This is another shot of Matt Deal (of Matt Deal Farms fame) jumping off of a deck into a pond.
Materials
A dock and a pond.
Procedure
Instruct a man to jump off a dock. It is quite amazing what one can get people to do if one has a camera. People seem to feel quite natural and somewhat fearless in front a camera. I can’t explain it, though it would be interesting to listen to someone who can. Perhaps one of our readers is a psychologist and can illuminate this for us.
Observations
This shot is another great look at the muscles of a well toned person. The subject in question has over years of farming toned his body up quite completely. Makes for an excellent video subject for a study in bio-mechanics. I plan on subject Matt to many more indignities over the years for your viewing pleasure. Next time I think I’ll make him take a few swings with a bat at a small, round moving object. Again, the splash is wonderful as usual. The light catches it all nicely. Poor Matt in this shot was unaware that the pond was only a few feet deep, much to his surprise. Sadly I don’t have enough disk space to export the entire clip (yes I filled up yet another hard drive, over 1TB of data now!) but I still have the original so when my new drive shows up I’ll re-export this shot and do a close up on his rather surprised face. It is quite amusing.
Procedure
Throw the pine cone, then giggle as does some really silly things to try and grab it.
Observations
Dogs do some rather odd things to pick up something thats been intentionally thrown to the ground. This is certainly no exception. I like this shot because it allows us to again look at the muscles in the dog and how they move and shift under his skin. Its also a rather amusing shot, for obvious reasons. King, while huge, is still very much a puppy and the awkwardness that comes with that territory is evident in nearly everything this dog does. However, at the same time there is a certain amount of elegance to the whole thing, though perhaps that stems more from the slow motion and less from the dog.
Today we look at hair bouncing and falling. Materials
A decent amount of hair.
A moving body.
Observations
This shot is interesting in that we get an opportunity to study something we see fairly regularly, hair, in slow motion. The momentary loss of weight in her hair as she reaches the apex of her run provides for some very interesting movement. I would love to see NASA tackle some slow motion long hair shots next time they are filming, but my guess is they have better things to film like more water drops. At any rate I think it is interesting to watch how the hair responds to the rising and falling motions of her running.
Today we take a look at another amazing video, this one created for the Sundance film festival. Lucid Movement had nothing to do with this video but since I love both slow motion and slapstick comedy I cannot resist posting it. This was sent to us by one of our readers, thanks!! This is another great example of what can be done with these high-speed cameras. This is an excellent study in bio-mechanics as well as humor. Enjoy!!
Today we look at my wife running through a wheat field.
Materials
My wife….sorry, you’ll have to use your own. I suppose a girlfriend or a female friend/model might work as well.
A wheat field.
Observations
This one is great for a number of reasons, some of which for me are purely personal, though many are independent of the person. I’ll focus on the ones that don’t involve me gushing about my wife. This shot involves all kinds of dynamic goodness. The movement of the dress and hair are both fascinating to watch. You can also observe how the dress interacts with the legs as she runs. It is also incredibly interesting to study the movement of the muscles and skin as she runs. My wife doesn’t jiggle visibly when she walks, at least not to the naked eye, so it is fascinating to see how much the average body actually moves when we are in motion. I plan to do a series of bodies in motion against a gridded background so we can more closely study how much flex and give there is in the human body.
I finally captured some lighting. Sadly there wasn’t much to it.
Procedure
To get this shot I used the Image Cue feature in the software they ship with this unit. This feature allows you to trigger based on an intensity range (grayscale, 255 levels). I have slowed this footage down to 25% of its original rate.
Observations
My primary observation is 532fps is not fast enough to get the lightning developing. The slow down I did in post for this video just allows you to actually see the flash. Otherwise it was a 4 frame event. It is interesting to see how the camera records the lightning. The first frame of the strike shows a ghosted, gray version of the lightning, then the next two frames show the full brightness of the strike, then nothing. I will continue trying to capture a strike at a higher rate of speed, hopefully we’ll catch something. Enjoy.
Today we look at another Butterfly taking flight from a Lantana bloom.
Observations
This is an interesting look at how the Butterfly feeds. In this video you can see it moving from one bloom to another. What I like in particular about this video is the chance to see the Butterfly turning around mid-air. I’m still trying to figure out how exactly that happened, I wish I had a better view of it. If you step through frame by frame on the take-off you can see why a Butterfly has a set of split wings. Apparently they move them independently of one another.
