$120k - slow motion video

[Mobsta]

I'm not wealthy. Anything which requires an investment of any substantial proportion requires an equal or greater investment of my energy.

Cutting a long story short, I simply cant afford a camera I would like. Not this year nor next, nor in the foreseeable future.

I'll explain. A few videos, slo motion footage, inspired me to pick a camera back up as I put mine down years ago, and hopefully learn another discipline. I had great success as a hobbiest playing around with my first SLR, but the new idea of shooting video at high speed and learn how to edit that, seemed like a wonderful opportunity. Ive wanted to do this for ages. Something new, which ive not considered. Video VS still, its a big step. No?

I spent a while casually enjoying and jotting down camera model names (when they cropped up) and the bits of kit Id need.

Long story short, I was a bit surprised and a little crestfallen initially, when I found out the body of the camera I was warming to cost $120k.

Wanting only the best because film and TV folk wont want anything less(?) I stopped searching. I did eventually stumble upon the FS700, which looks like a stopgap between a £2k and a $120k camera.

I have an eye. Well two actually. And an interest in capturing scenes, or just stuff, for the fun of it. My bias is and has never been photoshop, by the way.

Does anyone shoot slow motion video here? Professionally? If so with what? And are there any hobbiest shooters who also do it for fun?

Slo mo seems like an expensive hobby. Id like to start it for fun only, but im really not sure I can afford it, definitely not at $120k side of the scale.

And certainly nowhere close to 120k!

Edited to reaffirm: "And certainly nowhere close to 120k!"

Edited by Mobsta on Tuesday 20th November 19:58

[flat-planedCrank]

Mobsta said:

Long story short, I was a bit surprised and a little crestfallen initially, when I found out the body of the camera I was warming to cost $120k.

Wouldn't most people - even for production uses - just be renting this gear? Even digital medium format can escalate rapidly into the tens-of-thousands£ level.

Part of the argument might be that £120k is a lot of money to sit around when you don't use it - plus it will be (I'm guessing) superseded by newer models. If you're renting then you don't need to worry about that...

I guess the only problem will be putting up a deposit to rent £120k's worth of gear

[LongQ]

flat-planedCrank said:

Wouldn't most people - even for production uses - just be renting this gear? Even digital medium format can escalate rapidly into the tens-of-thousands£ level.

Part of the argument might be that £120k is a lot of money to sit around when you don't use it - plus it will be (I'm guessing) superseded by newer models. If you're renting then you don't need to worry about that...

I guess the only problem will be putting up a deposit to rent £120k's worth of gear

I guess if you could justify enough hours use to own the stuff and you had some appropriate tax breaks buying (and knowing when to sell on as the next best things becomes available) might work out. Having the kit available at all time for experiment and familiarisation might, just might, be worth the investment. But realistically this sort of deal will only work in a Pro use situation with finance in play somewhere.

You surely need to have the usage, one way or another, to justify the investment. Well, unless you are a footballer perhaps. Or an oligarch.

[Fordo]

I directed a series of promo's for the times, featuring their journalists doing some sports in slow motion.

We shot on a Red Epic - mixture of frame rates, depended on the sport as to how slow we needed to go. 96fps or so at 5k resolution, 4k at 120, and we went as high at 240 or so fps for one guy who we had playing table tennis. The Epic uses a crop of the sensor for higher fps, which isn't ideal - you start needed wider lenses. And glass that has the tri-factor - fast, wide and sharp, is fairly pricey to rent.

Still, got the job done on budget, and the finished result was great.

Sony's FS700, as you say, is pretty good bang for buck as regards to slow motion. I probably would have used that, if it had been out at the time. Although i'd have needed an external recorder to bring the bitrate up to broadcast spec... anyway, i digress into technobabble!

Sony have also announced some new cameras in their film range - the F5, and F55 - they also have good high fps capability.

Gold standard for slo mo is the Phantom, made by vision research. They specialize in slow motion cameras.

Like you say, it would be an expensive hobby. Dont forget the other costs too - slow mo captures and huuuuge amount of data. I forget how much my times shoot generated. Possibly 4 or 5 terrabytes? and that was just one shoot!

And dont forget the lighting. Slow mo needs huge amounts of lighting since you have to run very fast shutter speeds. I think we used 1 x 10k lamp, 2 x 5k's, and some 2k's. Anything under 2k in power tends to flicker.- we lit with tungsten lamps, previously I've tried HMI's, but they're not as flicker free as they claim, when at high frame rates.

A dop said to me once, everytime you double your fps, double your lighting budget!

