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This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it. First of all, I must say I am exhausted. I have not slept for days. Every waking hour I think of shooting something in high speed. All of my attention has been directed at the Vision Research Phantom HD GOLD high speed digital cinema camera. If you read my blog, you are the type who would understand this “sickness”. And if you got your hands on this camera package and the assortment of expensive lenses I had access to this past weekend, you would fight sleep as well. My good friends at Rule Boston Camera set me up with the Phantom. Rule is a TV/Film rental house located in Boston, Massachusetts. They have an extensive stock of gear and the people who work there are top notch and understand the business. I recently bought a $60,000 Sony F800 CineAlta camera package from them and I had an excellent experience throughout the purchasing process. In fact, Rule even gave me a loaner 17x Fujinon HD broadcast lens for my F800, for free, since my purchased lens was back ordered! I have been shooting with Fastec Imaging HiSPEC2 720p high speed cameras for the past few weeks. I am working on a New England mountain biking film called “The Missing Link” with fellow downhiller Nick Keating. The Fastec cameras I have been using are small metal boxes with a lens attached. Very compact and can take g-forces, so they are perfect for extreme sports coverage. However, the HiSPEC2 camera that I used had to be hooked up to a PC laptop at all times. You can read more about this by clicking here. These cameras are inexpensive to rent and work quite well. Check out the lacrosse commercial I shot mocking the real Paul Rabil Maverick spot shot by NFL Films camera guys on the Phantom HD GOLD. You can see my version here shot with the cheaper alternative Fastec camera. After spending this past weekend with the Phantom, I was able to draw a few quick conclusions regarding image quality using the cheaper high speeds verses the ridiculously expensive Phantom. The Phantom excels in resolution, speed and stops of latitude between brights and darks. Dust kicked up in bright sunlight by a mountain biker has detail on the Phantom and blows out on the HiSPEC camera. Keep in mind the fact I was using a $60,000 lens with the Phantom and a $50 Nikon prime with the Fastec camera. The Phantom does not need a laptop in the field. Very little time is needed to “render out” the high speed sequence on the Phantom. The HiSPECs need extra time between takes. The Phantom can be operated like an ENG broadcast television camera. Even off the shoulder! But I was able to shoot with the HiSPEC hand held with the computer as the viewfinder and got good results. One big surprise was the fact that the light sensitivity between the HiSPEC and Phantom was about the same. You need a lot of light to shoot high speed. All that being said, I would still recommend the HiSPEC cameras to anyone on a budget. If you are shooting a Jaguar commercial use the Phantom. If you want a few sick shots for broadcast TV or the web perhaps the $500/day rental at Fastec Imaging is perfect for your 720p high speed needs.
Now lets talk Phantom HD GOLD and an insane assortment of expensive glass for the rest of this blog. Rule Boston Camera let me take almost anything I wanted, as long as it was not being rented for the weekend! You have a lot of reading to do, as I got a bunch of stuff to say. And the big payoff is the fact you can download a file at the bottom straight off the Phantom camera… 1050 frames per second in 1080p ProRes. Enjoy that!
I grabbed the Zeiss Super Speed prime lenses. This kit included the PL mount 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm lenses all at f1.2 (or in film talk t1.3). These lenses were super fast, lightweight, had built in follow focus treads and a silky smooth focus barrel and iris ring.
I asked for a telephoto lens and Brian brought out a Nikon Nikkor 200mm t2. Beautiful lens with an aperture blade system that must have consisted of a hundred little blades. I had never seen anything like it. Plus the outer element was huge, allowing for a ton of light to get into the lens and onto the sensor.
I wanted a cine zoom lens. I had used the Angenieux Optimo 25mm-250mm t3.5 for a job with the Boston Celtics a couple years ago. The TV station rented the lens from Rule and I attached it to my Letus Extreme (PL Mount) attached to a Sony EX1. You can read more about that here. I knew Rule had the super sweet 17mm-80mm t2.2, but I figured it would be rented out or off limits. My buddy Mike at Rule, somehow secured it and I was good to go.
