Tag Archives: Krontech.ca

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS OF 2021!

 

We have passed another year in slow motion land and while camera releases were more plenty than expected considering the chip shortage and teh COVID disruption, it’s time to take a look back through the year’s camera releases, and see which delivered on the price/performance scale when it comes to slow motion frame rates.  Phones are stagnationg while high end cameras are getting more frame rate options in higher resolution. Our Best Slow Motion Cameras Of 2021 have been selected and ordered by recommendation! → Continue Reading Full Post ←

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS OF 2020!

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS OF 2020

As the end of 2020 nears, it’s time to take a look back through the year’s camera releases amid the COVID 19 chaos, and see which delivered on the price/performance bracket with slow motion frame rates as the primary goal.  Phone slow motion took a back seat this year as the interest of the feature in phones was subdued or even eliminated. Our Best Slow Motion Cameras Of 2020 have been selected and ordered by recommendation!

We saw some surprises including a mostly affordable 4k slow motion solution and the adoption of 4k 120fps on many cameras which makes us think 240fps at UHD should be something to think about in the coming years as a regular option once 8k video is commonplace on consumer recording devices and TVs. The increase in resolution should theoretically allow for a lot of 4k frame rates to be offered as 8k delivers 4x the pixel count of 4k for any given frame rate. Keep on reading for our 2020 picks!

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS of 2020:

Without further ado here are what we believe are the best value slow motion cameras in their respective categories for the year 2020:

Best Slow Motion Phone Category:

3rd Place) Sony Xperia 5 II:

The Sony Xperia 5 II is all about capturing the best video possible on a smartphone and in HDR. The kick here is that the phone is capable of 4k 120fps in full HDR which is pretty much class-leading.

The footage below will give you a taste of what the phone can do. In good light, it will let you capture excellent quality 4k 120p footage with the possibility to grade as it records a gradable flat profile.  In low light, it will be a pretty unremarkable image with grain and artifacts as could be expected from the light requirements when shooting at high speed.

Sony Xperia 5 II: 4K 120fps video footage by CNET Highlights:

Sony Xperia 5 II Slow Motion Specs:

  • 120fps 4k
  • 60fps 1080p

This is one of the first phones to offer 120fps in 4k which will probably become a standard spec in 2021 for flagships. However absent is the slow motion at 1080p which considering the 4k oomph, it should have been capable of 480fps at 1080p or similar. It is a shame that the spec was completely avoided considering HDR in 120fps 4k requires 240fps full pixel readout before merging.  In theory, 240fps non-HDR is possible on this phone but not available for unspecified reasons. Phones are becoming more powerful by the day and this is one that has our attention. The just under $1k price tag is not ideal but some of the best phones are going to cost you.

2nd Place) OnePlus 8T:

One Plus continues to offer compelling slow motion features on their phones with 480fps 1080p and up to 480fps at 720p.  It gives you a quad 48MP camera module which is literally insane considering the phone sells for under $750USD and has 120hz refresh rate. Feature-wise it has probably everything under the sun and then some and will not disappoint in the performance realm.

Fireworks in Slow motion – OnePlus 8T 480fps in dark by sternking: → Continue Reading Full Post ←

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS OF 2019!

As 2019 comes to a close its that time to take a look back through the year’s camera releases and see which delivered the goods at an affordable price in slow motion.  Phone slow motion continues to be a strong category, so strong in fact that we made a Best Slow Motion Phones of 2019 list that you can see here.

Stagnation in many camera segments aside from phones is still ongoing, the semi-professional and pro markets stay at 120fps and 240fps with the occasional 320fps camera that delivers just a tad better quality but at a price.  For professional slow motion, there were announcements but not a shipping product yet, however previously released cameras like the Chronos 1.4c and edgertronic still own the affordable quality market. Read on for our best of 2019 results!

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS of 2019:

Without further ado here are what we believe are the best value slow motion cameras in their respective categories for the year 2019:

Best Slow Motion Phone Category:

We had 5 finalists for slow motion phone of 2019 and while the Mate 30 Pro below got the top marks, the iPhone 11 and OnePlus 7 series had great showings, go to the dedicated article for the rest of the phone options.

