High Framerate (over 60fps, 120 at least) camcorder for under 2k

J

jeremiahjw

Active member
I'm going to be filming an explosion/guns being fired and want to shoot it at a high framerate for slow motion playback. So far my options are...

Hire a cinematographer with the RED (120fps max)

Buy...

Sony HDR-SR11 (120fps for 12 seconds. 1920x1080)

JVC GZ-X900 (120, 300, 600fps at a minimum of 720x48, for 4 and 2.4 seconds)

Casio EX-F1 (300FPS at 512X384 pixels, 600FPS at 432X192 pixels, and 1200 FPS at 336X96 pixels)

I'd use the RED for filming the guns. The other cameras would not produce footage that looks good enough (http://vimeo.com/3963486).

For the filming of the explosion I could use the RED, or the other cameras. However, having the RED AND another one would get me 2 angles...a close up and wide shot.

I'm deciding between the Casio and the JVC. I've seen upscaled footage of the Casio on YouTube, and it looks pretty good (obviously upscaled, but not trashy). The JVC won't work because of the short recording time, and the same for the Sony.

I've seen some cellphones that shoot at [gasp] 120fps and they cost under $120, but I don't want to rely on a cellphone to get my footage. Any other camcorders y'all know of that shoot at 120 or more FPS?

Thanks!

Jeremiah
 
^ expensive.


Look into some companies which rent these cams for scientific use. I wish I remember the place a past production rented from, because it was high def at hundreds to perhaps a couple thousand fps. It was made for science stuff, but had a nikon mount. It looked great.
 
I'm in the Dallas area, so the company would have to be there. Also, the budget isn't that big (5-10k), and seeing the cost of the Phantom I'm assuming the rental isn't cheap either.
 
There is a company that I think is in Dallas which rents out the Phantom. It's $3,200 a day...which is the whole package, laptop, lenses, etc. It's actually a lot less than I thought it would be. Right now I'm still thinking of sticking with the Casio and RED.
 
Remember it isn't just about pure framerate. The basic image quality between the RED and something like the casio are going to be far apart, especially at 1080p.
 
Let's take M16 for example. Muzzle velocity is 853 m/s. A 45mm bullet will make up only 4 pixels wide with a frame width of 2 meters, so you might need a tighter frame. It will take only 0.002 s for the bullet to fly 2 m distance. If you want to have a second of footage, you will need to overcrank to about 400x of nominal speed, that would be 24fps * 400 = 9600 fps.

You might find a slower rifle with muzzle velocity about 200 m/s, so this gives 2400 fps for a 4-pixel sized bullet.

Slow it down to 6fps, this gives 600 fps for a 4-pixel bullet in a 1080p frame.

Whatever the case, 120 fps just would not be enough.
 
I'm not trying to get slow enough footage to "see the bullet", just slower than what you normally see, and something a lot better than fake slow motion. Yeah, 1,000fps would be awesome, but I don't think this project has the budget for it.
 
jeremiahjw said:
I'm not trying to get slow enough footage to "see the bullet", just slower than what you normally see, and something a lot better than fake slow motion. Yeah, 1,000fps would be awesome, but I don't think this project has the budget for it.
Click to expand...


Just as an aside, as the frame rate increases, the exposure time decreases, and so, in order for a sensor to acquire more 'light', brighter lights are required... with that in mind, each doubling of the speed, as a requirement of doubling the light required to obtain the same values... at some point you will run out of sensor or light quantity...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Just as an aside, as the frame rate increases, the exposure time decreases, and so, in order for a sensor to acquire more 'light', brighter lights are required... with that in mind, each doubling of the speed, as a requirement of doubling the light required to obtain the same values... at some point you will run out of sensor or light quantity...
Click to expand...

Yes... if you look at my demo reel, right in the middle are some high speed shots with that scientific camera I was talking about. We were shooting maybe like 2000 fps? Can't remember... but we had probably 10k of light blasting at the guy, right off of camera and it was just barely properly exposed.

Say you have a 1k key light at 24 fps and you want to shoot 2000fps.... you'll need over 64x the amount of light at the same distance! It was quite humorous!
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Yes... if you look at my demo reel, right in the middle are some high speed shots with that scientific camera I was talking about. We were shooting maybe like 2000 fps? Can't remember... but we had probably 10k of light blasting at the guy, right off of camera and it was just barely properly exposed.

Say you have a 1k key light at 24 fps and you want to shoot 2000fps.... you'll need over 64x the amount of light at the same distance! It was quite humorous!
Click to expand...

In the olden days of still film one would start pushing the film, preflashing, and longer development time, increased contrast on the printing paper, and live with golfball sized grain...

I don't know if there's a 'preflash' equivalent in digital, but boosting the camera gain would be the 'longer developer', and boosting the contrast in the NLE would be the 'harder printing'...
 
It *is* an explosion with FIRE. so that would help some. Even then, there's no way I'm going to get a light near something blowing up.
 
jeremiahjw said:
Ryan, I looked at those shots in your reel, they were awesome. What was that fire explosion at the end filmed in?
Click to expand...

That wasn't the highspeed work. That's just 60fps HVX, some ramping, and a very large controlled gasoline fireball. The explosion was more of a whooooosh vs a BOOM! So it lent itself to looking even more slow in slowmotion had we just blown the car up.

I've got more footage with the slow motion bullet casings comeing out of the barrell (w/ muzzel flashes). Will try to find that and perhaps upload it.
 
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A little late to the party. But the Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 and VPC-FH1 consumer cams both offer some high speed modes( 1920x1080/60p, 448x336/240p and 192x108/600p).
 
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