Best Cam under 15K for super slo mo beside Alexa or Red?

F

flean

Active member
I'd like to get an advice from DPs who have actually worked with FS700/F5/F55, Red scarlet or Canon C series. I'm planning to shoot in a slo mo mode (240 fps). I know the FS700 can shoot a great slo mo 240 fps at 1080 but when shooting at 2K I've read the quality will suffer (some people reported that the footage became under exposed and color range downgraded and got a lot of noise). I am trying to find the best cam under 10k-15k to shoot super slo-mo at 2k so the quality will retain an optimum quality once projected on a theater screen, without having to rent a RED or Alexa. Has anyone achieved this and could share any tip and advice?
 
If you don't like the look of the FS700, Twixtor is your only hope. Everything else is way out of you price range or doesn't do anything close to 240fps.
 
Yeah nothing comes to mind besides FS700. Frankly I'd take FS700's 240fps over EPIC's 2k 240/300fps in most cases, as the latter tends to be pretty soft, noisy and very cropped. There really aren't any other reasonably good cameras for high speed in that price range.

Phantom Miro is a bit more pricey, F5 doesn't go up to 240fps, and is above $15k

That is a lot of pixel data for any camera to be processing.

If you need it to hold up and look sharp at 2k for theatrical release, you will likely have to increase your budget or rent. Even with Epic or Alexa, or F5 you won't be able to get 240fps that looks good at 2k, but they do great 120fps...

FS700 looks pretty good at 240fps, and the motion is different enough the added softness might not be so noticeable when intercut with 24fps. It also has the benefit of being the easiest camera to be able to go out and shoot with, as it uses 5-10x less power and ~10x less data than RED/Alexa and can potentially shoot 240fps content all day on one 64GB card and one battery. You do have to wait for buffer offloading between shots though.
 
Last edited:
If you're convinced by the FS700 enough to buy one - $15k will get you a LOT of FS700 rentals until a better option comes along.
 
flean said:
(some people reported that the footage became under exposed and color range downgraded and got a lot of noise).
Click to expand...

It seems like underexposure would be a pretty natural consequence of a high frame rate like 240fps, if you don't change anything else. After all, you're going from a shutter speed of 1/48 to a shutter speed of 1/480, so it seems pretty logical to expect that you'd need quite a bit of extra light to maintain exposure when you crank up the frame rate that much.
 
flean said:
I'd like to get an advice from DPs who have actually worked with FS700/F5/F55, Red scarlet or Canon C series.
Click to expand...

You can go ahead and scratch the Canon C series from your list. With over crank its a no show.
 
i would get a fs700 and the Sony or Odyssey7Q 2K4K recording solution, which will give you continous 240fps 2K raw(SonyRAW/CinemaDNG) in Slog2
 
To the OP, unless this is an ongoing project, would a rental charged back to the client not be the more financially sound thing to do?
 
Any simple and efficient workflow suggestions if using the Sony Fs700 with Odyssey7Q shooting 2k@240fps for an outdoor shot of the blades of a flying helicopter going super slow -Apocalypse Now style. (Has anyone worked with the Odyssey7Q)
Also, any advice if shooting with an Epic for slo mo-same frame rate?

I guess our choice will also depend on the workflow to get to post quickly and preserving the highest quality. I'm a bit afraid of workflow using Red?
 
Last edited:
the Odyssey7Q is not out yet, but there are several threads about it in the FS700 forum. Dan Keaton from Convergent Design also answered a lot of question in those threads...
 
flean said:
Any simple and efficient workflow suggestions if using the Sony Fs700 with Odyssey7Q shooting 2k@240fps for an outdoor shot of the blades of a flying helicopter going super slow -Apocalypse Now style. (Has anyone worked with the Odyssey7Q)
Also, any advice if shooting with an Epic for slo mo-same frame rate?

I guess our choice will also depend on the workflow to get to post quickly and preserving the highest quality. I'm a bit afraid of workflow using Red?
Click to expand...

You need to view the rolling shutter test from the single chip camera shoot out. You may be very disappointed with the results from a number of cameras shooting chopper blades.
 
The fs 700 is your best bet right now. It does a better 240fps than epic (I own both). As far as advice for shooting slomo, just remember that every time that you double your framerate, you are losing a stop. So 240 fps needs a lot more light than 24fps. For an exterior, this is not an issue but for interiors you will need large tungsten sources both for amount of light and to prevent flickering.
Here's a couple of jobs that I have shot on the Fs700



this one is Epic at 120fps for the foreground and fs700 at 240 fps for the background.
http://www.curiosityshoppe.com/work/mom-up/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top