1. This feat is accomplished by increasing the rate at which fields are recorded from 60fps to 240fps in three-second bursts, and then recording those frames at normal speed. Video shot in Smooth Slow Record mode is dark, because the amount of light recorded is reduced. Smooth Slow Record is a neat party trick, and perhaps even a useful tool for “analysing golf swings,” as Sony advertises.

3 seconds isn’t very much recording, as this video shows, and naturally it’s at decreased resolution. I can’t find any solid numbers on this, but it seems that it also undergoes in-camera uprezzing, which is a little daft. Quirks aside though, this is a huge step forward for slow motion in consumer cameras. It will be interesting to see the footage which makes it to the web in the coming months.

Street price seems to be around US$1300 on Amazon, or AU$2200.

Updated 2007-07-24: Jaymis has purchased a camera which features smooth slow record.

Make:Blog’s current weekend project podcast is revisiting their high speed photography project. Interesting, but not really the hottest thing for visualists as the process only yields one frame per event. However, if you combine this with group of low cost cameras, you done got yourself some animation.

Ever want to freeze a rose in liquid nitrogen and then smash it and catch the photograph of the rose just as it begins to shatter? Watch this video podcast to learn how!
If you get inspired to make amazingly cool photographs, go get the Make:flash controller kit, and then upload your photos to the Make:high-speed photography pool!

Related on Make: High speed photography - water figures.

Mixing traditional low-framerate stop motion photography with some beautifully composited morphs, Impactist’s Peace Corps spot is utterly stunning.

via Motionographer

The Impactist guys weighed in to the comments with these notes on technique:

We shot using a digital SLR for a number of reasons. First off, the resolution. The project was finished in HD, so of course we’d need greater than HD frame size. This huge frame also was neccessary for realignment since it was all hand held to achieve the end result where we’d be able to recompose within the frame.

There was no tracking software used, no plugin trickery. The majority of the work involved frame by frame painting and reconstruction of images. A custom solution was developed and tested prior to the actual production. No motion footage was used, everything was captured using the digital SLR.

In total, over 14,000 stills were shot over two days at eight different locations around New York City.

Hope that helped to make a little more sense of it.

Plenty of great stop motion and animated work on their site