The Phantom HD GOLD included a color Sony HDVF-C30W viewfinder. When I bought my F800, I thought about this LCD color viewfinder for use with my new XDCAM. But, I had never used it before and worried that the LCD would not meet up to my picky standards. Plus the C30W costs over $11,000! So I decided to go with what I was use to on my F800, the Sony HDVF-20a black and white CRT version. We use these to cover broadcast sports everyday and they are tack sharp. Plus these high resolution b/w viewfinders cost just over $3,000. Who needs color in a viewfinder if you set up the camera properly in the first place!
I was pleasantly surprised at how sharp and vivid the color C30W was on the Phantom. I never liked the RED ONE LCD version. But the Sony was much better. It was easy to focus, clear to see and there was no trace lag in the LCD image when whipping around. I was very happy with it and had slight buyers remorse with the 20a version I bought.... but wait, I needed another eight grand to upgrade to color?!
The HDVF-C30W had a specially modified connector to plug into the Phantom. This connector stuck out quite a bit and was defiantly a possible point of failure if the camera's weight fell on the connector. In fact, on my first day of using the Phantom, the cable connector was intermittent. I should have found this problem while setting up the camera at Rule, but it worked at the time. During my shooting on location, I had to pull the connector on a slight angle to keep the viewfinder powered. Another thing to remember is never point the viewfinder into the sun. CRTs can take more heat than LCDs. Just a few seconds of diopter magnified exposure to the sun and the LCD can be destroyed. Point those diopters DOWN!
The guys at Rule asked me if I needed a tripod and I said no. I wanted to use my Vinten Vision 10 AS. This tripod has served me quite well and I am a huge supporter of Vinten. But... this camera system with Optimo lens weighed in at nearly 60 pounds! The Vinten was rated for about 45 pounds. This extra 15 pounds of weight was a bit scary at times and I was unable to get perfect balance because I exceeded the payload rating of my tripod. I still came back with good stuff tho and made sure my assistant, Nick, was always standing next to the camera when mounted to the tripod. Let me take a second to talk about the weight of this beast. I found it impossible and down right stupid to try to carry the Phantom by its handle with the heavy Optimo attached to the PL mount. I HAD to use two hands at all times. One hand on the bottom rods and the other on the top handle. This made carrying batteries and a tripod difficult, so strapping them to my back was the only answer when working solo. The waterfall footage in the video blog was shot by me alone at Profile Falls in New Hampshire. Not a long hike, but still a hike.
The Phantom is a power hungry camera system. It pulls nearly 75 watts of power. I tried to power it with my Anton Bauer charger and it did not have enough juice. I could have used Anton Bauer high current batteries, but I did not have them with me. The camera did come with an a/c power supply, but I could not hike a generator with me into the mountains. Rule sent me out with six car-like lead acid batteries. These bricks weighted in over ten pounds each and they had four pin XLR connectors on them. They were designed to power older film cameras. Each battery had two sides of power, so once one side died, I move over to the other side. I got about 30-40 minutes on each side. The biggest problem was the fact they had no gauge on them. I had no idea if the camera would die during a RAM to CineMag data transfer. When the battery died, you lose the buffer in the camera. If the buffer did not make it to the CineMag storage in time, you lost the take forever! Happened 5 times over the weekend and I cursed so loud the fifth time it occurred, birds few out of the trees above me to get away.
That leads me to storage. CineMags are the solid state devices that snap onto contacts on the top of the Phantom. These mags are filled with high speed transfer memory and I had two 256GB and one 128GB CineMag. Let me explain how this camera records something in high speed. First of all, I have the camera set up to buffer the footage and take the clip post trigger. This means that when the Phantom is recording 1050 FPS at 1080p, I have a looping buffer of 4.1 seconds utilizing the internal RAM memory. This has nothing to do with the CineMag. The RAM is internal and built into the camera.
For example, I hit record filling the buffer, a mountain biker rips past me and just as he leaves the frame, I have my AC, Nick, push the remote trigger button. The recording loop stops and you get 4.1 seconds of time prior to the trigger. Get it? The data lives on the internal RAM memory. You do not want to lose power now or the RAM will be lost! Gotta get that footy over to the Mag. Next, I look inside the viewfinder and set in and out points in the clip. I take only what I want because the 4.1 second is like 3 minutes of video at the 1050 frame rate. Finally, I save the clip to the CineMag. This happens so fast that it only takes seconds. The transfer rate of this memory and CineMag is crazy. Now the clip is on both the RAM and the CineMag. Once you set the camera back to record, the RAM clears out and you repeat the process for the next high speed event. I need to mention here that one of the 256GB CineMags was not loading at times when snapped into place on the Phantom. I got a "Mag ERROR". I figured out the issue, dirty contacts. I used a cloth to wipe the large array of tiny metal pins and metal contacts on the mag and got the thing to scan and load.
