Here are some of the most asked questions received from our readers in the past two months about slow motion gear , phones and other imaging devices:
Q) What will the iPhone 6s be able to do?
Readers Questions August 2015!
Tag Archives: low cost
fps1000 Interview With Graham Rowan!
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!
The creator of the fps1000 camera Graham Rowan carved out some time to answer a few questions posed by our readers and us about the upcoming camera release and what went into the development. The answers are thorough and paint a good image of what the process from idea to build has been like; along with pitfalls and industry insights. The interview is a bit long so grab a donut plus coffee and dig in!
Panasonic DVX200 Release Date Nears!
There is a lot of expectation for the release of the Panasonic DVX200 4k camera. It has been proclaimed as a true professional tool that will last the test of time among other superlatives. What intrest us most is that the camera will offer the ability to shoot 60p at 4k and 120fps at full 1080p HD. While non of the frame rates are what we would call groundbreaking; they do serve the vast majority of the video production crowd with the most usable aspects of overcrank for sports and shooting techniques relying on fast panning motion and action shots.
While there is still a blackout of shots at 120fps there have been a few 4k released shots that show what the pre-production cameras are capable of. The performance of the Micro 4/3 sensor and the built in Leica 13x f/2.8 – f/4.5 Lens seems to be very good. The samples however show Dynamic range which is rated at 12 stops in the specs to be close to what a GH4 with VLOG can produce. Since these are pre production shots you cannot base the final image quality of the camera from these samples but the quality is there and it can only go up from here. As for low light abilities it will remain to be seen but if you expect Sony A7s quality you are barking at the wrong tree. It should perform close or better than what the Lumix GH4 is able to do. The camera should be released sometime in October this year with a MSRP of $5000 USD.
OnePlus 2 Slow Motion and Video Samples!
The OnePlus 2 has been a big success in pre-orders with over 30,000 phones ordered in 64 seconds. However people from the company got the One Plus 2 phone early and have been shooting footage and images with the phone in the last week. The quality is nothing short of amazing for regular video with macro capabilities that rival the best video cameras of a few years ago. The quality of the codec and detail extracted by the lens are extremely good.
When it comes to slow motion the quality of 120fps 720p is also better than other rivals in the Samsung and HTC space with less aliasing and Moire artifacts. It is still not perfect 720p but it comes very close. The iPhone 6 still provides a better slow motion capability with 240fps as an option also. Things are going to heat up with more releases soon in the mobile world, Apple 6s phone will probably debut sometime in September with improved specs and Android phones with better resolution and slow motion frame rates should be available by Christmas.
One Plus 2 Released and Moto X low Slowmo!
Today has been quite busy in portable device land with the release of the Moto X, Moto G and the One Plus 2 handsets. The hype and rumors regarding slow motion modes on these phones turned out to be way ahead of the norm and what we are left with is the same tired old specs of yesteryear when it comes to slow motion performance. 720p at 120fps seems to be the norm for an afterthought slow motion feature. Apple for example continues to up the ante with 240fps and possibly more in the upcoming iPhone 6s refresh. There is nothing wrong with these phones but if you want slow motion performance in your portable handset, the latest Moto and One Plus 2 are not what you would consider optimal. They however offer pretty good feature sets and great cameras for normal video applications and still capture.
One Plus 2 Camera specs:
- 5.5 inch : 1080p Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels), 401 PPI Screen
- Sensor: 13 Megapixel (1.3um)
- Lenses: 6 lenses to avoid distortion and color aberration
- OIS: Yes
- Laser Focus: Yes
- Flash: Dual-LED
- Aperture: f/2.0
- Front Camera: 5 Megapixel – Distortion free
- Video: 4K resolution video, Slow Motion: 720p at 120fps
The One Plus 2 is a phone flagship design for less money than you would normally pay for such a device. it has a modified Android OS “Cyanogenmod” that is fast, free of bloatware and very good with battery life. It has optical image stabilization, large pixels for a 13 megapixel sensor, fingerprint sensor and a great alert switch so you can deactivate alerts in a custom way when you are sleeping, in a movie theater or simply want to disconnect for a while. It is a lot of phone for the price. Even the One Plus 1 is still used in benchmarks today as a competitive phone in the mid range.
fps1000 July 2015 Update!
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!
The awaited update on the status of the fps1000 cameras has been posted on the Kickstarter page and once again it is twisting things up a bit by adding things, improving others and fixing some issues. The most important part of the update relates to what most backers are interested in which is the ship date and this update also starts to set a near time frame for building the first cameras and shipping them as soon as August 2015. While this date can move as it has in the past it seems that the hurdles for getting the improved from original design camera to buyers hands have been surmounted. It will be interesting to see how these cameras perform once in the field and what the software is like.