Visario G2 High Speed Camera

[Robert Starling SOC]

A client has approached me about flying the Visario G2 high speed camera on a tennis shoot in a few weeks.

 

It's basically a box with lens and internal memory that will store from 1 to about 16 second clips depending on the frame rates. It is and can be controlled and tethered to a laptop via ethernet cable but the media cannot be streamed out live so a shot is the shot until you download the media. It also requires a power inverter from 12v to 120 but the power consumption is only 25 watts.

 

http://www.weinbergerusa.com/SpeedCam-Visa...g2-l1cat19.html

 

Anyone have any experience / comments / suggestions flying something like this?

 

I spoke to the mfr rep here in the US and he said "Sure, we had a guy fly it on a Steadicam from a helicopter". Oh brother... just what you need to hear!

 

Thanks!

[Chris Konash]

Hi Robert,

 

I think this is another case of someone who doesn't know what a steadicam was made to do. Most high speed shots end up getting cut to bits and may only be 2 seconds long at the end. Just wondering what type of camera movement he is looking for in a tennis game in those 2 seconds. Not trying to talk you out of the job, but it will be an experience.

 

I did a demo (non steadicam) of the Phantom 1000fps camera the other week and the camera was the same, internal memory with an Ethernet control link. The Ethernet was used to control the menus as well as start or stop the recording. we had it set to trigger the stop of the recording so it was always re-writing the internal memory and you would push the button to stop the re-write and hold the last 8 secs of footage.

 

If you do this, you will most definitely be tethered, because you will need to somehow stop the recording, but then again an Ethernet cable isn't anything too bad. I wonder if you'll need a professioinal cable utility or someone from the IT department for this.... I'll have to get back to you.

 

Good Luck,

 

Chris Konash