All high speed cameras need cooling systems because the sensor heats up. The Phantom HD GOLD has an exhaust fan in the back that speeds up when the temperature rises. The camera also has a sick looking copper heat sink on both sides of the camera. Be careful with these, they can bend easily like the fine fins on the back of an air conditioner. Since the camera and sensor heats up, you must black balance before every shot (or very often) to keep the black levels correct. They tend to get grainy and move towards purple when left alone. It is easy and fast to preform a black balance. Just cap the lens and execute it. The white balance seemed to hold well over time and even with battery changes.
The sensor in the Phantom is big. Not sure the dimensions, if you find them post a comment at bottom of page. A lot of amazing stuff has been shot with the Phantom sensor. Shark Week on Discovery Channel, Air Shark, BBC Planet Earth and LIFE, to name a few. Even Hollywood films are using this technology.
Looking for buttons? There are only two of them on the entire camera. Plus a knob that you can also push in to execute a command. You can adjust frame rates, ISO, resolution, trigger points, black/white balance, in and out clip points and a few other necessary procedures. You can defiantly control a lot using the simple four page menu inside the viewfinder, but to really get the camera dialed in, you hook it up to a PC laptop via gigabit ethernet. But like I said before, when in the field, you do not need to tether a computer to this high speed camera. The workflow of this camera is tricky and I cannot really explain it in great detail on this blog because I do not totally understand it. But, I will tell you what I do know and how I am getting the footage into Final Cut Pro. Phantom does not offer free software like RED does for viewing RAW clips or accessing camera controls. Rule was unable to give me the Phantom programs for me to install on my own laptop, so they gave me a rental Mac Book Pro running Windows XP. The CineMags hold files with the .cine extension. They are RAW Phantom files. I have never dealt with these files and do not plan on to at this point for my project. I have no way of editing them and cannot get the software easily. So I found a work around that will work with my mountain biking film and for the content in this video blog.
I take the HDSDI out of the back of the Phantom and feed it into an AJA KiPRO portable recording device. The KiPRO takes the 1080i HDSDI signal from the camera and transcodes it realtime to Apple ProRes 422 HQ. The KiPro has a built in hard drive where the files are stored. The biggest problem with doing this is the fact the camera only plays out a clip or MAG at a time! So I have to sit next to the camera and KiPro and manually play out each clip. Keep in mind I filled all three CineMags! This took forever and to make matters worse, I ran out of time and did this grueling work at 4am. I was hallucinating from lack of sleep and accidentally deleted part of my video blog on my SR11 camera at 5am. Story for another time... I know I'm not editing with the master RAW .cine files, but the footage still looks amazing and the Apple ProRes 422 HQ codec is high bit rate. For the time being, the .cine files will sit on a hard drive at Rule for my future children to try to sort out and edit them! In the video blog at the top of this page, I tried my best to show you how this camera works. I shot the demo in such a way that it would answer my own questions had I stumbled upon the video before I met Phantom. If you have further questions, please post them at the bottom of this page and I will try to answer them.
Also, be sure to download the high speed waterfall footage in 720p XDCAM HD 1080i for smooth playback. I am also including an Apple ProRes 422 HQ file straight off the camera. The picture of the green leaves above is a grab from the 1080p 1050 FPS footage I shot with the Phantom. This was the very first thing I ever shot using this camera system. Not very exciting, but great color and DOF. Plus, I cant post the best stuff til the film is done! DOWNLOADS:
Here are a few behind the scenes videos shot on a blackberry on the slope style course at Highland Mountain Bike Park during the filming for “Missing Link”. Big thank you to my AC, Nick Keating, for using his BlackBerry to record these. Wish we could have used his 5dmk2 more, but we were both focused on carrying car batteries!
And here are a few screen grabs from the mountain biking footage shot at Attitash Mountain and Highland Bike Park. The film should be done next summer!