Best bet for cheap slo mo, is do it outside in full sunlight. Cheapest, most powerful light you can get, is the old sun.

Any questions, just give me a shout - i love nerding it out about camera tech!

Personally, i'm a bit tired of slow mo - too many slow motion skating videos about for my liking!

Edited by Fordo on Tuesday 20th November 22:54

[LongQ]

HAving read Fordo's post .... forget footballer or Oligarch - they would not have the time and would simply pay someone else to do it for them.

[Fordo]

here we go, here's one of them we did, if your interested!;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv4E00IFMtc&lis...

lots of time remapping, to accentuate the slow bits. We shot him at mainly 240fps I think, which was as quick as the epic would go

[Super Slo Mo]

Fordo said:

Sony's FS700, as you say, is pretty good bang for buck as regards to slow motion. I probably would have used that, if it had been out at the time. Although i'd have needed an external recorder to bring the bitrate up to broadcast spec... anyway, i digress into technobabble!

Not sure about that, it outputs HD-SDI straight from the body.

We were using it on an England rugby match a couple of weeks ago (the Broadcaster (or facilities co, not quite sure) has bought one to experiment with). Running 18dB of gain, it slotted nicely in amongst the regular Sony 1500's without much problem, arguably better than the other hi-motion type cameras they've been using recently. Actually, at 18dB, it looked at least as clean as a normal broadcast camera on 0dB, due largely to the nice big chip I'd guess.

Mind you, we stuck a wireless link on it, so the bitrate got squashed back down to 18-19 Mbps anyway.

There are a couple of snags with it from a cameraman's point of view though: One is that the monitor/viewfinder is at the back of the camera, so it is difficult to hand hold. We'd got it fitted with a Canon J22, although it needed the doubler in as the image circle without it is too small for the FS700's super35 chip.

The other snag was that although it shoots (in the setup we were using, at least) 9 seconds of slo-mo, this then takes around a minute or so to play out back to the truck, so the cameraman can't offer any shots during that time.

For a serious amateur, or for a professional film maker, it's a really nice piece of kit. I'd guess with a proper movie lens, or a prime, it'd be superb.

[Fordo]

Super Slo Mo said:

Not sure about that, it outputs HD-SDI straight from the body.

sorry, that is what i meant - sdi to an extra recorder, to record high bit rate. We were under spec requirements to deliver content record at 50mbps or greater. - I believe the fs700 spits out 1080/ 60p form the sdi port when it plays out its slow mo cache, so i believe for its full slow mo capaility, you need a recorder that can take in 3g sdi, at 60p. Then after, you conform the 60p back to 25fps. Something along those lines anyway!

Interesting to hear about your tests with ithe fs700. Do you have any examples online?

I've only had a play with it at the broadcast shows - agree 100% about the ergonomics. I swear these engineers who make design cameras dont even get out form behind their benches.... that said the f5 / f55 finally look like sony have realised what operators are after from larger sensor cameras

Edited by Fordo on Tuesday 20th November 23:30

[Super Slo Mo]

Aha, I see what you mean.

Picture wise, it looked really nice. Bearing in mind the Vision Dept has been battling with the likes of the cameras derived from medical/scientific/industrial useage, which are an utter pain to colour match even vaguely close to the rest of the show. The little FS700 just had an auto WB and off it went. Very impressive from something so cheap (in relative terms, obviously).

Also bear in mind I do broadcast, not film, so look at images with that in mind only, so it may not be idea for proper movie stuff.

[Fordo]

Super Slo Mo said:

Aha, I see what you mean.

Picture wise, it looked really nice. Bearing in mind the Vision Dept has been battling with the likes of the cameras derived from medical/scientific/industrial useage, which are an utter pain to colour match even vaguely close to the rest of the show. The little FS700 just had an auto WB and off it went. Very impressive from something so cheap (in relative terms, obviously).

Also bear in mind I do broadcast, not film, so look at images with that in mind only, so it may not be idea for proper movie stuff.

i have the feeling we've done what happens a lot in the pub - start talking shop, and everyone else turns away wispering "their talking in acronyms again..."

What type of broadcast work do you do? Mainly sport?

I work mainly in studios doing commercials or short promos. Live stuff has probably changed a lot since I worked as a news cameraman!

[sgrimshaw]

Just for fun ..... what about the Casio Exilim range?

[LongQ]

Fordo said:

i have the feeling we've done what happens a lot in the pub - start talking shop, and everyone else turns away wispering "their talking in acronyms again..."

Nope, it's interesting in a sort of detached way (way too complicated for my poor old brain to take it all in.) I can always look up acronyms if needed. Or ask.