 Huawei Mate 30 Pro:

Coming out of left field from a company that has been in the news as being in trouble with the US government, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro which is not shipping in the US officially but can be found from online import sellers, is the slow motion phone champ of 2019.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Slow Motion Specs Dissected:

  • 120fps 1080p Continuous
  • 240fps 1080p Continuous
  • 960fps 1080p for 1 full second (960 frames in total)
  • 1920fps 720p for 1/2 second  (960 frames in total)
  • 7680fps 720p interpolated 4x (lasts for 32 seconds on a 30p timeline.)
  • All super slow motion modes at 960p and above last 32 seconds of playback at 30fps regular speed.
  • The entire buffer for the slow motion feature is 2GB and gets filled by data then dumped and encoded on the fly by the Kirin 990 chip.

This is the first phone that truly records 1920fps slow motion in 720p mode for 1/2 a second or 960 frames and then does excellent interpolation to a whopping 7,680fps 720p to create mind-bending images.   It is especially good for people, animals, and hard non-deformable objects. It will of curse fail as any algorithm with fluids, powders, and heavily detailed objects and will create a soft mushy in-between frame in those cases.  If you do not choose interpolation mode then you can get real slow motion for up to 32 seconds of playback on a 30p timeline which is excellent for a phone.

If you decide to buy it, the phone has a few issues to keep in mind. Due to US government restrictions, it will not ship with a  full version of Android with the Google Apps and not have access to the Playstore.  However several workarounds have been worked out in forums to make this phone usable. The other is that it is a Chinese phone which may need you to get help from someone who understands/reads Chinese to make the setup and get to work in English after.    We do not recommend this phone as your main handset as the support of updates will probably be negated in the US but if you are in China, this is a great flagship phone.  If you are outside of China, make sure you can live with the limitations in the software.

960fps,1920fps and 7680fps test – Huawei Mate 30 Pro incredible Slow Motion by Slow Experiment:

As you can see from the sample above and these other samples at HSC, the quality is quite good and the time is usable easily as a sports and experimentation high speed mode.  It will of course not replace a dedicated slow motion camera for quality work but it is still an amazing development to get real 1920fps 720p and 960fps 1080p even with some artifacts in a portable device.

Huawei may be in hot water with the US government for some time but they have consistently delivered amazing hardware that is probably the cutting edge worldwide.  We are excited about the future of phone slow motion and considering the giant leap that happened here, it is not unrealistic to think that really good 1080p 2,000fps or similar could be very close.  At least for a small-time recording but it will really be magical.

Huawei has made an incredible slow motion phone on the Mate 30 Pro and if they read this, send a handset our way to test and offer samples of reference.  As of now, their new handset is the one to beat. -HSC

Mid Range Professional Cameras:

This year the semi-pro camera market had some very good surprises when it comes to cameras that can shoot RAW files at very high quality and also allow for windowed slow motion modes.

Two of our picks are from Blackmagic design which is a known name in the affordable quality camera market. They have been able to deliver RAW and compressed RAW with BRAW format for very little investment compared to many other brands.  The quality delivered by these cameras are really cinema-quality so the trade-offs when stepping down are more to do with changing a camera system for producers rather than giving up the footage grading ability or low light performance.

Third Place: URSA MINI PRO 4.6K G2

The URSA Mini Pro G2 had a firmware update mid-year that allowed for 300fps in a windowed 2k pixel mode that has great quality and can be stabilized for excellent 1080p production quality.  For under $6k for body only the price is not that high for a camera that can really bring your production values up.   It gets a third place because the cost of owning the camera goes up with accessories like media, lenses, batteries, monitoring, and storage for editing. A good kit can easily get in the 15k range. The BRAW format is excellent but not for everyone.  ProRes is also a possibility and probably what many producers will shoot in when need to deliver in a rush.