Big thanks to the guys at Rule Boston Camera, Mike Sutton, John Rule, Dave Kudrowitz, for giving me this chance to test out amazing gear. Also thank you Nick Keating (taking behind the scenes pictures and video) and Dave Hand for your help on location this weekend. 
This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it. I am working on a mountain biking film shot mostly in New Hampshire using high speed cameras. I was inspired by the guys at “Life Cycles” and their artistic style they bring to biking films. I have been granted the opportunity to use Fastec Imaging HiSpec high speed cameras and a Phantom HD GOLD to capture New England riding for an upcoming film called, “The Missing Link”. Nick Keating and I are currently in production on this film shooting at Highland Mountain Biking Park in Northfield, New Hampshire. I am also shooting at Attitash Mountain in Bartlett, New Hampshire. We are working with local riders on this project and hope to have it completed early 2011. More information to come, but check out the trailer at the top of this page. Special thanks to Dave Hand and family for giving me a place to sleep at night while shooting in the mountains! Big thanks to Matt at Fastec Imaging, Eric at Kessler Crane and Mike at Rule Boston Camera for equipment support. Also, thank you “Spunky” for your voice on the trailer.
I just got back from Highland Mountain Bike Park in Northfield, New Hampshire. The place is about five miles off exit 19 on RT 93 and it is less than 2 hours north of Boston. If you like to downhill mountain bike or BMX, this is the place to go. In fact, it reminded me of a condensed version of Whistler in B.C. Canada. And that is saying a lot! Whistler Bike Park, for me, is as good as it gets. I met up with my bud Nick Keating to shoot some high speed footage of the Park with local riders. Be sure to click on his name to see his Flickr account. Nick is an excellent stills shooter and he is taking some sick MTB photos. He recently acquired a Canon 5dmk2 and a bunch of lenses and accessories from an online contest. Congrats Nick, time to step up your game!
Highland Mountain Bike Park GoPro HD Helmet Cam Test from Nick Keating on Vimeo. Nick shot this short GoPro Hero helmet cam video as he ripped through “Hellion” at Highland. Those of you who have cruised down Whistler’s A-Line may see some similarities. Hellion is like a baby A-Line but this track it is in my backyard! And Highland just opened up a new downhill trail called “Happy Hour”. Sweet. I can’t wait to ride that. Nick and I set up the Fastec Imaging HiSPEC2 Color 720p high speed camera at the base of the Slope Style course at Highland. The slope is a bunch of berms and dirt piles that form an incredible, air-inducing, super flowy downhill course. We worked with professional freeride mountain biker, Aaron Chase to shoot a simple high speed dirt jump sequence. Aaron is a great person and he was fun to work with. Crazy sense of humor and he is living the dream for sure. He was leaving for Whistler the day after we shot this footage! I shot at 718 frames per second off a tripod (most of the time) and had my cam assist, Nick help with lenses and moving the tethered laptop around in the intense sun and heat. The camera shut down twice, due to temperature and the black Sony VAIO laptop got so warm, it was hard to hold. But so far, both are working well in the field.
I have to use 12 volt lead-acid batteries with a 140 watt inverter to get the camera power. At one point, the laptop died and we had to grab a power strip at the lodge to send juice to both the camera and the computer from the sketchy Walmart inverter. I have a USB powered monitor that mirrors my computer screen, but with the limited battery power, i have yet to use it on the high speed camera. It is a real challenge to follow the action without a proper viewfinder mounted to the camera itself. Fastec Imaging has me testing out new high speed software and a firmware update to the HiSPEC2 camera. The software on the PC was version 1.0.0.0. Never fun to run that version. A bug was found and I was unable to export the high speed footage as an uncompressed .avi file. This was the workflow I was use to in my past experience with this camera and now I had to do a few extra steps. I had to export as a “.tiff image stack” and then load all the images as a sequence in Quicktime 7. The same process I use when taking stills from my Canon 5dmk2 and building a timelapse. This added extra time to the rendering and will be fixed soon. I want to use uncompressed .avi, I think it looks better. I found the .tiff files added aliasing and moire to the camera images that I had never seen before. The .tiffs looked “digital”. When editing the content in the lodge (waiting for a storm to pass that never arrived), Nick made the suggestion to turn the entire project black and white. I agreed with him once I looked at the footage and saw the moire and heavily blown out sky. I used Magic Bullet Looks to apply a film-like soft feel and removed all the color. This little camera has trouble with high contrast situations. It also creates the “screen door effect” where you see small black lines and texture off the sensor in dark and white areas of the picture. This can be avoided as long as the do not clip the video or shoot in very low light. It can also be removed, in most cases, in post. I will be shooting much more at Highland this summer. Hope to get a Phantom into the bike park next! Stay tuned… If you have any questions about this camera system, please email Matt through this contact form at Fastec Imaging. 
