Tag Archives: Krontech

Chronos 2.1 HD Shoots 1000fps 1080p For $5k!

Chronos 2.1 HD Slow Motion Camera

In what could be summed up as a big milestone day in affordable slow motion, Krontech.ca the company behind the excellent 720p 1500fps Chronos 1.4c slow motion camera has now announced ready for pre-order a new 1080p Full HD 1000fps slow motion camera that starts at a bargain basement price of $5,000 US Dollars.  Considering just a few years ago this performance in the Phantom camera space was a six-figure proposition, this is major progress towards a camera that we have been waiting for a long time.

Sure there have been other cameras that democratized the space in the past like the amazing edgertronic SC2X we tested which is a 15,990 USD piece of gear and is capable of 2000fps+ at full HD resolution on an APS-C sized sensor.  Still very cheap compared to other cameras but not exactly affordable for the common shooter. Now the Chronos 2.1 HD is here to change all that and offer in a fully contained package with a ready to shoot kit for a starting price a third of that. → 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

Chronos 1.4 Survives 180Gs of Force Strapped on Mower Blade!

Chronos 1.4 Mower

The Tesla500 Youtube Channel is at it again with an impressive build and experiment. David Kronstein the creator of the Chronos has attached a camera to a specially modified mower and blade assembly to shoot what a lawnmower does directly on the blade’s edge.  The mower was only run at 1/2 speed, to avoid a camera failure, resulted in about 180 G-forces at the edge of the camera.

Needless to say, it really shows how good the camera is at withstanding abuse.  While we do not condone you do this with any camera it is cool to know it can be done and still have beautiful high speed imagery to go with it. Congrats to David for the successful build!   The G-forces involved would kill any living thing with a brain in seconds hence why a camera is a good subject, Please don’t try this at home! Watch the video below: → 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. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Chronos 1.4 New Firmware Improves h.264 Image Quality!

Chronos 1.4 New Firmware

The Chronos 1.4 team has been hard at work on firmware improvements. The latest pre-released software patch shared with HSC improves the h.264 file quality at the pixel level by using a new demosaic algorithm to better match the real camera output.  We did a few sample tests to see how big an improvement it is and also to maybe ditch the slow and space eating RAW 16bit workflow which is our preferred file saving format as it retains all the sensor information.

The new improvements are already available to the community as a beta in this post. It is very stable it should immediately improve the way you work with the camera. Also, a new roadmap of upcoming firmware releases was shared in the forums which include HDMI monitoring and a complete OS change to Debian Linux from the current Arago distro for the camera which should improve development and speed in implementing features. → Continue Reading Full Post ←

CHRONOS 1.4 SOFTWARE V0.3 RC2 Released!

Chronos 1.4 Software V0.3 RC2

The Chronos 1.4c Team has released the latest v0.3 RC2 software for testing.  Be aware that this is not mission critical stable software so only use on your own private testing and not for recording mission critical shoots.  The Interface can now be flipped to the left side though we would love to see an option to be concentrated on the lower part for better screen real-estate distribution.

We have tested over the last few days and are happy to report that the software has been stable and rock solid with no lock-ups and no sluggishness.  The Color science was improved since the first v0.3 RC1 release to render the red colors among others more faithfully. In our testing, there was a definite improvement but we would like to see better treatment of the deep blues and magentas. We are happy to see White Balance is now supporting built-in presets! → Continue Reading Full Post ←