• Cinematography

  Best Camera for Ultra Slow Motion?

  Posted by Greg Ball on September 1, 2017 at 8:52 pm

  I have a client looking to demonstrate a golf swing and the impact of the driver hitting a golf ball in ultra slow motion. We’ll be shooting this in front of a green screen.

  ny suggestions for a camera that will shoot this at probably 1,000 to 2,0000 FPS, and is capable of being chromakeyed?

  Greg Ball, President
  Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
  https://www.ballmediainnovations.com

  Saskia-anett Ebelt replied 8 years, 8 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Todd Terry

  September 1, 2017 at 9:17 pm

  Sounds like a Phantom job to me…. one of the various flavors of the Phantom camera from Vision Research.

  Not all rental houses have Phantoms, but some do. Some require that you hire their tech guy for the day along with the Phantom.

  T2

  __________________________________
  Todd Terry
  Creative Director
  Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
  fantasticplastic.com
  
• 

  Greg Ball

  September 3, 2017 at 10:43 pm

  Thanks Todd. That’s what they told me . We would need to use their Tech. Also I’m wondering about lenses. Do these use DSLR canon lenses?

  Greg Ball, President
  Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
  https://www.ballmediainnovations.com
• 

  Todd Terry

  September 3, 2017 at 10:56 pm

  Couldn’t say for sure…

  The standard (or at least most common) Phantom mount is the PL mount, so that would require PL mount cine lenses.

  I know there is the option of the EOS mount on the Phantom for use with Canon lenses… but I’m not sure if DSLR lenses would work or if those are just for Canon’s real cine lenses. At any rate you’d want as-fast-as-possible glass of course… with such a high frame rate (and thus, shutter speed), you’d want at least superspeeds just to gather enough light. The double-edged sword is that such high shutter speeds require boatloads of light… but many of the otherwise-desirable high-intensity lights (like HMIs) aren’t suitable as they will show flickering at high frame rates. The best option for REALLY high frame rates is probably the sun.

  As for the mount, that’d be a question the rental house could readily answer. And of course they would have lenses, too.

  T2

  __________________________________
  Todd Terry
  Creative Director
  Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
  fantasticplastic.com
  
• 

  Saskia-anett Ebelt

  September 9, 2017 at 9:39 pm

  Hi Gregg,

  I did a shot with a Phantomflex for a McDonald’s Highspeed Foodshot, and I used Arri CP=Cineprime.
  It was an indoor shot and we used 6x1kw 1000hz Arri Highspeedlight, but in the bright sun you probably don’t need it. Maybe for the shadows.
  It’s not useful to use canon lenses, because the rental price for a Phantomflex is so high, that the lens price is not so important.
  The challenge when using the Phantomflex is to find a good relation between frame rate and shutter, normaly you need an hour to figure it out for your special shot situation. And the data wrangling is also not simple, you need an extra assistant for this.
  The workflow is: do a shot, play it from the cartrigde in the camera, to see if it was successful, after a lot of shots change the cartrigde to secure the content and continue recording with the second cartrigde. The data usage is enormous high!
  But the quality is phantastic.

  Best Regards, Saskia-Anett Ebelt

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