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High speed Video cameras


Matt Burton

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If anyone wishes to wire their own cables, the pinouts for the Fischer3 are:

 

Pin 1 -- +24vdc

Pin 2 -- Chassis Ground

Pin 3 -- Power Ground

 

Abel would be happy to make cables for your sleds to power directly to the camera. Just let us know the connector & pinout on your sled and the length of cable you desire.

 

Mitch Gross

Abel Cine Tech

mitch@abelcine.com

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Remote run connector is a bit of a beasty at the moment. The camera has a Fischer8 which is used for a multiple of functions: IRIG (a timecode syncing between cameras and other units), Frame syncing (great for 3D), Strobe (drives the lights to the shutter) and Trigger. Wiring for Trigger is thus:

 

Pin 3 -- ground

Pin 8 -- Trigger in

 

Closing the connection triggers the shot.

 

But here's the thing -- it doesn't work right now when using CineMags. With the next firmware build coming soon we expect it to, as a closed continuous contact when running. This camera was originally designed to shoot short bursts of incredibly high speed, so it has a revolving RAW memory buffer (always dumping the beginning to add more to the end. The trigger just said stop recording now and save whatever is in the buffer. Now with CineMags and recording in our more familiar "run/stop" mode the functionality has to be adjusted but it's not done yet. So for now there is a Trigger button on the operator side of the camera. Push to start, push again to stop. Soon enough the remote cable trigger will function. If you leave the camera set in Loop mode as I described above then the trigger does function as I said.

 

Hope this makes sense.

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I looked at one of these a while ago, the one you buy depends really on weather you want to use it for film or research. you can get a camera from a company called Photron pretty cheap. They do these Fastcam PCI cameras that is a camera head, and a big thick cable that goes to a PCI card. The PCI card has a load of solid state storage on board, and the camera dumps its images onto the solid state storage before it is copied to the hard drive. When i was looking at it it was about 15GBP for a colour system doing 2000fps at full frame, up to 150,000fps at reduced frame/reduced res.

 

Failing that, Olympus do one called the iSpeed which is quite neat, as its an all in one system with a touchscreen controller/storage device.

 

Once you get your camera, I got some pretty cool fast things you can use to test it out, I got a gun that shoots beer cans (full ones) at 400mph :-D

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I just finished a DP gig for Michelin tires where we used the Phantom to shoot rig shots in water. We achieved some very nice scenes where you can see droplets of rain coming off the tire around 450fps. We used a Hydroflex splashbag / compressed air rain deflector for a 435. It fits perfectly, except the viewfinder does not line up (which didn't matter for a rig). Don't try to use a spinning disc rain deflector with a high speed camera, you'll see the disc.

 

We did have a hard time securing a CineMag. They are in short supply, so make sure you can get your hands on one before committing the that camera for Steadicam. There is a new docking station for the CineMag, and that is not yet available. The docking station will allow you to download one CineMag while you are shooting with another one. We shot all day on a single 500G CineMag, and didn't fill it up.

 

One consideration is that to shoot a lower resolution, say 720P, the camera crops the sensor, which changes the aspect ratio. Basically, whatever resolution you shoot at, that is the height of your image. The Phantom crops the vertical resolution to your selected format, but maintains full horizontal resolution, creating weird aspect ratios. We stayed at 192) resolution which gave us a 16x9 aspect ratio.

 

I'm not a fan of cropping sensors to change resolution outputs. Red camera does it as well, and you loose the 35mm characteristics if you want to record 2K to save data space. I prefer a downrezzed proxy of the total sensor resolution. I suppose Phantom and Red have to crop sensors to keep their cameras smaller and cheaper, not carrying the processing for the downrez.

 

Another note, get fast lenses. We had Zeiss T2.1's and when the clouds rolled in, we were limited to our fps by exposure. I could have used another stop in my pocket with Super Speeds or Master Primes.

 

We used Steve Ramano for a tech & Abel Cine Tech in NYC. Steve was flawless, and we had no issues the first time using the Phantom. Talk to post about their file preference and workflow. The CineMags record the proprietary Cine files, which have to be translated to a post friendly file (DPX, TIFF, etc...) Our post guys wanted TIFF files, which doubled the size of the files, and took a long time to convert from the Cine files.

 

Frankly, at those speeds, I don't see much advantage in putting the Phantom on a Steadicam. In capturing 4 seconds in the camera's internal 16G memory, you won't really feel much movement. We had a car driving 40mph with a camera rigged to the side, and at 600fps, the ground was barely moving.

 

Overall, it was a good experience using the Phantom, and the clients loved the footage.

 

Mark Karavite

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I agree that above 500 fps or so it's not useful to use steadicam but at around 100-400 fps I've had some incredible shots. One of the best was on low mode tracking a dog running. You could see bit's of grit flying up from it's paws at the lens, they looked kinda like asteroids floating around in space. :rolleyes:

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  • 2 months later...
I'm looking for information on high speed cameras as I need to spec one up asap.

Really I'm looking for the best bang for buck camera I can get hold of that will do speeds of 1000fps and over at a decent rez.

Has anybody got much experience with high speed cams and could share some advice with me.

Many thanks

 

-Matt 'friend to the animals' Burton

 

 

 

If your looking for information on cameras, I have a site dedicated specically to HD cameras. It has alot of great info. Check it out www.hdcameraguide.com

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Hello all,

 

Just been looking through the archives on Phantom info, as it looks like I'll be doing some Steadicam sequences with it for a music promo.

 

Thanks to all for the info that has been posted already - great stuff. Just wondering if anyone has flown one more recently, and if anything has changed since these posts? Tether-free is good...anything else to watch out for?

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