- Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today in The Slanted Lens, we're back at the YouTube
space shooting with our high speed camera the Phantom. We are going to take a
look at the basics of slow motion video and then how to use the Phantom camera
which is anything but the basics of slow motion video.
♪ [music] ♪
We have the two, two, two, two, two giveaway.
Check it out at the end of the video.
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Let's look at the basics of slow motion video. It's easier to understand when we
relate it to frame rates. On a normal clip of video, we shoot 24 frames a second.
In 1 second we stream together 24 individual frames and create motion. Our
editing timeline is set for 24 frames to show each second. When we watch our
video, we see 24 frames for 1 second of time. That's called real time. The person
walking through the frame is walking at normal speed from point A to point B. When
we change the rate, at which we capture frames to 60 frames a second then we have
captured in 1-second 60 individual frames. Now when we put them on the 24
frames per second timeline it takes 2.4 seconds to show the 60 frames. The
distance they traveled in 1 second is the same but on our 24 frame, timeline 60
frames will play back at 2.4 seconds. It slows the person down so it takes 2.4
times longer to walk from point A to point B. They walk very slow. If we just slow
down a normal clip that's shot at 24 frames a second to 2.4 seconds, the
frames are going to be jittery and jumpy and it just looks really odd. There's not
enough frames to fill so it jumps from frame to frame. So we need to shoot more
frames to show slow motion. On the Mark III, you can only shoot 24 frames at
1080p you have to drop to 720p for 60 frames. On the Sony A7s, you can shoot 60
frames at 1080p and 120 frames at 720p. If you really want to see the detail that
comes when you smash a camera for instance not that there's any reason we would be
doing that but you're going to need to go 1000 or 1500 frames a second thus the
Phantom camera. It will shoot up to 1540 frames at 1080p and 8490 frames at 640p.
For our demonstration, we're going to shoot at 1000 and 1500 frames per second
at 1080p. Let's take a look at our camera settings. They're a bit tricky with the
Phantom and then how we lit our camera smash because we're shooting 1000 frames a
second we're going to need to shoot a 2000th of a second for our shutter speed.
That takes a whole lot of light. Remember twice the frame rate for our shutter
speed. On the Phantom, there are not different shutter speeds but just shutter
angles. At 180 degrees, we know that the shutter will give us the equivalent of
twice the frame rate. If we shoot at a 90 degree shutter, it's going to cause the
motion blur to be much less than what we're used to looking at. It's going to
feel a little choppy. So we
need to shoot at 180 degrees which will give us the equivalent of roughly twice
the shutter speed. Remember we're going to need twice the frame rate and that's what
we get at 180 degree shutter. Our aperture is going to be 4.0. Let's take a
look at our lighting. Remember we're going to need a lot of light because we're
shooting at roughly a 2000th of a second and in some cases 3000th of a
second. The first image shows the light that's here in the room. There's not much
here at all. We added a 2k from camera right to give us some backlight and a
rim on our product. We then added a 2k from camera left to rim the other side of
our product and to give us more backlight. Then from camera left we added a 1k aimed
straight at the product. We then added a layer of diffusion to smooth out the
highlight. Last of all, we added two photoflex light panels up front. They'll
bounce light back into the product and also block the 2ks from flaring into the
lens of the camera. The problem with this camera is it only gives you about 4
seconds of record time at 1000 frames a second. At 15,000 frames, it only gives
you two and a half seconds record time. This limitation would cause this camera to
be hard to use as a production camera to shoot a lot of things. There was a trigger
method I didn't really understand at first but now it makes better sense. The
camera's always running. It's always recording and you can use a trigger where
the trigger when the explosion happens, you hit trigger and it gives you two
seconds before and two seconds after the explosion or the moment, you hit the
trigger. That's actually a pretty good way to make sure you don't miss the explosion.
We did run the camera from the laptop. It's impossible to run on the camera. The
laptop's very intuitive. You can see the settings, you can set things from there,
you can make the changes. It's just much easier to run from there. The lag time
from camera to laptop however was hard like if you're trying to focus you got to
do that on screen on the side of the camera which made more sense. So now,
I think it's time for us to take a look at some smashing cameras.
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Keep those cameras rolling and keep on clicking.
[slow motion voice] Keep those cameras rolling and keep on clicking.
And here it is the two, two, two, two, giveaway. Two flex flash heads, 2
100 watt seconds, 2 light boxes, 2 stands and we're giving away 2 of them.
Go to the slantedlens.com.
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- [male voice] Action. - [Jay] Awww, dang it.