What I been working on...

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J.D.
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What I been working on...

Post by J.D. »

High speed video.

Probably not everyone's cup of tea but here goes. It starts with my dad who has 60 years in athletics (track & field to seppos) coaching virtually all events except distance running. I was also an athlete and a coach, most particularly the high jump. The greatest difficulty in coaching these events is that they are over in the blink of an eye and detecting problems is not easy. A minor technique fault may mean the difference between a club athlete and a state champion and it usually takes years to develop a "coaching eye".

Photography was always a part of what we did. It goes back to the late 1950s when dad first came into contact with a bloke who used a Robot camera, capable of 8-10 frames per second. I joined in the fray when I could eventually afford it, owning an OM-1 and OM-3, both with motor drives. The limitation with my system was that it was only capable of 5 fps and of course, burnt through an awful lot of film very quickly. We also used 8mm movie film at slow motion speeds.

Video was more positive in that we could review it virtually immediately but display was a problem. Getting it into a computer wasn't the most practical aspect and I invented new swear words for it.

A few years ago a man called Wes Webb developed a software system for analysing golf swings. It is marketed today as the quaintly-named SwingerPro and is used by a huge number of Australian and international customers. At around $600 per license it's not cheap but it's probably the best product out there for the job. The preferred format for Swinger is DV and while we have used this, recent developments have led us to far more potent solutions.

http://www.webbsoft.biz/prod_swingerpro.php

Enter the Casio EXILIM EH-FH20. Two years ago, Casio introduced a camera called the EXILIM Pro EX- F-1. This camera could shoot 300, 600 and 1200 fps and dump it to an SD card. The format is .mov and it retails for around US $1000. This camera has been used by the VIS and Tennis Australia in conjunction with Swinger and while it's been reasonably successful, the file format works better when converted to .avi form. In November 2008, Casio released the EX-FH20, a similar sized camera but at a much more modest cost. The performance specs are quite similar but equally quite different. It shoots at 210, 420 and 1000fps. The file is rendered as an .avi and the header says it should replay to 29.97 fps. Since the chip can record 720p HD movies at up to 30fps, the output of this thing is pretty high. Reduce the resolution of the file down to 360x480 and you can up the frame rate to the speeds we wanted, like 210 fps. At 420 the picture starts to get a bit small for practical purposes - 224 x 168 and at 1000 the picture is not usable at all. At this point it's a narrow slit only 56 pixels high.

I sent a sample file to Wes Webb for his own trial purposes and the new format not only works better than the old one - no surprises there - but every frame is keyframed, meaning that he can pull selected frames out if he wants to and still have a coherent file.

This camera + SwingerPro seems to be just about the dog's ballocks in coaching tools. Even at 210 fps, you miss virtually nothing. While the image quality is nothing to write home to mum about, it's certainly compensated for by the fantastic frame rate. At 210fps it still requires an awful lot of light to work well but as the attached frame shows (captured through SwingerPro 2), it has sufficient resolution to pick up whole body movements very clearly and with the speed it captures at, subtle errors can be picked up very quickly.

The camera is nothing special as a still photography tool in pure image quality terms and there are many suitable alternatives out there which represent better value for money. It also has the ability to capture 40 9MP images per second and no other camera, except the EXILIM EX-F1, can compete with that. If you were after a superzoom, you'd look at a Panasonic, FujiFilm or Canon instead. But if it's high speed stuff you're after, this takes the whole thing to a new level.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/FH20/FH20A.HTM

We picked it up for a little over US $300 a few weeks ago and the whole package came to AU $420 or there abouts, including freight.
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Re: What I been working on...

Post by DexterPunk »

J.D. wrote:The camera is nothing special as a still photography tool in pure image quality terms and there are many suitable alternatives out there which represent better value for money. It also has the ability to capture 40 9MP images per second and no other camera, except the EXILIM EX-F1, can compete with that. If you were after a superzoom, you'd look at a Panasonic, FujiFilm or Canon instead. But if it's high speed stuff you're after, this takes the whole thing to a new level.
unless you want 20,000 fps in 1080p res :D. Or several hundred thousand frames per sec. The you may need a Phantom by vision research. But agreed not a bad buy JD considering the price! Does it still give you changeable lenses? And manual ajdustments for gate time (assume it's a gated shutter and not mechanical)... And aperture? Is it colour?? I really wish I could afford a phantom after playing around with one heaps.. It's almost cruel.


I love high speed vid! I will prob be doing my honors research In high speed video next year. I have heaps of highspeed vid stuff to chuck up on the net that I havnt posted here. I will at some stage.
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Re: What I been working on...

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Yeah, I know about the Phantom but it costs about US $100,000. Mind you, for that you get up to 1,400,000 frames per second. That's a wee bit more than we need!

You've played around with one of those, haven't you?
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Re: What I been working on...

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J.D. wrote:Yeah, I know about the Phantom but it costs about US $100,000. Mind you, for that you get up to 1,400,000 frames per second. That's a wee bit more than we need!

You've played around with one of those, haven't you?

