High frame rate, low-cost consumer camera

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
Hey folks,

I don't normally keep an eye on the consumer camera realm, but I have developed an interest in high-speed photography and I know that there are some sort-of-high-speed consumer cameras out there (like the Casio Exilims, etc) that may be suitable for what I'm looking for -- or maybe not. I found and ordered a GoPro Hero 3 Black, as it can do 240fps at WVGA and it's $399. Obviously I know about the FS700, but I can buy twenty GoPro Hero3's for the price of one FS700, and I'd much rather have a lot of camera angles as long as the frame rate is fast enough.

GoPro's bonuses are that it's cheap, and 240fps (even if it's only at 800x480 standard-def), and has a waterproof housing.

But, it's only standard-def, and only 240fps, and in 240fps mode it can only use the ultra-wide field of view, so it'd have to be really really close to the action. Is there something better out there that I just don't know about? Is there something that can deliver standard-def at 1000 fps? Not interested in machine-vision camera heads that require computers attached and all that, just looking for something affordable and easy and fast. Video quality is not paramount, I don't care if it's got raw and 80 stops of DR and a Super35 sensor, just want something that will capture the action, effortlessly...

I know there's an Exilim ZR1000 that can do 1000 fps, but it's at 224x64, and that's just too tiny to be of any use at all... Watched a number of 1000fps Exilim ZR100 samples on youtube and they all look pretty awful... yes it's 1000 fps, but the detail is so low you can't see what it is that you're looking at, and the mosquito-noise compression was just hideous on some of the clips. Is there any reason to be optimistic that the ZR1000 footage will look better than the ZR100?

Anything I'm missing in the sub-$1000 category that can handle 500+ or 1000+ fps in decent quality?

Thanks!
 
The best that my Google-Fu has come up with so far is this thing: http://www.amazon.com/Casio-Exilim-Digital-Camera-Optical/dp/B00155WX90

At 3 grand, though it's not cheap, but supposedly can shoot as high 1200 frames per second, though the resolution at that speed is decidedly sub-SD, so I don't know how useful that is. A search on Youtube turns up some sample footage. Quality is not amazing, though. I'd probably rent an FS700 instead of buy one of these, but it seemed worth noting its existence.

Some people have tried modding the lenses in their Go-Pros, so that might be an option to deal with the FOV limitation.
 
Yeah, that EX-F1 was an interesting unit. $3,000 is an artificial price though, as it's been discontinued for a while; I think the MSRP was under $1,000. It's a lot older tech, I think it came out in 2008, but it recorded 1200fps at about 2.25x the resolution of the current models(!) Would be nice if they would have continued a "pro" Exilim to today, that'd probably be the no-brainer unit to get, but it looks like they discontinued the "pro" line and only offer the compacts now, and in the compacts, 224x64 is all you get. Sigh. Thanks for pointing it out!

Would be nice if the GoPro folks would be able to shrink the frame size even further to get faster frame rates out of it; at 240fps it's 848x480, so chop that down to 424x240 and theoretically it could be 960fps... and that'd be vastly better than the 224x64 of the Casios... it'd be a picture 7x bigger!

Oh well... still looking...
 
A few things I found other than what you have already mentioned...nothing crazy fast. The JVC 300 fps at 720 x 480 seems pretty sweet though!
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/887140-REG/Sony_hdras10_b_HDR_AS10_HD_Action_Camcorder.html 120 fps, but at 1280 x 720
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ic_dmc_fz200k_Lumix_FZ200_Digital_Camera.html 120 fps @ 1280 x 720, 240 fps @ 640 x 480
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/834567-REG/JVC_GZ_EX210BUS_GZ_EX210_Full_HD_Everio.html 300 fps 720 x 480 (according to the manual)
 
i had the same quest barry, about a year ago. pretty much came up with what's been stated already. there's also the sanyo hd1010, but i think the gopro might be the best IQ overall from any of the 240+ options
 
That JVC looks interesting. Unfortunately, all of the test clips for it that I've seen on YouTube show obscene amounts of aliasing. The aforementioned FZ200 is starting to look like the best high-speedish camera in Barry's price range. Would 640x480, 240fps, interpolated up through Twixtor or similar do the job?

edit: The ex210 was the JVC I was refering too. That px10 doesn't look half bad.
 
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Wesley Byram said:
That JVC looks interesting. Unfortunately, all of the test clips for it that I've seen on YouTube show obscene amounts of aliasing. The aforementioned FZ200 is starting to look like the best high-speedish camera in Barry's price range. Would 640x480, 240fps, interpolated up through Twixtor or similar do the job?

edit: The ex210 was the JVC I was refering too. That px10 doesn't look half bad.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't think anyone who has taken clips used decent settings for uploading or for recording...lol. Makes it hard to truly judge anything.
 
If it's truly plug 'n' play webcam style in a laptop, that might work for one angle, and 600fps of VGA would beat 240fps of WVGA, that's for sure. But how do we find out what those things cost? Google has not been that fruitful, although I guess it's that they just aren't out yet?
 
I'm not certain about either of these things. But from what ive seen, the cost for these types of cameras is the low thousands, sometimes as low as high hundreds. And the one other necessity is the control software. A good person to ask about it is the guy working on the low cost raw can side project thread.

Not as ideal as a point and shoot, but certainly with plusses of its own.
 
nice quick reply from lumenera, a bit of promise in this idea:

"Darren, I received your note asking for information on the Lt225C. This is what I was able to get for you based on your questions:

The camera should work with the Surface Pro tablet but not on the Surface RT tablet. The Surface Pro is using a full blown Windows OS while the Surface RT is using a specially designed low footprint OS called Windows RT. We have not tested with the Surface Pro tablet yet but I'm stating that it should work because from specs that tablet is really a windows computer in a different shape.

We have not tested integration with software specific to the film industry, rather working with machine vision software so far. I would like to hear from this contact which software packages would be of interest.

We've had lots of interest in the filmmaking industry but being a new product (we started releasing product last month), no product deployment yet.

I hope this helps. Also, if you are looking for a quote, please let me know where you are located so I can get you in touch with one of our resellers to provide you with a quote."
 
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