This article and video comes to us courtesy of the folk over at Motionographer.com. This is a short narrative film created by Superfad for Vision Research/Phantom using their slow motion camera. The video is amazingly well put together. The narrative is just enough to keep you interested but doesn’t distract you from what is obviously the point of the video, to show off the amazingly cool Phantom cameras. Phantom, for those who are unfamiliar with them, have been producing cameras since the 1950’s and have produced some of the highest quality cameras in the business. Hopefully one day in the future I will be able to review one of them for you all. But until then we can look at this amazing video and drool.

This video was filmed with the Vision Research Phantom HD camera which by all appearances is a damn fine camera. The camera sports a sensor capable of 2048×2048. The frame rate is variable from 1-1,000fps. More than likely it will push over 1,000 fps at a lower resolution, that seems to be standard though not explicitly stated so may not be accurate. At any rate it looks like an amazing camera and one cannot argue with the quality of the footage.

Thanks to Gordon for the heads up on this one.

iPod version

Manufacturer	Model	Distributor	FPS	Shutter Speed	Full Resolution	Clip Length
Photron	ultima APX	MCT Cameras David Wiese	2000	1/2000	1024×1024	0′44″

Lens	Focal Length	F-Stop	White Balance	ISO Speed	Lighting
Nikon 60mm f/2.8		f/2.8	3100k	Default	Overcast day

For those of you who make a habit of hitting up high speed video galleries you have no doubt seen more than your fair share of water balloons being put through all manner of torture. We’re different! Well we were anyway. Without further adieu I bring you…….(drumroll please) The Death of a Water Balloon, part one….of six. In all seriousness I’ve always loved the high speed water balloon shots and while they have been a bit overdone they are always fascinating for one reason or another. In this instance I took balloons from a helium balloon kit, instead of normal water balloons, and filled it overfull with water and then unceremoniously dropped it from about 3ft. This particular shot has had some post processing to bring the brightness down and the contrast up a bit so you can more readily see the shape of the balloon and resultant splash. The camera was placed almost level with the ground, and using the 60mm lens lets the water appear very close without endangering the camera. I like the contortions the balloon goes through right before it breaks. If you use the arrow keys and step through the part where it actually breaks you get a chance to see some really interesting things happening around where the balloon is splitting.

David Wiese at MCT Cameras was kind enough to loan us a Photron ultima APX camera for our first set of shooting. I sent the camera back on friday and a sad, sad parting it was. I really enjoyed shooting with this camera. It was easy to get up and running in the morning, solid shooting during the day with the only downtime being the time it takes to drag the images off of the memory (which is just enough time to set up for the next shot) and then a quick take down at night.

The camera arrived in a trunk, everything nicely labeled and ready for action (thanks MCT). The case itself was a very heavy duty travel case that made transporting the camera a breeze. David had also included a zoom lens (couldnt find a make or model no. on this one) and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 lens as well as an F to C mount adapter and a few close up filters. The zoom lens was nice but I found the image quality on the 50mm more to my liking. I stuck to that as well as one of my own 60mm lenses for most of the shots.

The Setup
Setting up the APX the first time took me around two hours, mainly through my unfamiliarity with this kind of setup. The camera head is separate from the processor on this particular model. The head is connected to the processor by two heavy duty cables. Initially I had issues getting the computer to see the camera, the fault being the firewire cable connection on the laptop was too stiff. Once that was taken care of things went incredibly quickly. Successive setup times were only about 10-15 minutes. Take down took about the same amount of time.

The Software
Photron’s Fastcam software was an easy install and was up and running very quickly. The software is intuitive to use- they do a good job of putting all of the necessary information right where you need it. Some of the settings are quite esoteric if you are not used to high-speed filming, but they also do a really good job of setting the defaults so you don’t need to muck around with stuff too much. There were a few quirky spots, but most of that is chalked up to personal preference. The defaults are just that, you cannot make permanent preference changes (such as making the jpg save at 100% by default instead of their default of 75%). The sidebar can be hidden but not expanded, so the scrub bar ends up moving in larger jumps than I would like but that is where post processing and editing software come in handy, it’s good enough to clamp down to the part of the clip you would like to save.

The only major issue I saw was every time I closed the program and opened it back up again the software would hang on opening. I had to kill the process and restart the software again whereupon it would startup properly, however in thier defense I believe I am using an older version of the software. You have to contact them for updates vs an auto-update feature. The calibration (which you end up doing every time you have a major change in lighting, bg, or lens exchange) took a few too many clicks to get to, I felt it should be out on the main menu for as often as one needs to hit it.

All in all the software is a cake walk and very well put together. Saving files takes a bit of time, but when you are pulling 3000+ frames at 1024×1024 over firewire this is to be expected. The saving options were very comprehensive giving you access to most of the major file formats. I was a bit supprised that they didn’t have support for TGA, but with all the other options I can understand its exclusion though I do hope to see it in future versions of the software.

The Manual
The manual was very informative…..if you happen to be making your own connections, remotes and triggers. Other than that the information was a bit sparse, but enough to get you going. I never did figure out where to set the ISO, not that it was needed, the light sensativity on this camera was awsome. Some of the settings a bit under explained and other over explained, so about par for technical manuals.

The Camera
This thing is a monster, 1024×1024 max resolution at 2000fps, and the memory configuration it had allowed us to save 6144 frames total. The peak speed on this camera is 120,000fps, however that is at 128×16, not very high res, but still useful for certain specialized applications. Isn’t that what this camera is all about anyway?

As a visual effects artist I want as fast as I can get at as high resolution as I can get and so I was pretty happy shooting at 2000fps at 1024×1024, tickled in fact. I really enjoyed working with this camera, it is easy to see why Photron has been listed as one of the top high-speed camera manufacturers. I look forward to trying out some other cameras both from Photron and some of the other manufacturers so I have a better basis for comparison but the image quality was really good as you will see yourself. Sadly I did notice some ghosting, but I didn’t have the time to contact support to find out exactly what the issue was. I am certain it was a problem on my end as I have seen a bunch of footage from this particular camera that didn’t have any. Had this been an actual production there would have been assistants to handle that, but since its just me and the occasional helper and I only had the camera for a week I had to make the most of it. I don’t think the shots suffered any for it. The only improvement I consistently found myself wanting was a viewfinder on the camera head. Aiming while looking at a side monitor is a bit difficult depending on your setup.

The Distributor
MCT Cameras was great to work with. I spoke with David a few times over the course of the week we had the camera (in addition to the numerous times prior to recieiving the camera) and he was always very helpful and eager to clear up any questions I had and also took the time to give me a few pointers on using the rig. I had sent David some of the shots we had taken and even with his undoubtably busy holiday schedule he took the time to chat about the results and seemed eager to see more of the shots we had taken.

It was a very pleasurable experience for us and I look forward to repeating it. For those of you who are reading this who have considered renting or purchasing a high speed camera I recommend talking with David for a bit before making a decision, he was very knowledgable and seemed genuinely interested in making sure we got what we needed. You don’t have to take my word for it though, give him a call or drop him an e-mail and talk with him yourself.

So, after all this, where are the vids? The videos should be popping up over the next day or so, I am currently processing all of the batch and figuring out which to toss up first and prepping all the versions. There should be about 3-5 going up a week from this point forward so please check back often!