One of the more interesting aspects of video vs still is that with stills (it seems to me) we can marvel at the latest greatest but always ahve a little something extra we might really like to see, though realistically the stuff that has been hitting the market for the last year or so is probably far more than most people need, especially non-pros.

With video however there is so much more complexity and performance demands that one could make a case for that it still seems to have needs well ahead of wherever the amazing technology has managed to reach. Not at some sort of esoteric or theoretical level either but in 'real need' situations, albeit that 'need' may only exist because the technology is almost able to deliver a solution. Formerly the need might have been a 'nice to have some day' or even further removed as a germ of an idea in someone's mind.

All interesting stuff though the huuge volume of data is someone overwhelming.

Keep it going chaps and let's see who else appears to join the conversation.

[FurtiveFreddy]

sgrimshaw said:

Just for fun ..... what about the Casio Exilim range?

I've got a couple of these and TBH for the money they are OK if you don't mind the reduced resolution.

If you want serious slo-mo and good quality then there's not much choice and a high price to be paid but there are more solutions coming on the market.

In addition to the Phantom there are offerings from Olympus and For-a, which both provide proper slo-mo and good resolution.

Whichever way you look at it, high res + high fps = big bucks.

[Mobsta]

LongQ said:

Keep it going chaps and let's see who else appears to join the conversation.

I concur. Whilst the technical aspects and most of the terminology goes over my head, PH has welcomed and helped innumerable photographers who didnt know their f stop from their door stop before they first posted.

Video is new to me, Slo mo another world. Perhaps in years to come, when your average $49 webcam comes with ten mega trillion gigatrumpets of ram, pro level kit prices will fall.

The Sony I mentioned does seem to be the only bit of kit on the market which does fall into the HD category of performers, without the price tag of a new Aston. Even that seems a bit rich for my hobbiest blood. I naively thought a few grand for a body plus memory and lenses bought for a purpose or study would be enough... But I had no clue a few zeros could be tacked onto the price tag for the kit.

I remember the days when a 14 inch flat screen monitor could cost nearly £1k. It would be nice if, in the next 10 years manufacturers work sufficiently hard to develop competing models or functionality which bring prices down. There is no industry quite like the computer hardware and manufacturing industry quite like this, that I'm aware of.

As my post has been virtually entirely non-contributory in nature, I'll lower the bar and postulate that, in 20 years time, a decent spec web cam will perhaps be able to shoot Slo mo in full HD at a considerable frame rate. With an off the shelf standard pc setup and no custom graphics card or ram stack requirements.

I'm waffling, so I'll shut up now. /@grumpy that I can't afford the vision kit

[Mobsta]

Fordo said:

here we go, here's one of them we did, if your interested!;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv4E00IFMtc&lis...

lots of time remapping, to accentuate the slow bits. We shot him at mainly 240fps I think, which was as quick as the epic would go

Watched it several times now. Was it at any point shot faster than 240 fps you mentioned? The Sony cam I keep prattling on about shoots at up to 240 in full hd, but still seems like a very big stretch as far as a hobby goes.

Love the video by the way, thanks for posting it. What was the setup and can you explain in newbie terms, what was needed to achieve the end result and what purchasing decisions were made to buy the bits needed? Lenses, lighting, memory, etc.

Can you, pretty please with a cherry on top, explain how a full HD segment might fail to meet the higher standard of another full hd segment, shot on a lesser camera? I understand how the glass works, but I really don't know one body from the next, nor what I'd want.

The Sony is 6k, the vision cameras $150k
Both shoot 240fps full HD. And my ridiculously simple question is, what attributes or specification parameters does one generally look for, when buying a body?

[Super Slo Mo]

Fordo said:

i have the feeling we've done what happens a lot in the pub - start talking shop, and everyone else turns away wispering "their talking in acronyms again..."

What type of broadcast work do you do? Mainly sport?

I know, I think I'm guilty of it in a few threads. Yes, mainly live sports.

[FurtiveFreddy]

Mobsta said:

Watched it several times now. Was it at any point shot faster than 240 fps you mentioned? The Sony cam I keep prattling on about shoots at up to 240 in full hd, but still seems like a very big stretch as far as a hobby goes.

Love the video by the way, thanks for posting it. What was the setup and can you explain in newbie terms, what was needed to achieve the end result and what purchasing decisions were made to buy the bits needed? Lenses, lighting, memory, etc.

Can you, pretty please with a cherry on top, explain how a full HD segment might fail to meet the higher standard of another full hd segment, shot on a lesser camera? I understand how the glass works, but I really don't know one body from the next, nor what I'd want.

