With the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ on the running for the best slow motion smartphone of 2018, recent leaks if confirmed could make the Note 9 an even better proposition for high frame rate enthusiasts. As with all rumored and leaked info, it could be false or inaccurate when compared to the final specs. However, this phone is scheduled for an August 9th, 2018 reveal at a special event.
The most encouraging info on the new Phone will be the use of a new ISOCELL sensor capable of full HD recording at 960fps. Which will be a big improvement from the Galaxy S9’s 720p 960fps. That phone only records 0.24sec worth of 960p video so it would be ideal if the Note 9 was able to at least double that time but at full HD resolution. The phone is expected to cost at least $960 based on the Note 8 price so it will not be cheap to get this kind of performance.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
By popular demand, we have found some new samples for both the OnePlus 6 and the Xiaomi Mi 8 phones for you to see. We have to give the nod between these two phones to the OnePlus 6 as it offers 240fps 1080p and 3.75 seconds worth of 720p 480fps and even 60p 4k. The quality on the super slow motion modes is not up there with a dedicated slow-motion camera but it is a big improvement in the recording department by allowing 3.75 secs on the 480p mode on the OnePlus 6 compared to the very restrictive 960fps 0.24sec on the Galaxy S9.
The Xiaomi Mi 8 is a big improvement from their earlier phones but simply cannot compete in terms of frame rates with the best the Android world has to offer. The quality on any phone will be restricted by the memory buffer, codec and read-out speed from the sensor. Quality still has a ways to go for being true HD or Full HD so remember before choosing a phone, it may not do as well as that fancy Slow Motion on Youtube or TV.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Oppo the phone company based in Dongguan, China has released their flagship phone the Oppo Find X. Comparisons will be made to the iPhone X nut just in name but also on shape and design. However, the Oppo has no notch but it also has a similar aesthetic to the Galaxy S9 from Samsung but with the impressive feature which slides a motorized top part with both the rear and front cameras. Design wise this phone might be the most impressive and elegant phone ever made up to this point.
The phone has no 4k 60p like others in its class but does have 240fps 1080p and 480fps 720p video. There is something akin to this phone and the OnePlus 6 in that they share the video specs. Are these phones similarly built or it is just a fluke? We tend to see a homogenized spec sheet on these handsets as technology is standardized in China within camera modules. It is encouraging to see so many phones having the slow motion feature included and prominently displayed in the feature run-down.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
NVIDIA has been hard at work on the problem posed by high frame rate interpolation of video data shot on lower fps. We have had this tech since the late 1990s with the advent of Twixtor and refined over the decades in systems like Twixtor Pro and Adobe’s Optical Flow in After Effects. You are still not getting real temporal detail data since the frames are created by extrapolating velocity and direction vectors plus pixel values between frames to get the result.
We explored this technique in our post on interpolation here and why it is no substitute from a real slow motion camera solution. NVIDIA’s new method uses machine learning along with 11,000 videos to arrive at a more convincing result. Considering the relatively small sample size we can imagine a future where hundreds of thousands or millions of footage samples are used to generate near flawless interpolation. This technique takes some serious computation and data sets so as of now it is not really ready for the mass market but that could change with the cloud very soon.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Panasonic has been known on having deals or rebates on cameras way before replacements are set to be unveiled. In that same manner, the latest price cuts or instant savings on the GH5 and GH5s make it a much easier proposition to get one of these cameras that shoots in the case of the GH5 up to 180fps 1080p and on the GH5s up to 240fps 1080p. In a previous post, we showed that the GH5s is actually less detailed in 1080p slow motion than the regular GH5s which suffers from more aliasing and moire artifacts.
The Sony RX100 VI camera has not reached the reviewers yet for a full in-depth look but the early press shoots did gather some slow-motion footage which shows the camera in action. We also got a final word from a good source that the camera has the exact same HFR resolution and timing features as the RX100 V which means there is no improvement in the quality of the image when shooting higher frame rates.
In fact, you may even get lesser quality footage due to the lens being now an 8x f2.8 to f4.5 lens 24-200mm (35mm Equivalent) which is much slower and by optical standards, it should trail the 2.91x f/1.8-2.8 Lens 24-70mm (35mm Equivalent) of the RX100 V. So you get a $250 price increase for a better AF system, better color in video, a better tilt screen which is now full touch and the ability to zoom 8x. If those things are important to you then the extra money may be worth it.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
