Ideas on how to set up a video shoot for a science project

[Timothy J. allen]

Hi,
We videotape in “zero G” pretty often. Honestly, I’ve seen more issue with the camera iris because of the white walls and lack of controllable lighting on the “vomit comet” (and the space station or shuttle), than I see problems with reduced gravity.

Whether to build a rig depends on what you want to see. You will lose the perspective of the entire experiment

[Andy Stinton]

Wow!! I think that Tim, as usual, has covered all of the salient points. So time for me to chip in. The fact that a non professional cameraman is going to be shooting makes me want to vomit without the aid of one of Tim

[Mark Suszko]

Okay, you don’t need a picture of the laptop, or home movies of the lucky engineer revisiting his lunch, you only need to record video of the laptop’s screen output in synch with whatever the camera is picking up of the fluid action.

Most modern laptops have an s-video out,it mirrors the screen output. This can be connected to a Sony “clamshell” Dv deck, something you can buy for maybe 400 bucks or rent for less. Rent two, and to the second one, connect a “lipstick” “bullet” or “ice cube” (all slang for tiny POV cameras) camera with a close-up lens. Our shop uses a Sony LS-1 lipstick cam with various screw-on lenses, I think it matches our PVV-1 betacam footage pretty well, but there are probably more modern and better POV cameras out there now. The lipstick camera can have plenty of resolution (they are sometimes used for medical and industrial process imaging) with the right add-on lens. Some of the Sony lipstick cams can take power right from the clamshell deck, eliminating a separate power supply for the camera and thus cutting weight and complexity. Another benefit of the lipstick cams is they are small, light, easy to make custom mountings for, and take up little room, making your whole experimental unit more compact and more sturdy against the positive g-forces on the bottom of the parabolas and any in-flight vibrations. The two DV clamshell decks will record time code and audio, so, if your guy can make a noise or a beep or something to slate audio at the beginning of the experimental run, the two tapes will be able to be locked into synchronization in post, and you wind up with a 2-window screen of the laptop data and the experimental glop’s behavior all synched up.

All the gear I mentioned, two clamshells and a lipstick, can be rented from a reputable place for not too much money, under $500 a day I would expect, maybe more on the coasts. The expense would mainly come from finding someone experienced and capable in rigging the stuff up so it works and is safe and reliable. That may include adding lighting and a suitably contrasting background to the experimental cell so the fluid behavior is easier to discern. Finding a gaffer that works on a nano-scale can be difficult, OTOH, the craft services table is only a foot long;-)

BTW Tim, I thought the v-Comet was retired, or did they just change aircraft and keep the nickname?