Very little attention is placed on high speed thermal imaging because frankly it’s a field so new that only a handful of cameras can even approach that performance. The FLIR X6900sc is breaking records by now recording 1000fps at 640 x 512 resolution which is pretty high by thermal pixel standards and a memory buffer recorded on-camera RAM for 26 seconds.
Resolution is one of the most important aspects of any camera image. In slow motion it could be the difference in showing important details or just obscure an event all-together. In machinery failures during manufacturing; low resolution and high resolution can mean the difference in spotting a crack or bend in the process and that is hugely important.
For film makers and videographers resolution weights a lot when deciding upon a slow motion camera solution. Not to long ago slow motion cameras at or under 1 megapixel 1024*1024 for example was a novelty and a luxury. Nowadays 1280*720px or the lower end of HD resolution is easy to find and widely used. However 1080p and or 4k are the resolutions that seem to cause the most interest.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the Sony a6300 horrific rolling shutter performance. Most early adopters are crying foul at the skew and jello movement artifacts when hand holding, panning or using a long telephoto lens. There is however a big question that has been answered concerning 1080p; that is how bad is rolling shutter in the 1080p modes including 120fps? Sort answer is about 1/10th to 1/6th that of the 4k mode.
Mark Puckett of the Photo /Video Show set out to find out about the rolling shutter in the Sony a6300 first hand using panning motion while testing the different modes in the camera including 4k 24p, 30p nad 1080p 120fps and 60fps.
Apple today unveiled the iPhone SE; little kept secret due to huge leaks in the rumor sites. What was not confirmed was the camera specs which as it turns out are exactly the same as the bigger and more expensive iPhone 6s flagship brother.
The camera should yield the exact same performance as the iPhone 6s which means great news when it comes to slow motion aficionados. 120fps at full 1080p and 240fps at 720p made their way in the specs which gives some indication that Apple cut very little from the phone; with the biggest omission being 3D touch.
The Sony a6000 was a good middle of the line performer with pretty competitive performance. The new a6300 is a refined version with some pretty robust improvements in the video area.
For starters the 4k 30p, 24p, 25p video internal mode records in the robust XAVC-S video format at up to 100Mbps which is comparable to what the Panasonic GH4 and a7s II cameras record 4k into. It also has S-Log3 Gamma for a flat profile for creative grading and LUT application for editors and colorists. If you were looking for a Sony 4k alternative in an S35 crop sensor then this is the camera for you. Furthermore the 4k mode is using the entire S35 frame and correctly down-sampling the image for extremely crisp looking 4k video from a 6k original sensor source.
Regardless of what the GoPro and Ambarella marriage can provide in tandem hardware it is clear the company wants to branch out of the fledgling sales of GoPro which have tanked in recent quarters and the stock price from a high near a $100 USD is now trading at a mere $12 which is half the IPO price. By branching out it seems they want their chips in many more imaging devices and be less affected by the GoPro product cycle.
The announced H2 and H12 chips are able to provide beefy 4k specs at high frame rates for mobile devices at a mere 2 Watts of power. As to 1080p frame rates it will remain to be seen how this powerful new chip can handle that in a camera design and how it is implemented to squeeze that performance. 120fps at 4k from the H2 in theory should be able to yield 480fps at 1080p just counting the Pixel processing. This however can be limited by the rest of the components like imaging sensor.