Ever wonder what you camera flash would look like if you watched it in super slow motion? Thanks to Phantom high speed cameras you can wonder no more! This flash bulb (the single-use kind used in old film cameras) was captured at 1052 frames per second.
(via f stoppers)
This is what lighting a match looks like up close and in super slow-mo at 2000 frames per second. Who knew the process was so bubbly and gross?
(via Laughing Squid)
Forget throwing water balloons at people’s faces — if you ever get your hands on a super expensive slow-motion camera, tossing around water is awesome enough. Shinchi Maruyama is an artist that photographs hand-tossed liquid sculptures using a Phase One P45 camera and a Broncolor Strobe. He also used a high-speed camera to capture video of sculptures being “made”. The results are beautiful.
When a NASA Space Shuttle lifts off, there’s always high definition cameras carefully placed around the launch site, documenting the launch in high-definition photographs and slow motion videos. Back in April we featured a slow motion video of the Apollo 11 launch in 1969, and now here’s another neat super slow-mo documentary of more recent launches (i.e. 2005). If you have 45 minutes to spare, this video is sure to amaze and educate you.
By the way… during the launch, the shuttle burns 1,000 gallons of liquid propellants and 20,000 pounds of solid fuel every second.
(via Engadget)
Update: Ben tells us that every single image in the video above was shot on film, not HD cameras.
What do 225,000 watts of light get you when shooting with the high-speed Phantom camera? Not much. Just ask Vincent Laforet who shot this commercial using the uber-expensive camera. Even with that much light, he still needed a 2.0 aperture. That only created more problems of staying in focus while using dolly moves in slow motion.
Read more…
Graeme Taylor took his Casio High Speed EXILIM EX-FH20 camera and shot some 210fps footage out the window, resulting in some pretty beautiful slow-motion footage. On his blog Taylor writes,
In all my slow-motion work so far, I’ve used a static camera to capture a high-speed event. But, I wondered, what would happen if the camera was the fast-moving object? For instance, if you use a 210fps camera at 35mph, on playback at 30fps it’ll seem to the observer that they’re moving at walking pace- but everything observed will be operating at 1/7th speed.
What I’d hoped to do was film the people on a railway platform from a train as it blasted past, but since the places they don’t stop at tend not to be listed in the timetables, this would be hard to co-ordinate. I figured that being at the very front of a fast train as it approached a stop would suffice; although the ‘frozen in time’ effect is less pronounced towards the end of the video, the platforms at non-stops tended to be mostly empty, so there’d be less to capture anyway. Helpfully, people don’t seem to move too much as their train arrives!
Now someone needs to take this idea to the next level with a Phantom camera and a bullet train.
Thanks for the tip Luke!
Another entry for our list of “random things made awesome by slow motion”: here’s a video of a steel ball being dropped into fine sand heated to about 500° C, at which point it takes on strange liquid properties. Be sure to also check out the water drop at 2000 fps video we posted in the beginning of the year if you haven’t seen it.
Here’s something to add to your list of “random but awesome things to shoot if you ever get your hands on a Phantom camera”: popcorn popping. The exploding kernel above was shot at 6200 frames per second with a Phantom v12 and played back at 25fps.
(via Laughing Squid)
Here’s another beautiful example of what Twixtor, the $300 frame-rate conversion software, can do for footage captured with ordinary cameras. This one was shot with the entry level Canon 550D (i.e. T2i), a Canon 18-55mm kit lens, and a Sigma 70-300. Though motion approximation can present issues such as warping, this kind of software is a good alternative for people who want slow motion but can’t afford to rent ($2,500/day) or buy ($118,000) a Phantom camera.
More Super Slow Motion [Water] – 550D (via f stoppers)
Dentsu London, the same ad agency that recently experimented with iPad light-painting, was recently hired by Canon to create a commercial for the Canon Pixma line of printers. They decided to create super close-up and super slow-mo shots of paint dancing by using sound, and created a rig that spins around the paint super fast to create a sense of motion as they shoot at 5000 fps. As you’ll see from the video, this is a great idea for still photos as well.
The resulting commercial can be seen at the end of the video. It’s stunning.
(via f stoppers)