High Speed Frame Rates on the URSA Mini G2:

Blackmagic RAW 8:1

4.6K Full – Up to 120 fps
UHD Windowed – Up to 150 fps
HD Windowed – Up to 300 fps

With 4k UHD at 150fps it makes for a killer feature rarely available on other cameras and the 300fps in HD or 2k allows for that extra oomph within your creative shoot.

300fps UMP G2 test 190629 by Reel Eagle Studios: → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Chronos 68 Posted by Krontech, April’s Fools or legit?

Chronos 68

The Twitter account of the Krontech.ca company has posted here a render and a short info spec on a supposed 48 camera rig that can process an awe-inspiring 68 Gigapixels/sec which they arrive at by aggregating the 1.4Gpx/s on the Chronos 1.4c camera multiplied by 48 different units. (Update: Real Product See Our Post Here!)

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the “Chronos 68″ made of 48 Chronos 1.4 cameras thus able to process 68 Gpx/s. Is anyone in to buy?” Krontech.ca

Being this April 1st which could make it an April Fools prank we are cautious about calling this a real rig, or product, but it sure looks pretty capable as a way to capture a 360-degree view of something.  Whatever the case, this is probably not going to be cheap but geared to professional movie making or very hardcore labs.  Krontech.ca website here!  What do you think? -HSC

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS OF 2018!

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS 2018

As 2018 comes to a close it is time to look back through the year’s camera releases and see which delivered quality at an affordable price in slow motion.  Phone slow motion options above 480fps were a big surprise this year and the frame rate quality improved in other cameras up to 240fps.

There has been a stagnation in the mid to professional camera range at the 240fps with no big improvements afterward. The best quality and value once again came from the Chronos 1.4c from Krontech and the edgertronic cameras which offer professional quality results at a very reasonable price. Read on for our best of 2018 results!

BEST SLOW MOTION CAMERAS of 2018:

Without further ado here are what we believe are the best value slow motion cameras in their respective categories for the year 2018:

Best Slow Motion Phones:OnePlus 6, 6T, Samsung Galaxy S9 and Note 9, Sony Xperia XZ2 and XZ3 series!

The best slow motion phones of 2018 are in our view the OnePlus 6 & OnePlus 6T which offer the same Slow Motion quality and features at 480fps 720p with a recording time of 3.75 seconds which translate to a full minute of playback at a 30p frame rate timeline. This is unmatched by any phone and while the quality is still not ideal, it is, however, the undisputed king of usable slow motion.

Other phones in the running like the Galaxy S9 and Note 9 offer 960fps recording for up to 0.2 and  0.4 seconds which is a very short time frame to catch the action. Sure they offer twice the frame rate as the OnePlus 6 at 720p HD as well but the time restriction just gets it to second place. The Samsung phones do have better 240fps continuous recording which is something to take into consideration.

The Xperia Sony Phones XZ2 and XZ3 are 960fps phones that record at 1080p resolution which is a first for any phone. Problem is they record at just a very tiny sliver of time. The 0.1-second recording is so small a window that the phones are just next to useless for serious slow motion use.  Furthermore,  the phones at 720p only double that time recording to 0.2 seconds which is 6.4 seconds of slow motion at 30p playback.

OnePlus 6 vs Samsung Galaxy S9+ super slow-mo by Fun4sure:

The big surprise in the phone space was the iPhone is no longer a class-leading slow motion phone, same goes for the Google pixel which capped performance at up to 240fps only.  Both of the big tech companies nearly forgot about slow motion this year while our phone leaders OnePlus, Sony and Samsung used it as one of the top features to tout the feature set.

As a Side Note, OnePlus just released a new variant of the OnePlus 6T called the 6T McLaren Edition which also offers the exact same camera performance in the regular 6 and 6T. The big change comes in faster charging and a 10GB RAM memory configuration which will probably be unnoticeable compared to an 8GB 6T in real use. The extra price tag is mostly for the look and feel so we recommend the 6T and regular 6 OnePlus variants as better options for value. All of these phones have the exact same slow motion specs.