This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it.
I had some fun with the Fastec Imaging HiSpec2 color hi speed camera shooting a “fake” lacrosse commercial. The commercial was a copy of the Paul Rabil 111 MPH spot that my buddy Dave sent me on YouTube. It looked as if the real commercial, shot by Maverik Films New York, was captured using a Phantom camera. You can watch more of their work by clicking here.
Dave’s son, Dylan, plays lacrosse in New Hampshire. We traveled to a local lacrosse field and set up to shoot the commercial. I brought the HiSpec2 color camera, a set of Vinten sticks and the Sony VAIO laptop computer running the hispeed capture software. I had a Nikon 16mm f2.8, 55mm f1.2, and 200mm f3.5 lens. We shot for just two hours! No lights, just the sun. We had to wait a few minutes for clouds to clear and have consistent sunshine. Dave brought some water so that we could wet down Dylan’s hair and lacrosse strings to get the “hi-speed sweat effect”.
When we finished on the lacrosse field, we shot in the locker room for the first two shots on the spot. I used the Canon 5dmk2 shooting at 30fps with a Canon 85mm f1.2 lens for just these shots. We were in and out of the locker room in about ten minutes! For locker room lighting, we used a clip-on light with a bare 60 watt light bulb (you can see it on the lockers in the background). The key source was a florescent worklight with 1/2 CTO gel gaff taped to the lamp. No KinoFlos on this shoot. This “commercial” had a zero budget thanks to my friends at Fastec for letting me play around with the camera system. If you are wondering about pricing, this camera can be rented for about $500/day and you can buy one for around $20k. A Phantom may shoot better pictures, but the rental on one is $2,500/day or you could buy one for $150k! Do not quote me no these prices, you can ask Fastec directly by clicking here. I really wanted to shoot this spot to prove that a very expensive hi-speed Phantom is not necessary for doing this sort of work, as long as 720p HD is enough. When shooting this sort of stuff for the web or even broadcast television, the Fastec Imaging low-budget HiSpec cameras may be the perfect solution. I will post my version of the Paul Rabil 111 MPH Maverik Lacrosse commercial at the bottom of this page. The following video below is the actual commercial shot (with a big budget for sure) by Maverik using a hi speed camera system. Watch this video first, so you can see what inspired Dave and I to get out and shoot our own version with Dylan. I am not the only one out shooting spoofs on this great commercial spot. Watch the video below for an attempt to imitate the look and feel of the real commercial. I loved the sweat stains! At some point, these high speed cameras will become more available for almost anyone who wants to shoot at fast frame rates. The above YouTube video was inspired by the very well shot and attention stirring professional lacrosse advertisement. I am looking forward to see what people do with these cameras when the price drops. Now, here is my version of the Paul Rabil Maverik commercial. Dave, Dylan and I shot this entire thing in a couple hours and I edited it using Final Cut Pro. I used the Eureka “Vapor Across” transition for the white flashes. I made a few changes to the shots and enhanced the sound a bit to match the white flashes. The last few fast action shots at the end of my version were shot at 718 FPS, but I speed them up in post 2,000 percent to get them back to normal real-time speed! Be sure to download the video in the links at the bottom of this page to view the commercial spot on your computer screen at full resolution 720p HD. The video will play much smoother off your hard drive. These Fastec Imaging cameras are silky smooth when it comes to slow motion playback. 
This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it.
I have been testing out a HiSPEC2 camera from Fastec Imaging that shoots crazy fast frame rates at 720p 16:9. The camera is a small cube with a Nikon mount. It is powered by a 12 volt battery using an inverter and I must have a PC laptop tethered to it at all times to make it work. The PC controls all aspects of the camera, white balance, frame rate, and pulling down the large uncompressed .avi files from the camera’s internal memory. If you are interested in renting these cameras, please visit Fastec Imaging. I do not have any information on pricing or availability. I shot a quick test video and a video blog showing you how the camera works with the Sony VAIO laptop. You can watch it here.