Usually not quite that fast... and usually more $$ than that... we had a Phantom v7.1 and a Phantom V4.1 at uni.. the 4.1 could get around 2000 fps @ 800x600.. and it starts to reduce down after that.. and max out at about 30,000 fps with a tiny res, and you need a hell of a lot of light to get any decent gate times... That camera would be worth around $80,000 USD. And the v7.1 was about a $130,000 USD camera that was on loan to my lecturer from Vision Research for a paper he was doing on shockwaves... but he liked me so i used it a fair bit for fun stuff :) Like high speed video of an M4 assault rifle that ill post here eventually. That could do 800x600 to about 5000-6000 fps, and up to around 100,000 fps, you could get half decent res at about 40,000 fps as well. These are mainly scientific cameras though, so their party piece is the gate times (exposure times) that they can achieve, which is imperative for capturing the fast loud thing with minimal smear, so that measurements can be taken.

My mate is now doing a bit of work for Autolive, which does crash testing. They have lockers and lockers of phantom cameras, and the v7's are old news to them. They use v12's and no i idea what they are worth, or what they can achieve. Ill find out. Theres also a Phantom HD... creative ludicrous sized video files at 5000 fps etc @ 1080p res. :eyepop:

for 1 million fps, youd be looking at a Shimadzu.. and close to a quater of a million dollars iirc.



oh we also had an Olympus iSpeed2 which was about a $50,000 black and white high speed camera.. but it kinda sucked. Not because of the speed, but the pictures werent brilliant. Sadly most of our work out field or anything off campus for the most part was done on that camera.



oh i found some specs on the Phantom V12

Resolution/Speed Chart (fps)
1280 x 800 6,242
1280 x 720 6,933
512 x 512 20,978
256 x 256 66,997
128 x 128 183,250
128 x 64 330,469
128 x 8 1,000,000

One website i found reckons you can get one for $105,000... im a little sceptical though. Ill ask my mate at autolive to find out what they paid.


the insane bit for me though....

Minimum Exposure Time
1 µsec (standard)
300 nsec (optional)


and we think a flash freezes stuff! :D theres a bloke called Harold Kline (i think thats the spelling etc) at the Aust Defense forces who uses a broncolor flash as his movie light. I did that at uni as well.. at 40,000 fps, a flash will last long enough to capture shockwaves and explosions etc.



will you be able to post some vids from the camera JD?? id love to see what they are like.
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Re: What I been working on...

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I'll try uploading a vid to YouTube soon. Trouble is, we shoot most of our stuff in vertical format and I'm not sure YouTube will accept it that way.

The resolution and image quality is pretty well exactly as you see it in the still frame. That's at 210 frames per second. It's nothing brilliant but in terms of value for money, plus the fact that it occupies a totally unique corner of the consumer market, it can't be beaten on any count.
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Re: What I been working on...

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yeah for sure, im quite interested in buying one tbh... $300 USD is really quite a bargain.

and as i mentioned, all that serious gear is no longer available to me at uni.. at least its not until i go back to do my honors.
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Re: What I been working on...

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At 2000FPS I could do a porn movie!
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Re: What I been working on...

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I may or may not have done that :D
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Re: What I been working on...

Post by wobblysauce »

norbs, your still going to lack a plot to the movie
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Re: What I been working on...

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wobblysauce wrote:norbs, your still going to lack a plot to the movie
"You're."

Also, what porno has a plot?
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Re: What I been working on...

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norbs wrote:
wobblysauce wrote:norbs, your still going to lack a plot to the movie
"You're."

Also, what porno has a plot?

Pirates!!! The greatest Porno ever!
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Re: What I been working on...

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yep Dex, that was a nice movie
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Re: What I been working on...

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wobblysauce wrote:yep Dex, that was a nice movie
lol, a nice movie....
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Re: What I been working on...

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this thread took a serious nose dive didnt it...
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Re: What I been working on...

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Quick, lock the thread before someone tells schuey about it ;)

I'd so want a Phantom HD, researched them last year or the year before.
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Re: What I been working on...

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Gusto wrote:I'd so want a Phantom HD, researched them last year or the year before.
Thank fuck we're back on track.

I looked into it as well after talking with Dex. The ones I'd be interested in start at about US $10,000. No lens.
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Re: What I been working on...

Post by wobblysauce »

High Speed Videography of Mosquitoes

http://intellectualventureslab.com/?p=653

:devil: hehe .. I really liked the last video
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Re: What I been working on...

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fantastic!! now thats scientific photography :)

thanks for posting wobbly.

/me drools at Phantom v12
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Re: What I been working on...

Post by wobblysauce »

np dex, I love the camera but I want the lazer pointer
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Re: What I been working on...

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wobblysauce wrote:np dex, I love the camera but I want the lazer pointer

http://www.wickedlasers.com/ :yes:
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Re: What I been working on...

Post by wobblysauce »

what do you think they would of used on the mozzy, a green 500mw? humm it would be a use for a spare 3grand
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Re: What I been working on...

Post by wobblysauce »

Riseee.. :dead:




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Re: What I been working on...

Post by DexterPunk »

Wow, you revived a 5 year old thread?

Some cool vids though. On a related note, I was using a Phantom Flex 4k a few weeks back to video brains on a record player. True story.
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Re: What I been working on...

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DexterPunk wrote:On a related note, I was using a Phantom Flex 4k a few weeks back to video brains on a record player. True story.
This guy?
brains.jpg
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