Winner: OnePlus 6T and OnePlus 6!

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Mid Range Professional Cameras: Panasonic GH5s, Sony a7 III, and Sony PXW-Z90V!

3rd Place: We were excited by the announcement of the Panasonic GH5s earlier in the year as the rumors showed 240fps 1080p continuous recording.  Sure the spec was included in the camera but the results were an aliased and moire prone image that made it unusable for professional use at 240fps. The camera does offer excellent 1080p at 120fps and slightly reduced resolution at up to 190fps.  The 240fps mode is usable but you will not want to shoot anything for a client with it as the quality drop is severe.  The Panasonic GH5 of 2017 is actually a higher quality 180fps image than the GH5s which seems to be based on the sensor itself being able to out resolve and scale the image down with more detail retention. We still think that unless low light is your prime focus, the Panasonic GH5 is still the better choice for frame rates in the Panasonic portable Mid-Range Professional cameras.

Panasonic Lumix GH5S + DJI Ronin-S | 240fps Slow-Motion Footage by Tom’s Tech Time:
→ Continue Reading Full Post ←

Chronos 1.4 Firmware 0.3.1 b9 Unleashes New Features!

Chronos 1.4 Firmware

The Chronos 1.4c team based in B.C. Canada has been hard at work unleashing the features of the camera hardware and adding software features that should make the camera more valuable to video professionals everywhere. The new firmware adds HDMI live mirroring support for monitoring which is clean and lets you record its output. Another feature is the inclusion of native CinemaDNG save format image sequences which retain 16bits of color data and allow you to really streamline the workflow without time-consuming conversions.

In our testing over the last 4 days, we have really put the firmware “available here” through its paces and found very minimal issues in the software related to usability but no freezes and rock solid operation over around 14hrs of operation.   By saving to CinemaDNG we have no issues with cards getting write space errors due to saving the 1.8MB files individually. We feel this format is really unleashing the camera’s quality fully with a faithful sensor capture representation.

Chronos 1.4 Firmware – HDMI Mirroring is here!

Since the release of the camera, the HDMI port had been turned off until the code was mature enough to support it. We are glad to report that it is hot plug and play and on 3 different 1080p monitors it had no issues feeding a signal and displaying raw video data. Footage capture should be possible to an external HDMI recorder offering another way to store the camera’s images.  The playback buffer allows the camera to playback at 30p, for example, making it possible to externally and cleanly record slow-motion footage in any format your recorder supports.

The Chronos also allows recording in H.264 with a new and updated de-bayer algorithm which should yield better edge detail and fewer color artifacts. Still, we cannot compare it directly to the quality of the RAW data in CinemaDNG for example. If you want to capture the entire data stream you need to use RAW which will let you change white balance and use your preferred converter. We used Adobe’s Camera RAW CC 2018 to convert the DNG sequences and were really amazed with the detail retained.

The white balance interface has been reworked and now allows you to edit the color matrix information manually if needed and have a custom white balance setting which should suffice for matching shoots.  In our experience, we used the custom WB only sparingly as our lights are 6500k balanced which offered near-perfect color reproduction in the Cinema DNGs.

Final Notes:

The firmware has a lot of minor and major fixes and tweaks that really bring the camera to a solid footing and dependable on the field. So many bugs have been squashed and usability has taken a step forward which is not to be dismissed as just one more feature. The camera is a breeze to use and has finally unleashed its potential for image quality and dependability with all these fixes.

The camera exposure can now be adjusted by the jog wheel and allows for shutter angle degrees to be used easily. We, however, wish we could have the option for using shutter speed in the fractions of a milli-second format i.e. 1/2000, 1/4000, 1/8000 which are ideal to match the look and feel of other camera motion blur characteristics.  This should be an easy software feature to implement.

One other thing on our wish list is the ability to have the shoot interface be on the bottom of the frame while allowing the 720p preview, for example, to go from edge to edge on the screen. The way it is implemented right now makes a real estate sacrifice on the preview image which could be better used for easier focus and framing.  A re-work of the video settings and slider interface would have to be factored in. One possibility is to do an interface overlay on video and allow on off of the buttons and slider area on command.  Since the camera software will be ported to a new OS it will be possible to iterate further and maybe allow for custom themes by users who require specific features on screen.

Future Wishlist: Live histogram in B&W and Color positionable on the screen.   Zoom feature to check focus before recording.

Firmware Verdict: In a word… Great!– Well done Chronos team!

You can find the firmware download at the official Chronos Forum post here: http://forum.krontech.ca/index.php?topic=423.0

Make sure you follow the update instructions to the letter and to save your calibration data beforehand to avoid any unforeseen problems in case an error occurs. Be kind and keep the Chronos team informed of any bugs that may crop up during your camera use.

Look at this accessories article here for improving your Chronos Camera!

Chronos Firmware V0.3.1.9  Release notes below:

Notable Changes:
– New Demosaic algorithm based on AHD, which should improve color reproduction and reduce edge noise.
– Standalone daemon to operate the video system, with DBus API.
– External HDMI displays are supported at 1080p and 720p resolutions.
– Recording speed improvements.
– Add CinemaDNG and TIFF as save file formats.
– Deprecate Raw 16-bit right-justified save format in favor of CinemaDNG.
– Add a demo mode to replay a section of recorded video in a loop.
– Add option to overlay frame statistics onto processed video formats (H.264 and TIFF).
– Jog wheel can be used to adjust the exposure, and navigate the settings menus.
– New video memory recovery tool to download video (slowly) in the event of a software crash.
– Redesign of the white balance window, including a new dialog to edit the color matrix.

Minutiae:
– Add white balance preset for 3200K/Tungsten lighting.
– Adjust highlighting of text when selecting text boxes.
– Auto-record and auto-save modes independent of one another.
– Improved algorithm to estimate framerate during file save.
– Date format in the Utility window changed to shorten the Month string.
– Display separate version strings for both the Application and Filesystem/Release.

Fixed Bugs:
– Crash causing the video to freeze after approximately 45 recording attempts.
– Trigger delays would scale incorrectly when using segmented recording mode.
– Abort recordings when the free space drops below 20MB to avoid crashing when the disk is full.
– UI bug causing the selected save location to always select the first mounted disk.
– First frame of a raw recording would contain corrupted NV12 image data.
– First pixel of a Raw 12-bit packed frame was sometimes being dropped.
– Corrupted pixels at the end of a Raw 12-bit packed frame.
– Add crosshairs to the white balance window.
– Add Qt stylesheet to improve focus visibility.
– Main window exposure now is shown in microseconds and shutter angle.
– Jog wheel now adjusts exposure logarithmically, or by degrees when pressed.
– The ‘close’ button on the soft keyboard now applies the entered text.
– Reorganization of the soft keyboard to include a negative key.
– Black areas of the UI become transparent after an HDMI hotplug.
– HDMI hotplug while on the playback window would revert to live display.
– Add missing ColorMatrix1 and CalibrationIlluminant1 tags to CinemaDNG files.
– Fix possible crash of the video system when aborting a file save.
– Fix possible crash of the UI when rapidly aborting and re-starting a file save.
– Fix color correction math so that saturating the image sensor tends towards white.
Also, some bugs that were introduced in beta-4 but now fixed:
– Monochrome TIFF now pads the pixel values with least-significant zeroes.
– H.264 bitrate setting was being ignored and defaulting to 0.25 bpp.

Compatibility Issues:
– The pixel packing order in Raw 12-bit mode has been changed for the v0.3.1 release.
Given a pair of two 12-bit pixels in hexidecmal as (0x123, 0xabc), the bytes produced
by the Raw 12-bit packing mode changes as follows:
v0.3.0 and earlier: (0xab, 0xc1, 0x23)
v0.3.1 and later: (0x23, 0x1c, 0xab)

Known Bugs:
– The first frame of an H.264 recording is erroneously copied from the display buffer before the recording starts.

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