The Sony is 6k, the vision cameras $150k
Both shoot 240fps full HD. And my ridiculously simple question is, what attributes or specification parameters does one generally look for, when buying a body?

You're not comparing like with like. For a start, which of the (many) Phantoms have you looked at which costs $150k? The Sony is not a dedicated high speed camera, whereas the Vision Research range are. The Vision Miro M320 (around $60k) does 1500fps in 1080p, which is what I call high speed. 240fps is not that fast if you're going to play with slo-mo, unless you only want to shoot relatively slow-moving action.

You're not telling us what subject matter you want to capture in slo-mo and the answer to that question will, to a large extent, define which type of camera you would need...

If I want a nice slo-mo shot of a marathon runner for a Nike TV ad, I'd be using a different camera to the one I'd use to capture a rifle bullet slicing through a playing card.

[Super Slo Mo]

Mobsta said:

Can you, pretty please with a cherry on top, explain how a full HD segment might fail to meet the higher standard of another full hd segment, shot on a lesser camera? I understand how the glass works, but I really don't know one body from the next, nor what I'd want.

The Sony is 6k, the vision cameras $150k
Both shoot 240fps full HD. And my ridiculously simple question is, what attributes or specification parameters does one generally look for, when buying a body?

Right, let me see if I can try to answer this without losing you.

In simple terms, HD resolution doesn't change between cameras. However, as with stills cameras, the quality (that's colour resolution, noise, and other visual effects) can vary. For instance, a full frame (ie 35mm) SLR stills camera at 12 MP should produce a better quality image than a little compact camera at the same 12MP. The same principle applies to video. Bigger chips (that's tech talk for the image sensor) stand a better chance of producing a clean, good quality image. However, there are a lot of variables.
Broadcast cameras use quite small image sensors, 2/3inch is normal. They are generally very expensive for their size (the sensor that is), and there are three of them, with a light splitting prism in front which sends red, green and blue light to the relevant sensor (hence the term '3CCD' you find on many broadcast spec cameras).
With a smaller/cheaper camera, often they come with a single sensor, which is then split into three, so part of it deals with green, part with red and part with blue. Technically this means it's not 'really' HD, but some clever electronics sort this bit out.

After that, it's down to output. A true HD-SDI stream runs at 1.485 Gb/s, which is a huge data rate. However, most edit suites, and transmission systems (ie satellite, cable etc) can't handle this bitrate, so it gets compressed. This loses image quality. By the time it gets to your house it's looking somewhat ropey compared to the feed straight out of the camera.
With the smaller cameras, some of them output HD-SDI, but there's not a lot, as a consumer, that you can do with that, other than watch it live on an appropriate monitor. To record/edit the footage, it needs to be compressed. There are a number of different formats that are used, but all have an effect on the final quality, you can see the compression artefacts (looks like smearing, blockiness), which get worse depending on how far it's compressed.

Hopefully you're still with me (I suspect I'm not explaining it simply enough, I'm not clever enough to do that, unfortunately).

Anyway, camera bodies:

It all depends what you want. To integrate a camera into a live show is completely different than using one to record footage for editing later. For live, you need to be able to control colours, iris (aperture), gain (Sensitivity), plus a load of other subtle settings, on the fly. This means that generally you have a 'control panel' that's part of what we call the 'camera chain'.

A (broadcast) camera chain consists of a camera (exc lens), Camera Control Unit (CCU), and Operator/Remote Control Panel (OCP/RCP). The CCU is connected to the camera by an umbilical cable, that sends power and data information to the camera, and receives video and feedback data back. It's at the CCU where you can take the HD-SDI feed and the audio signals. The camera on its own is essentially useless. The OCP/RCP (depends on manufacturer what it's called) is connected to the CCU via a cable, and is where an engineer controls all the camera settings, so colour balance, iris, matrix, gamma, flares, black colour, etc (the list is massive). This system is entirely pointless for the home user. To get an idea of what they cost, a typical camera is here: http://www.creativevideo.co.uk/index.php?t=product...
Check out the price, it doesn't include the lens, and it's used, although to be fair, they don't cost all that much more when new.

Lenses start at around £12k, and head upwards.

For home use or non-live (so for instance, a corporate film maker) the broadcast kit isn't necessary. You're looking for the ability to record on-board, or attach a HDD/solid state recorder to it (so HD-SDI output is handy). Then it's just things like being able to adjust colours manually, control gain/ND/Iris easily without having to hunt for it in a menu, audio inputs, preferably with level controls.

