- All right, so this week,
we're testing out the Freefly Ember
which is an $18,000 super slow-mo camera,
or a high speed, whatever you want to call it.
It's called high speed,
because it records a lot of frames every second,
and then you can stretch that out
over a long period of time.
But now let's go ahead and bump it up
to 120 frames per second, which is actually fairly common,
like the A7S3 can do that.
And we have Sam here to show us your special talent.
Go for it.
(lips blowing)
(chuckles) All right, cool.
So you guys wanna see the playback on that?
So this is recording five times more frames every second,
so when we play it back we could take a one second clip,
and stretch it out to five seconds.
So this is the iPhone 14 Promax.
And this could actually do 240 frames per second in full HD.
So that is 10 times more frames every second,
so basically 10% speed.
Dude, that's
actually pretty good. (Sam laughs)
But here, even at full resolution, we can go past that.
Actually, if I scroll up to the top here,
I could just see what the max is.
For this resolution, 436 frames per second.
That's because we're at max resolution,
but we can go ahead and drop that down.
Oh yeah, I like that. (Sam chuckles)
- [Sam] (laughs) Just-
(both laughing)
- All right, so this is 616 frames per second.
And if I divide that by 24 frames per second,
so every second of recording gets pulled out
into about 25 seconds.
But let's see here.
It looks like we can get 1,011 frames per second.
- [Carrie] Can your lips handle it, Sam?
- I'm getting ready, hold on.
- [Potato Jet] (laughs) And we're rolling.
(lips blowing)
(indistinct)
(Sam laughs)
- [Carrie] What happened?
- Too much pressure.
(cheerful music) (Carrie & Potato laughs)
- That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
You know what's funny,
we could definitely like find the right frame
and just freeze it. (Sam laughs)
One of the things I love about this Ember
is how easy this thing is to use.
I mean, it's literally on/off, record,
and this is like your select and jog wheel.
So between these four switches and buttons,
you can pretty much navigate the whole menu.
All right, we're gonna go ahead and switch
to a wider lens here.
This is a super 35 mil sensor.
(confident club music)
Oh dude, I gotta try this.
All right, here.
(confident club music)
(Potato Jet cackling)
- You look like you work in the DMV.
(Sam and Potato Jet laughing)
- You go from like new born to old man really quickly.
Do you wanna film more stuff?
- Actually, do you want some dessert?
- I do, I'm hungry.
(cheerful, bright music)
- [Sam] There we go, (Carrie chuckles)
that was good.
That was beautiful.
- [Potato Jet] Now as fun as it was throwing pies
in each other's faces,
the real reason why we booked this camera was
for the latest Veritasium video on fireworks.
If you haven't seen it yet, definitely go check it out
'cause it features your favorite potato,
as well as a bunch of Ember footage.
Now in the past we have made videos about the Kronos camera
which can surpass this in frame rates and costs way less,
but it is far from being cinematic,
more for scientific purposes.
Then Freefly released the Wave,
which I actually thought about getting for a little bit
because you can achieve some great shots
if you have even lighting,
but it did lack dynamic range.
On the other hand, I asked Arri,
"Why don't you make an Arri Alexa
that shoots super slow motion
because you already have that great dynamic range."
And they said it's because if they were
to design the camera to do 1000 frames per second,
it would sacrifice on other aspects of the image quality.
So Ember's an interesting middle ground where
you get super slow-mo but still maintain 11 plus stops
of dynamic range.
A great way to test dynamic range is giant balls of fire.
And honestly, I was pleasantly surprised
with the image quality coming out of this camera.
I mean even my Sony A7 IV can get more dynamic range
out of this, but for something that's high speed like this,
there's this pretty dang good.
Now there is the Phantom cameras,
which can give you 13 to 14 stops at dynamic range,
but that makes the $18,000 price tag
on the Ember look super cheap.
So I think the Ember ended up being the perfect camera
for this shoot, and it was just so much fun
to huddle around the camera after every take,
and just see the playback.
- Whoa!
- Gosh, that was nuts.
- Just when I thought you had the money shot before.
(group laughs)
- You keep getting money shots.
This camera is like the money shot deliverer.
- [Potato Jet] It's also really nice that there's
no buffer limits of this camera.
So you can just hit record,
and it'll keep recording until you cut it
or burn through four terabytes of data.
That four terabytes is internal,
so to access those, you just plug in a USB-C cable,
it pops up as a drive,
and you just copy-paste the ProRes 422LT files.
So to prevent myself from going bankrupt from buying SSDs,
I found it pretty easy and quick to just trim inside
of quick times, and just save a new version that's trimmed.
