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HD Slow Mo with Phantom

Jul 8, 2008 10:22 AM

              

Cinematographer Jim Matlosz reports that ongoing developments with the Vision Research camera are offering an attractive alternative to commercial and narrative TV clients looking for high-speed photography on a budget. Still, he warns, in order to maximize the image quality the camera has to offer, users need to be thoroughly prepared on the postproduction end to make the most of the raw image data that comes from the camera's sensor.

Previous iterations of the company's digital high-speed camera equipment have been embraced for some time. The Phantom HD High Speed was introduced in the fall of 2006. The Phantom HD High Speed—capable of 1920x1080 HD or 2048x1535 2K resolutions and featuring a PL lens mount—started to be routinely used by many artists for the types of sequences that previously would have been done only with a high-speed film camera.

Matlosz became a specialist in high-speed photography 10 years ago as a technician for Photo-Sonics high-speed film cameras, which he continues to recommend for many high-speed jobs he's offered. But when budgets don’t allow for film stock—Matlosz sees hourly rates in HD telecine bays as the most costly roadblock to shooting film for high-speed sequences these days—he is eager to work with the Phantom, which can yield a 14-bit, 1920x1080 image at any frame rate between two and 1000fps. (It should be noted that Vision Research, Photo-Sonics, and other companies currently make high-speed digital cameras that can record even faster, but at lower resolutions.)

Although he likely wouldn't use the camera for an all-sync sound job (timecode remains an issue in such situations), he did recently mix Phantom footage with 24p sync sound footage—slating it with the traditional Smart Slate used on film shoots—for certain shots in otherwise slow-motion spots featuring basketball star Kobe Bryant. By doing so, he points out, he eliminated the need to carry separate cameras for sync sound and high-speed photography. The spots for Bryant's new sneaker product, the Nike Zoome Kobe III, were produced by the athlete himself and the agency, Zambezi, are offered on the site www.kb24.com. You can see Matlosz favorite shot at www.kb24.com/media/video/144.

Matlosz also used the Phantom HD for some CBS bumpers and tags for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in which slow-motion shots of fingernails and bullet casings fall through the air. He's also done some bumpers and tags for the Food Network showing ultra-slow motion symbols of cooking—ice falling into a glass, water, smoke, fire, and such.

The Phantom HD uses a single-chip Bayer pattern CMOS sensor that sends its 14-bit image data in a proprietary raw format directly to an attachable flash memory CineMag drive that the company manufactures in 512GB and 256GB versions. In the 1920x1080 format, the 512GB CineMag can hold approximately 90 minutes worth of material at 24fps.

Part of the efficiency of the system comes from a minimal amount of data processing both within the guts of the camera and in the drive.

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