The Sony FS700 has a Super 35 sized image sensor, so it has an advantage over Broadcast stuff in that the chip is nice and large, so it's easier to get good quality images at a reasonable price (a broadcast sensor on its own (ie just the part) would cost more than the complete FS700 camera). It's also pretty clean when gain is added, better than a broadcast camera in this respect.

Most slo-mo cameras are derived from medical or industrial cameras. In my experience, this means that they're heavily compromised for broadcast or home use. Factors such as being difficult to control (from an engineer's perspective), heavy, difficult for the cameraman to handle since they're not designed from the outset to be used running up and down a touchline.

The FS700 also appears to be 4K ready, which is the next big thing (3D is pretty much dead in broadcast). Hireacamera have one on their hire fleet http://hireacamera.com/camcorders/detail.asp?model... if you fancied spending a couple of hundred quid to have a play with one. It doesn't come with a lens though.

I've just read all that through, I'm not sure how helpful it all is.

Let me try and summarise: When looking for a camera body, it depends what you're going to use it for. Broadcast is different to Movies is different to Professional Use is different to Domestic/Hobbyist use. It probably sounds obvious, but the requirements of each are so different, that it's difficult to quantify what you'd look for in general.

From using the FS700 recently, the only thing I would say about it is that it doesn't 'handle' particularly well. That's from a hand-held perspective, on a tripod it would be fine, but as the viewfinder is at the back of the body, it means that as a camera operator you are reduced to holding it out at arms length, which is tiring, and not particularly stable. It's also not possible to use it 'on the shoulder', or underarm, but they are perhaps not important for the non-broadcast user.

We also use the little Panasonic AF101 (it doesn't do Slo-Mo), but the image quality is really nice, very clean and natural. Once you're into the realms of paying a few thousand quid for a camera body, the image quality is there, it's just the features/useability/handling that vary. Oh, the Panasonic AF101 is micro 4/3rds sensor size, so it means we need ultra wide lenses to get a normal 'field of view', compared to the big chip on the Sony, which just means the lens options are greater.

As said, I'm not sure how helpful that is, if there's anything in there that makes sense but needs clarifying, please ask. It might be better to discuss one point at a time in details

[LongQ]

Super Slo Mo said:

As said, I'm not sure how helpful that is, if there's anything in there that makes sense but needs clarifying, please ask. It might be better to discuss one point at a time in details

Very interesting. It's one thing suspecting that a subject is more complex that one imagines it to be and quite another to read just how different some requirements can be.

Fascinating as it would be I have never really been seriously tempted into video on the basis that I could never justify the amount of quipment required to do it properly. And I keep thinking back to my father's 8mm stuff that he spent ages, back in the day, editing and recording taped commentary. Once in a while out would come the screen, the projector and the tape recorder and the whole lot would take quite a while to set up and sync. We would watch. Take a break between reel changes and celluloid breakage repairs. Then it was all put away for another couple of years. My very few excursions into VHS video (no editing) received even less enthusiasm from my family. I probably still have the tapes somewhere, not sure about anything to play them through.

When video started to hit the dslrs I watched with interest but quickly realised that although it brought casual video users a potentially high quality option at low cost to get the 'film like' (let alone any thoughts of Slow Motion) qualities probably required a fair selection of other kit related to handling the camera. Add to that a fair amount of computer power and quite a lot of time for editing and, probably, a very short 'life time' for the output (in a family context let alone for wider consumption) I have never really done much with it.

It's still very interesting to understand a little of the technology and shooting approach though.

Many thanks.

[Super Slo Mo]

FurtiveFreddy said:

You're not comparing like with like. For a start, which of the (many) Phantoms have you looked at which costs $150k? The Sony is not a dedicated high speed camera, whereas the Vision Research range are. The Vision Miro M320 (around $60k) does 1500fps in 1080p, which is what I call high speed. 240fps is not that fast if you're going to play with slo-mo, unless you only want to shoot relatively slow-moving action.

You're not telling us what subject matter you want to capture in slo-mo and the answer to that question will, to a large extent, define which type of camera you would need...

If I want a nice slo-mo shot of a marathon runner for a Nike TV ad, I'd be using a different camera to the one I'd use to capture a rifle bullet slicing through a playing card.

No, indeed, this is quite right.

One thing that became noticeable when they introduced 400 fps and upwards on the Rugby, was that the cameraman's technique became very important. The replayed slow mo footage amplified every tremor in his hands, every focus correction, every tiny framing change.
Actually, the replays took so long too that the director would get bored and cut to something else. 1 second of action becomes an 8 second replay, 2 seconds a 16 second replay etc, which is an eternity in a live show.