Have you always dreamed of soaring high above the Earth… and dive-bombing other birds? If so, this might be the next best thing: some falconers over in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi recently created a pint-sized helmet cam designed specifically for their hunting falcon.
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Photographer Tom Warner shot this slow motion incredible video of lightning at 7,207 frames per second. APOD writes,
The above lightning bolt starts with many simultaneously creating ionized channels branching out from an negatively charged pool of electrons and ions that has somehow been created by drafts and collisions in a rain cloud. About 0.015 seconds after appearing — which takes about 3 seconds in the above time-lapse video — one of the meandering charge leaders makes contact with a suddenly appearing positive spike moving up from the ground and an ionized channel of air is created that instantly acts like a wire. Immediately afterwards, this hot channel pulses with a tremendous amount of charges shooting back and forth between the cloud and the ground, creating a dangerous explosion that is later heard as thunder. Much remains unknown about lightning, however, including details of the mechanism that separates charges.
It’s amazing how much action goes on in just a blink of the eye.
Single Stroke CG in High Speed (via APOD)
Video credits: Footage by Tom A. Warner/ZTResearch/WeatherVideoHD.TV and used with permission
McLean Fahnestock of Long Beach, CA took high definition video of all 135 Space Shuttle launches and synchronized them into this mesmerizing video titled “Grand Finale”. It’s a beautiful project with a twinge of sadness.
(via Doobybrain)
Security camera clips that make the news usually show bad things, but Coke decided to “look at the world a little differently” in this heartwarming viral video. They found security camera footage from around the world showing happy moments: people stealing kisses instead of possessions, dealing potato chips instead of drugs, and offering car assistance rather than road rage.
Here’s a video overview of some interesting research that’s being done in the area of video processing. By taking standard video as an input and doing some fancy technical mojo on it, researchers are able to amplify information in it to reveal things that are virtually invisible to the human eye. For example, you can detect a baby’s heartbeat by simply pointing a camera at his/her face. The method is able to visualize the pulsating flow of blood that fills the face.
Cinematographer Jim Geduldick was lucky enough to be the first to test out Vision Research’s new Phantom Miro M120 high-speed camera in the real world, and — luckily for the rest of us — is kind enough to share the results. Falling on the smaller, more rugged side of the Phantom line, the M120 is made to take, well, exactly the kind of footage Geduldick captured. The camera can shoot a whopping 1540 at full 1080p HD, and is estimated to cost anywhere from $25,000 to $60,000 — a bargain compared to the price tags on its more expensive siblings.
(via Gizmodo)
Cesar Kuriyama spent a couple years saving enough money to take an entire year off from work — his 30th year of life. He spent that year living frugally, doing all the things he never had enough time to do: travelling, personal creative projects, and spending time with family. He decided to document that special year by capturing 1 second of footage every single day and creating a short compilation video at the end, similar to Madeline’s video that we shared back in January. After completing the year, Kuriyama now is planning to capture 1 second from each day for the rest of his life. This means he’ll have a 5-hour video summarizing 50 years of life if he lives to be 80, since every decade creates roughly one hour of video.
(via Coudal)
Japanese website mono-logue released this short 30-second video comparing footage from the Canon 5D Mark II and the new 5D Mark III captured at ISO 12,800. The difference in noise levels is remarkable (be sure to watch it full screen and in HD).
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Anna Franz, a researcher at the the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford, has won Nikon’s first annual Small World in Motion competition with an amazing video that shows the beating heart and blood vessels of a 72-hour-old chick embryo. Franz cut a window into an egg to expose the embryo, and then carefully injected ink into the yolk sac artery in order to visualize the beating heart and the vasculature of the embryo.
(via Nikon Small World via Feature Shoot)
A young woman living in Los Angeles named Madeline did a 365 day project that’s a bit different than most: instead of taking a picture a day, she decided to document each day with roughly one second of footage. At the conclusion of 2011, she combined all 365 video clips into this beautiful 7-minute-long video that offers a glimpse into what her year was like.