I am using this camera to shoot a downhill mountain biking film. I took a few hours after an epic day on the hill to shoot a small brook in New Hampshire. I have always enjoyed shooting moving water at 60 frame per second using the Sony EX1. Now, with the Fastec Imaging camera, I can shoot many more frames and really get a close look at how the water in the river is acting. I found that you get the “screen-door-effect” artifacting (in the blacks) when shooting in low light. I used mostly the Nikon 55mm f1.2, the fastest Nikon lens I own to capture these images. You need a lot of light when shooting high frames rates.
Keep in mind that this is a small brook. The resulting images make this place look like a raging torrent… maybe even class VI rapids! More high speed footage to come in future blogs. 
This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it.
I have been given the opportunity to test out Kessler Crane products for review on my website. I am very excited about some of the new stuff Eric Kessler is designing in Indiana. The gear is well built, easy to use, and fills a void in both price range and tools for creating awesome camera movement. Please go to the Kessler Crane website for availability, pricing and kits. Some of this stuff is sold separately. The Kessler Shuttle Pod is going to be released in the next few days. I had a prototype unit to play with and test over the summer. I am very impressed with the dolly system.
The Shuttle Pod is a “skateboard-like” dolly carriage that runs down the truss from the Kessler Crane. If you own the crane already, you have track. If you do not, Kessler will offer a scaled down bare-bones version of the track just for use with the Shuttle Pod. The system is much like a friction-free PVC skateboard dolly, but I found it to be much more versatile. But the best part is the fact you can hook up ElektraDRIVE motors to the Shuttle Pod and do some amazing things with the Oracle controller. In the video at the bottom of this page, I explain what the Shuttle Pod is and how to set it up. I also go into great detail showing you how to set up the belt driven motor system. It is very simple to do and requires NO TOOLS in the field. I also show off some awesome video we shot using the system and a Canon 5dmk2 in Indiana.
Eric and I set up a sliding motion move in the Oracle controller and played it back multiple times. By resetting the carriage to the exact same start point on the truss, we were able to get perfectly repeatable complex dolly moves over and over. We were able to create a moving scene where I pop in and out of concrete pipes kinda like a “whack-a-mole”. We also used the Shuttle Pod to drag the camera up into a tree and later, capture some epic motion controlled astro-timelapses.
This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it.
I am having a lot of fun up in New Hampshire testing out a high speed camera. The camera is not very easy to shoot with, no viewfinder, very shallow depth of field and requires a lot of light. Plus, you must have a laptop connected to it at all times! But I love a good challenge so I am going to shoot a few things for my website. My friend, Matt, at Fastec Imaging, is letting me play with one of the high speed cube cameras that were used on the Discovery television show “Time Warp“. I am not here to sell these cameras, just to share my first impressions shooting in the world of high frame rates. Also, everything looks so damn awesome in super slow motion! I will be using the camera to shoot a short downhill mountain biking film this weekend. I will be working with a few talented riders knifing berms, dusting the track, ripping down rocky terrain and jumping full suspension mountain bikes. I have shot MTB films before, but never like this with hi speed capture. I am so stoked to have the opportunity to use this Fastec Imaging camera this weekend shooting a sport I love. It will be tricky dragging a laptop computer up the hill and trying to figure out how to power all this stuff in the field, but that is what this test day was for! Thanks to Eric Kessler at Kessler Crane for the carbon fiber sticks and the battery system.
My buddy Dave, lives in New Hampshire and he is a big fan of lacrosse. He played in college and now his son Dylan is into the sport. I figured that capturing a single high speed lacrosse move from a few different angles would make for a nice test. I needed to see how shallow the DOF would be in different lighting conditions. I also wanted to make sure that my power system for the camera (using a battery and inverter) would provide enough juice for a full day on the mountain. Then, later in post, I needed to understand how to edit the content. Dave and I started late in the afternoon talking about the four shots in the “lacrosse shot” sequence. We were running low on daylight! The shots we decided on were: a wide shot of Dave, tight shot of Dave, shot looking into the goal (over Dave’s shoulder) and a shot from behind the net (ball fired at camera). It took only one or two takes to get the first three shots. The final shot was tricky because it required a skill shot with great accuracy for Dave to hit a certain spot in the net. I setup on sticks behind the goal and made sure the lacrosse ball could not actually hit the cameras. I also made the crazy attempt to “rip” focus to follow the ball from the stick strings to the net strings. Very difficult to pull off in .25 seconds, but we got it after about 15 shots!
