Gav of The Slow Mo Guys made this interesting video comparing different high-speed camera frame rates. Using a Phantom HD camera, he films coffee mugs shattering on pavement at 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, and 10000 frames per second.

Here’s another beautiful example of why you don’t need to shell out $100,000 for a pro-grade high speed camera when you can use just a simple DSLR — in this case it was a Canon T2i — and Twixtor. David HJ. Lindberg writes,

I used a Canon 550D T2i to create a Phantom camera look, but with a much lower budget. All I used was my 550D, my lens and Twixtor. Of course the Phantom camera makes better results, but compared with the prices, I think Twixtor is totally worth a try.

The video was shot using the super cheap Canon 50mm f/1.8 Mark II lens and was converted from 60fps to 4000fps afterward.

(via Doobybrain)

Cinematographer Chris Bryan used a Phantom HD Gold camera in a custom underwater housing to capture super slow-motion footage of waves in Sydney, Australia. Water looks amazing at thousands of frames per second. Be sure to watch it full screen and in high-def.

(via PhotoWeeklyOnline)

So this is how some photographers always manage to capture awesome action shots… Now if only Neo or Max Payne would lead a photography workshop on how to activate “bullet time”.

(via ISO 1200)

Wedding photographer Lee Morris recently had the idea of trying his hand at making a wedding video with his still photography mindset. His idea was to slow down the video to make it more of a “moving image”, bringing it more into his realm of expertise. To do this, he photographed a wedding at 60fps using a Canon 60D and then slowed the video down to 24fps afterward.

Here’s a slow motion video showing a closeup look at the human eye, our amazing biological lens (and sensor). You might be surprised at how mechanical its movements are and how fluid the iris is. Another crazy fact is that we’re continually relying on “image stabilization” to see things clearly:

The visual system in the brain is too slow to process information if the images are slipping across the retina at more than a few degrees per second. Thus, for humans to be able to see while moving, the brain must compensate for the motion of the head by turning the eyes. [#]

To see a quick demonstration of this fact, try the following experiment: hold your hand up, about one foot in front of your nose. Keep your head still, and shake your hand from side to side, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. At first you will be able to see your fingers quite clearly. But as the frequency of shaking passes about 1 Hz, the fingers will become a blur. Now, keep your hand still, and shake your head. No matter how fast you shake your head, the image of your fingers remains clear. This demonstrates that the brain can move the eyes opposite to head motion much better than it can follow, or pursue, a hand movement. When your pursuit system fails to keep up with the moving hand, images slip on the retina and you see a blurred hand. [#]

Like with cameras, our built-in image stabilization can deal with head shake but not motion blur.

Melbourne-based design studio Betty Wants In is at it again. They’ve created this stunning slow-mo video of BASE jumpers doing their thing — a perfect followup to the skydiving one they shared back in April. The footage was captured with GoPro cameras and then slowed down using Twixtor, just like the crazy wingsuit video we shared yesterday.

Earlier this year, daredevil BASE jumper Jeb Corliss leaped off a cliff in Switzerland in a wingsuit and wearing 5 separate GoPro cameras. One of the things Corliss did afterward was create this ethereal slow-motion video with the footage using Twixtor, the artificial slowmo program that has become quite popular as of late.
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While we’re on the topic of high-speed cameras (and slow motion videos), here’s a beautiful slow-motion video of an eagle owl “attacking” a camera, shot at 1,000fps with a Photron FASTCAM SA2. The new Phantom v1610 camera announced today can record footage 1000 times slower than this.

(via kottke.org)

When Eadweard Muybridge shot the first motion picture of a galloping horse back in 1878, he used 24 individual cameras placed 27 inches apart, using trip wires to fire off each camera one thousandth of a second after the previous one. With fancy high-speed camera rentals priced at thousands of dollars a day, YouTube member Destin came up with a Muybridge-esque technique for capturing a bullet flying through the air using an ordinary DSLR: he shoots a bullet for each frame and uses a fancy trigger to capture the bullet at increasing distances, combining the resulting images into a neat super slow motion video.

(via DIYPhotography.net)