Warning: The parent company of FPS cameras “The Slow Motion Camera Company Ltd.” went out of business and entered liquidation proceedings. No further development of cameras is expected. More information here on Google Search!
It has been a little bit over a month since the last update of the fps1000 was posted. This time around it is all about the electronics and how they fit into the aluminum case and the first look at how it all fits in a tight package.
For many of us it seems counter intuitive to own a camera that doesn’t shoot color images. In this day and age of technological marvels, being constrained by black and white / monochrome output on recording is a strange proposition. For the world of high speed imaging however you have to re-examine the entire debate from a benefits point of view and why it could be ideal to have monochrome instead of RGB color as your high speed option.
Depending on the intended use Monochrome might give you more bang for your buck and save you a lot of money on lighting and power requirements to run those lights. To understand the benefits we need to dig in on why Monochrome camera sensors excel in areas where color sensors suffer and why this will hardly change with current sensor technology in the near future.
DxO the company associated with DXO Optics Pro RAW conversion and for it’s popular camera sensor rating scores has released their first hardware product based on a coupling with the Apple iPhone and iPad devices with lightning connector.
The camera attaches in the thunderbolt charging port and lets you swivel the phone or tablet screen for easier viewing angles. The power of the camera comes from what could be the highest quality portable device camera to date. The RAW and Super RAW modes claim unprecedented image quality with scores in RAW mode of 70 DxO points and in Super RAW of 85 points. In contrast the original full frame Canon 5D Mark 1 only gathered a sensor score of 71 in RAW mode. While the results show a clear progression in sensor technology they simply cannot match the aesthetics of a full frame sensor with a 1″ inch sensor.
Lambert Instruments of the Netherlands has introduced a small and compact but powerful duo of high speed cameras with a monochrome sensor. The main difference in both models is that one – HS540S –is designed for streaming data continuously to a computer terminal for high end production lines and the other – HS540M – is for research settings that do not require full continuous recording by streaming monitoring. A variety of mounts supported Nikon F-mount, C-mount, M42-mount, custom choice.
Lambert HS540M
The Lambert HS540M is a high-speed camera for research applications. It has up to 16 GB of internal storage and is ideal for scientific research and industrial R&D. After recording your data, you can review the results in our software and trim the high-speed video before exporting it to your computer.
At first glance the LG G4 Android smart phone with it’s RAW image capture and completely manual camera might seem like the best ever camera phone to date and it is in many respects but; when it comes to slow motion it is barely mentioned in the specs. It does have a slow motion mode but after looking at samples it is far away from an iPhone 6 in quality and even below the Galaxy S6 which disappointed.
The 120fps mode is limited to 720p HD resolution which is now standard on most high end to midrange phones. The quality is not even 720p in closer inspection it is more like 960*540px or lower scaled up showing all sorts of artifacts from heavy pixelation, aliasing & moire.
During the review of the edgertronic camera; HSC asked Mike Matter the brains behind it a series of questions “some submitted by our readers” regarding past present and future of the high speed camera market, sensors and where things are going in the camera market. Many of his answers are very detailed and offer a glimpse into his own efforts and how he sees the future evolving with the continual adoption of high speed capable devices.
Mike Matter from Sanstreak/edgertronic Interview: