The Rio Olympics has been called many things so far but if you have been watching it closely it is probably the world event with the most slow motion cameras ever used. By some estimates there are about 1500 high frame rate capable cameras at the games anywhere from 120fps to 2,500fps. The quality is also astounding as full HD and even some 4k 120fps and Phantom 4k footage at 1,000fps has been shot.
We are just a couple of months away from Photokina 2016 which takes place from Sept 20-25th in Cologne Germany. There are quite a few refresh expectations when it comes to cameras but there are also rumors of new announcements. As to what is solid and or dependable remains a mystery but rest assured there will be some good hardware presented.
For starters the updates to popular higher end camera lines in the Nikon, Canon, Sony and Panasonic lines should be announced with most of them sporting higher frame rates as specs. Continuous Phase Auto focus will continue to be a trend this year as more sensors support it.
The Drone market has started to heat up when it comes to professional features in the mid range pricing space. The Phantom 4 by DJI showed us that collision avoidance and obstacle awareness as a built in feature can stay within the realm of fairly priced drones.
Now the Typhoon H Drone by Yuneec an established electric aviation company with it’s 4k camera capable of slow motion 120fps at 1080p which is competitive with DJI’s is trying to compete head to head with some great technologies that the Phantom does not offer like a 6 rotor design that gives redundancy if one of the propellers should fail mid flight.
If you thought you couldn’t get sicker about water balloons bouncing and stretching in slow motion think again! This time 1500 small water balloons are bounced on a trampoline with kids jumping to create some mesmerizing footage with the help of a Phantom Camera rental from aimed reasearch.
Mark Rober the creator of the video is a former NASA Engineer who worked on the curiosity rover and overall experimental scientist that does a lot of cool things in his life and shares them on his Twitter feed here! This time his nephews and himself enjoy bouncing with diverse water balloons while filming in super slow motion for an enjoyable effect.
Something that came out of NAB 2016 is the paper launch of the CRAFT Camera a modular low cost professional camera that can record in Pro Res and Cinema DNG RAW with more formats to be announced.
It is unclear at this point if frame rates will ever be higher than 120fps but since the 4k spec also includes them; it remains a solid option for 4k slow motion at 120fps or 5x slow motion at 24p playback. For a 4k camera the pricing of $2,984 for a full 4k Cinema package is not to shabby!
Aalborg University’s Drone Research Lab based in Denmark has tested a catapult contraption with a Drone rotor and propeller against pig flesh. The results seem to be as you would expect even before you attempt the experiment. A given hypothesis is that a high speed propeller can cause some damage to skin or flesh as any sharp object would.
It is interesting as an experiment but there seems to be a lot of negative press about this from several news and tabloid sources. Drones get a bad rap and continue to be a favorite of regulation advocates for privacy and security. There will be more experiments made with larger and diverse drones as time progresses.