According to the Encyclopedia of World Climatology, lightning happens about 40–50 times per second worldwide; that translates into almost 1.4 billion flashes per year. But of the 1.4 billion that happen in 2011, we’re pretty sure this was the only one captured at 11,000 frames per second, turning a one second lightning flash into an incredible 6 minute experience. Read more…
Photographer Florian Knorn recently took a Fastcam SA4 high speed camera — ordinarily used for observing things like ballistics and fluid dynamics — and pointed it at a Sony HVL-F58AM flash unit, capturing what a camera flash firing looks like when captured at 500,000 frames per second and then slowed down to to 25fps.
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It’s not uncommon for digital cameras to have burst modes as fast as 10 frames per second these days — especially in mirrorless and pellicle mirror cameras — but do you think you have a good understanding of just how fast 10FPS is? If not, check out this video by YouTube user krnabrnydziobak, who pointed a Phantom Miro eX2 at a Nikon D4 to see what 10FPS looks like when captured at a staggering 1920FPS.
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What do popping soap bubbles look like up close and slowed down? That’s what Gav and Dan of The Slow Mo Guys recently decided to find out. They used a pricey and powerful high-speed camera: the Phantom v1610, which costs upwards of $100,000 and can shoot up to 1,000,000 frames per second.
They didn’t up the FPS that high, though (the resulting videos would take an eternity to watch). Instead, they chose to record at a much-more-reasonable 18,000fps (at 720p), and used a macro lens in order to capture the beautiful details of the bubbles as they disintegrate. This is the slowest footage the Slow Mo Guys have ever captured, and the results are quite beautiful.
(via Gizmodo)
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
Super slow motion footage captured by high speed cameras usually shows slow movements (if any), but German studio The Marmalade came up with a brilliant way of speeding up the movements: a high-speed robot camera operator.
Our groundbreaking High Speed Motion Control System ‘Spike’ brings the creative freedom of a moving camera to the world of high speed filming and so enables us to create shots that would be impossible to achieve otherwise. ‘Spike’ can freely move the camera with unparalleled speed and precision, thereby removing the previously existing creative limitation of having to shoot high speed sequences with a locked camera.
By marrying the hardware of a sturdy and reliable industrial robot to software that was built from the ground up for the demands of motion controlled high speed imaging, we developed a unique system for creating real life camera moves with the ease of use normally associated with 3D Animation.
The system does camera moves that are exactly repeatable, allowing them to be slightly tweaked until the shot is just right.
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If there was an official list of things that are too epic, this video would probably be somewhere on it. It’s a compilation of videos showing various extreme sports captured in super slow motion.
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)
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)
Vibration tester manufacturer Fluke recently published this video showing what the world of vibration looks like at 1,000 frames per second.
So much of movement is invisible to the human eye. Sure, our eyes can see a cymbal move when struck by a drum stick. But it’s what our eyes can’t see that is most captivating. Metal rippling as if it were fabric fluttering in the wind, droplets of water bouncing and hovering just above the surface of a puddle; the beauty and science of movement is in the details. And the details are often the result of vibrations. [#]
Everything was shot using a Phantom HD Gold high speed camera.
(via Laughing Squid)