The Fastec Imaging camera did not have a model number, I will find out what it is later. I really don’t care, it looks like it was pieced together from spare parts! I only care what the little silver box can do. Also, I do not know the price of this system. Remember, I am just playing with this thing! Check out the Fastec Imaging website for more information. I used all Nikon old lenses. The same lenses I used on the RED ONE and with my EX! and Letus Ultimate. They worked very well and the focal length matched up too.
Surprisingly, I really like this camera and the workflow. It was missing some important things, however. I must use the laptop for my viewfinder, I knew that going in. But the camera and the software (made by a third party) worked perfectly. Nothing crashed the entire test day. I was able to watch the 718 FPS footy before rendering to an uncompressed .AVI file in real time. The render time was less than thirty second when I chose to keep a shot. When editing, I just dragged the AVI files into Final Cut Pro and rendered them on the timeline as ProRes 422. Not a big deal. Why 718 frames per second? Because that is the fastest frame rate this camera can shoot in 720p. It does shoot higher than 718 FPS, but the resolution drops off. I do not plan to test that out this weekend.
A bit more info on the camera: This camera body is all controlled by the laptop. White balance, Frame rate, record trigger, and shutter. The camera has built in RAM memory for the many frame capture. I do not know the buffer size, only that it runs about 13 seconds in a loop. You pull this 13 second “high speed event” data off the solid state internal memory to render it down to an AVI in the computer. Only PCs, no support for mac that I know of. It does not shoot 2k or 3k or even 1080p. But 720p is enough for me. Remember, I work in broadcast tv. We deal with 720p content all the time. If the price is right to purchase a high speed camera at the 720p level, I think it would sell well. I wish I had the option to shoot up to 2000 FPS for special occasions tho. And maybe make the thing with a viewfinder!? Fastec Imaging may have a refined version of this camera coming out in the future. I am going to try to blog about it if it becomes available. I don’t know about you, but I am sick of waiting for the RED SCARLET.
This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it.
Foolish I know, this blog war. It is a real waste of talent and resources. But it is fun and entertaining too. I have been on the road with a bunch of Kessler gear and I have shot a ton of cool stuff in the Pacific Northwest. Exciting content like the Pacific coastline, the California Redwoods, a gorge covered in lush ferns, a short subject on a guy named Harvey who works with wood and I even spend the day shooting a Banana slug with a macro lens. I will eventually edit those videos and post them to my site. But this trip has been half driving and half film making, so the edit time got put off. This was my vacation so I had to have a little fun too!
But, all my spare time has been spent defending myself from Philip Bloom. You know, the guy who put poison in my beverage during that Eric Kessler fishing trip in Key West Florida!? So this is my move, my left hook back at Sir Philip. I decided to continue with the boating theme for this battle.
I spend the last few days with Paul and Marnie Reynolds, their kids… hey Garret… in Oregon white water rafting the McKenzie and Deschutes Rivers. These guys own a rafting outfitter company called Wild Water Adventures. If you are ever in Oregon and want to have a good time, look these guys up. They are fun to be in a raft with and have plenty of skill to keep you alive! At least anyone NOT with the name Philip Bloom. Enjoy the video! I’m looking forward to Philip’s next move. He does not have a sense of humor, but I think he might find this entertaining. See you next Tuesday Philip, or at your Boston meetup, whichever comes first.
This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it.
Tomorrow and Tuesday I will be renting a Trek Session 88 Downhill Mt. Bike. Yes, I am at Whistler mountain in British Columbia Canada. I am meeting up with the guys at Faultline TV, a small BC based production company that shoots MTB films. Looking forward to riding the same trails that I have watched to pros pin in many bike movies. Don’t expect me to be shooting any movies myself up here, I came to ride!
