Category Archives: Science

Canon New Cinema Camera Will do 240fps in 4k!

Canon it seems is thinking 3 steps ahead of everyone else when it comes to pro 8k video.  After being left behind in the adoption of 4k and playing catch up to the format, they seem intent on making their cameras the new 8k default option with specs that seem out of a dreamer’s wish list.  Be warned that these cameras will probably start at $10k USD and go up from there. The low end should be about 10k to $15k for the C300s at the low end, and the high end a $30k price tag for a C700DR.  

The most impressive of the new rumored cameras is the Canon EOS C700DR (DR Stands for Dynamic Range) which will be capable of recording 4k not just at 120fps but a class-leading 240fps with excellent quality. It also hints at a 180fps mode that will have expanded dynamic range if needed.   It is interesting that 1080p as a slow motion mode is not even considered here but these cameras are geared to a specific market and that is digital cinema which needs much more resolution nowadays than what even 2k can deliver, much less 1080p.  → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Samsung ISOCELL GN2 does 480fps!

The hegemony of phone sensors has been the purview of Sony with their Exmor sensors for many years but now Samsung has started making inroads in the space with their ISOCELL chips. The latest is currently mass-produced and shipping in handsets already which is not a paper launch, but a real thing. The chip is capable of massive low light improvement compared to other sensors because it is essentially a near 1″ sensor with 1/1.12-inch measurements. This is close to what Sony RX cameras use as a main sensor, and a first for a phone.

As to how they are able to fit this sensor on phones, it is a dance between a protruding camera bump that is a little larger than usual and also a lens system that creates a full imaging circle from a minute distance. The GN2 is capable of recording 480fps in HD 720p, 4k 120fps, 30fps in 12.5MP windowed size and 10fps in 100MP mode which uses a clever algorithm and three RGB exposures to derive a 100MP image from the 50MP source. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Oppo Find X3 Pro brings microscopy to phones!

Oppo Find X3 Pro

There is always an outlier when it comes to phone innovation and we have to give it to Oppo in 2021 as it seems to have created a phone that really delivers features that seemed impossible just months ago.  The Oppo Find X3 Pro can deliver the usual 4k 30p and 60p video and up to 720p 480fps slow motion along with the common standard of 240p at 1080p.  Where the phone jumps ahead of the pack is the inclusion of a real microscopy camera module that has a ring light to boot.

The Microscope camera can deliver a mind-altering 60x microscopy range magnification that looks so good that you might think it was taken with a professional clinical microscope.   It will not be enough to show blood cells that usually require over 100x to be appreciated but it delivers detail on small insects, fibers, textures, and electronics that previously required a complicated camera setup attached to a multi-lens instrument. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Phantom TMX 7510 does 76000 fps in HD!

Phantom TMX 7510

The scientists at Vision Research are at it again at their favorite pastime of hyper slow motion gear creation.  The new TMX 7510 Phantom camera is the fastest ever in their arsenal with a mind-bending spec of 75 Gigapixels throughput which is capable of delivering 76,000fps  1 Megapixel resolution or slightly higher than HD at 1280 x 800px.

The camera features the first BSI or Back-side illuminated sensor ever used in a Phantom camera. This allows for much better low-light performance which is crucial for slow motion applications.  The camera tops out at a ridiculous 1.75 million fps frame rate at 1280 x 32px in standard width mode or 640 x 64px in Binned mode.  One second recorded at that speed creates a file that plays back for 972min or just over 16hrs in a 30fps timeline.  Yikes! → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Nikon Stacked CMOS Sensor Will do 1000fps in 4k!

Nikon Stacked CMOS Sensor

Nikon Japan has been busy creating the next generation of 1″ stacked sensors.  The latest is a 17.84 Megapixel stacked design with hyper-fast memory interconnect that shoots up to 1000fps at 4k resolution which is no slouch. The sensor is still in development but it will be a possibility to see it in a camera that could compete head to head with the Sony RX series which now dominate prosumer P&S sales.  It was announced at ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference) held in San Francisco, February 15, 2021.

The sensor works by shooting in buckets of 16 x 16 pixels as one block, and then subsequently 264 x 264 pixel blocks (4224 x 4224 pixels) are conformed to form the final image at nearly 18MP.  It is unclear at this time if 4k video will be a windowed resolution or a supersampled then reduced final image from the full sensor.  The market for this sensor goes beyond consumer cameras as it is aimed at other applications like self-driving cars and production lines. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Multiply Your Video Frame Rate with Dain-App !

Multiply Your Video Frame Rate

We got over 20 messages with essentially the same video sample in our inbox this week. They all touted the new interpolation from the DAIN experimental App or (Depth Aware Video Interpolation App)  which now analyses footage with a Neural network AI algorithm that crunches motion vectors and even what seemed impossible before “Object Occlusion” to generate higher frame rates from lower fps sources.  The technology is pretty fascinating and should be further improved by more training and samples over the coming years.

For stop motion animators, this is a complete game-changer as now you could animate with as little as 8fps and then interpolate to 30fps or 60fps with very little in the way of tearing and artifacting as long as the footage is well lit and objects clearly defined.  To make matters more interesting, it also analyses footage with shallow depth of field yielding impressive results.

Multiply Your Video Frame Rate with Interpolation or the “I” Word for Slow Motion Enthusiasts:

We visited the Interpolation topic in the past on our Fake Slow Motion article and concluded that then, the quality of interpolation while good was far from usable and you really could not compromise real high fps footage from interpolated versions except in very simple cases.

Now with DAIN technology, we have no choice but to re-visit the cases and analyze what it is capable of.  We looked at a few dozen examples and it is clear the technology has progressed forward so much that now stop motion animation, 2D Cell-based cartoon animation, and even 3D animated sequences rendered at 30p can easily be turned in higher fps increments yielding impressive and in some cases miraculous results.

We would like you to first watch the video below to understand what a depth map is and how the software in DAIN can create frames from nothing that look just like real ones.  A depth map will generate an approximated view of the world in a Lidar-Like vision representation to figure out to the best of the AI estimation where objects are in a scene according to their location close or far to the camera.

Depth-Aware Video Frame Interpolation by Wenbo Bao:

Even at 48fps from  12fps source, it is clear the technology in DAIN can yield impressive results even with heavy organic detail in the background including foliage. The software does an admirable job of estimating the relative position of objects in the video scenes.

AI使用フレーム補間アプリ DAIN APP byTALBOの実験室 Ch.: → Continue Reading Full Post ←