Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Need another reason to pick up the FlashBox digital video recorder I wrote about yesterday? Well here it is. The Phantom v12.1 CMOS-based high-speed digital camera is capable of capturing a whopping 6,933 frames per second at a resolution of 1280 x 720. According to Ben Cain’s HD CINEMA blog, the Phantom high-speed cameras where originally developed by Vision Research with the military in mind, but have been adopted by the film and TV industries for high-speed photography with great success.

Now shooting HD footage at almost 7,000 fps isn’t quite as easy as shooting with a consumer-level HD camera, but Ben has posted his recent experiences and successes with using the Phantom v12.1 on a high-speed shoot for Starz on his blog. Interesting tidbit, it’s apparently better to use massive 5K lights on a high-speed shoot instead of 2Ks because you can actually see the light cool slightly in-between the alternating current’s 60 cycles on the high-speed footage, causing flicker. 5K lights on the other hand burn hot enough that their intensity isn’t visibly reduced in-between cycles. Crazy!

[ Phantom v12.1 ] VIA [ HD CINEMA ]