I have known an English fellow, Philip Bloom, for about two years. Lovely human being, but something is fishy. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is, but I think Philip has declared war. You can read his blog here. I am currently in beautiful northern California in a small town called Ft Bragg. The hotel I am staying at is cheap, but right on the Pacific Ocean. Fog, is in fact, rolling in right now as I type. I am free to do whatever I want for the next 9 days up here. I am on vacation. I have my two Canon 5Dmk2 DSLRs with all my Canon “L” series glass. I have a Vinten Vision 3 tripod on carbon fiber legs. I also have my Kessler CineSlider. I managed to pack an ElektraDRIVE motor and Oracle controller so that I can use the CineSlider to preform slow dolly moves and motion control action in timelapses. JetBlue charged me $25 for the second bag and $75 for the third! Thinking about using UPS to ship the gear back to Massachusetts! Will be cheaper! Tomorrow, I will be walking with the forest giants. The Red Woods. I have always wanted to see them and a National Geographic magazine a few months ago stoked me up to get out and do it! I can’t wrap my head around the fact the only 5% of the original old growth Red Wood forest remains today. And, I managed to pack my downhill mountain bike helmet, pads and armor to shred A-Line on Whistler Mountain in Vancouver BC. For those of you who don’t know, Whistler is a mecca for downhillers and a dream ride for me.
But back to the pressing issue. Sir Philip Bloom. Phil tweeted out that he had posted a video “Revenge” blog to his site. I was wondering what I had done to deserve it? I’m the one who drank the poisoned beverage on the Kessler Fishing Trip! The beer was tampered with by Philip himself! To make a long story short, here is a short video of me watching the first few minutes of Philip’s retaliation. War has been declared and this is just the beginning. I personally think Mr. Bloom is upset that I own a “dot com” and he is stuck with the inferior “dot net”.
This video is also available on Vimeo. Click Here to view it.
I have been in beautiful, sunny Key West for two very short days. I am joining forces with Philip Bloom, Jon and Christina from Canonfilmmakers.com and Eric Kessler on a Kessler Crane sponsored meet up and equipment demonstration. We are also shooting short films from the colorful streets and people who call this small island home. Jon and Christina will be shooting behind the scenes short videos for Eric and Phil to be posted later. Yesterday, Eric invited us all to fish five miles off the mainland in a chartered fishing boat called “Sea-Clusion”. We were greeted on the docks by Captain Chuck and first mate, Steven. They got all the bait and gear ready for us and we headed out into the deep blue sea to fish for Dolphin (not Flipper, but Mahi Mahi), a not-so-edible species of Tuna and the elusive Sailfish.
Eric was really excited to go and he wanted to land a Dolphin fish. I was stoked to shoot a video blog on the small boat in the 5 foot rollers and warm tropical air. Plus the thought of drinking Corona and hanging out with Philip Bloom only sweetened the deal. But things went horribly wrong. We caught fish, that was not the problem. And nobody fell overboard. The issue was not entirely clear, at least the cause of the issue.
I got very sick. I was spending most of the second half of the fishing trip “hanging the food rope” over the side of the vessel. Captain Chuck said that the food bits or “chum” was good and attracted the fish. I was not so sure. How I got sick was called into question. When I was editing the video blog footage today, I found inconclusive evidence that my Corona was tampered with by Mr. Philip Bloom. I cannot be sure, but I ran with the story anyway.
I assume that Phil was trying to get back at me for a video blog I posted a few years ago from his first ever “official meet up”. You can refresh your memory of that night by clicking here. As for the video blog posted below, you decide for yourself. I almost never get sea sick. I have slept on a boat for three nights with very little issue. I worked on a large ship excavating a pirate ship off the coast of Cape Cod for Nat Geo with zero problems. How can this isolated incident be explained?
Sure, I had a concussion (from a nasty downhill Mt Biking crash) a few days ago that required an ER visit for XRAYs and a neck support. I cannot imagine how this could be related to the sea sickness and my hands and legs going numb on the boat in the rough seas. All joking aside, head injuries are not to be underestimated and I need to keep an eye on the recovery for sure. Just glad to be off that boat.
You can also view this video blog on Vimeo. Click here to see it! If you are interested in a charter boat in Key West, check out Captain Chuck and ride “Sea-Clusion”. He is cool and has no problem if you puke off his stern. Click here for his webpage. You can read Philip Bloom’s blog entry from the meet up yesterday at the Reach Resort by clicking here.
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