It would be kind of nice to be able to do something
like this in camera,
but just doing this after downloading was not that big
of a deal either.
All right, we gotta get a few underwater slow-mo shots.
Now it would be cool to take that underwater,
but we don't have a housing for it,
so we're gonna just take the A7 S in with 4K 120.
Once you start recording at like 800 frames per second,
filming in 120 just doesn't feel the same.
But at least it's a good excuse
for me to pull out my scuba gear.
(lively music)
- What's up, we're on a little ride right now.
- Yeah.
Flying in this haze is pretty trippy huh?
- I like it a lot.
- [Potato Jet] Yeah? - [Friend] I think it's
pretty awesome.
Like it brings a whole different perspective
on how the commercial's gonna be like, you know?
- [Potato Jet] Ooh whoa, whoa
There is ducks out there.
- Just chilling out there?
- [Potato Jet] Yeah, they flew right in front of the drone.
- Now we gonna use a Ember today.
You got some slow-mode bike (indistinct).
- [Potato Jet] Hey, look at this CAT.
Oh dang, that thing is huge.
- I have the same thing,
but it's a little bit smaller than that.
- [Potato Jet] (chuckles) A little bit smaller?
- Yeah, and the wheel- - [Potato Jet] Like this big?
- Yeah, a little smaller.
- It's tiny.
- [Potato Jet] Right, I was shocked
at how small it is. - It's very lightweight.
It's actually smaller than the Komodo.
It's got the same kind of like venting
like the Komodo as well.
Like it has on the side here.
It's like the box form factor,
so I mean that's kind of what we look
for when we're flying FPV.
- It's got four terabytes internally-
- This does?
- Yeah.
- Wow.
It's a little e-mount,
so no electrical connections on the lens.
- Right, super 35 sensor,
and I have a speed booster for it.
- Okay. - So you could use
a full frame EF.
I got this right here, the Ninja.
We'll just use editing magic.
So- - We'll just snap to that.
- [Potato Jet] Yeah.
- (blows) Whoa!
- [Potato Jet] That was fast.
Oh hey, lunch is here too.
- You did not- - [Potato Jet] What?
- Unbox the camera (Potato laughs)
without me.
- [Potato Jet] Hey you guys were taking forever.
You guys were eating
lunch without us. - You know what?
I brought you guys food, you know?
- [Potato Jet] So you have a Wave?
- I have the Wave.
Took a lot to make it look good.
It was tough.
So and I- - [Potato Jet] The highlights?
- Yeah, the highlights.
It was tough, right?
Even shooting outdoors in like bright sun
was like kind of the toughest stuff.
In a controlled like lighting situation,
where you're shooting you know product stuff,
and you have it lit, it's amazing.
But yeah, this thing I have heard has come a long way.
Yeah, and then what goes on here?
A little grip side.
- [Potato Jet] I'm actually not sure,
but it looks like it's got connections for something.
- I think that's where you
have a hand grip - Side grip with like a
start/stop.
- [Potato Jet] Actually, it looks like this mount
can be swapped out almost.
- You can take off these four screws,
and just put different mounting stuff on it.
- [Potato Jet] What frame rates can the Wave go up to?
- Usable is 420,
4k. - 420.
- This is 800 frames right here that you're at.
Dude.
- [Friend] It looks like the same user interface,
like the Wave.
- Kind of looks the same,
how you scroll through this. - [Friend] Yeah, right?
- It's way more just like responsive though.
- And the ergonomics of the way how the Wave
was designed versus this now just works better.
- It's crazy how simple the menu is.
Keep going to the right.
And that's essentially the entire menu.
There is no like deep menu that you have to go into.
Which I thought it's kind
of interesting. - That's nice.
- It's so easy to learn.
- [Friend 2] What is this, this HGL?
- [Potato Jet] HGL Beta's not quite log,
but you know, not Rec 709.
This is tiny compared to what you've been carrying
around all day, huh?
- Oh yeah.
This is my runaround rig right here.
- [Potato Jet] Oh nice.
You got the ready rig.
- I got the tilted nucleus hand grips,
and I've got the full control right here.
- [Potato Jet] Oh dang.
Oh that's sweet.
Oh yeah.
- This is like my runaround dock beast.
- [Potato Jet] Oh look at that, it's the 360 X 3.
Oh you got the X three, that's the good one.
- That shoots my BTS.
Get on a one wheel with this bad boy-
- So we can empower this off of 6s batteries.
- [Potato Jet] A 6s battery, wow.
- The voltage input is 12 to 30.
- [Potato Jet] Got the rest of the crew coming in.
All right, time to rock and roll.
- Yeah, this is plenty wide enough.
- [Potato Jet] This thing is terrifying for FPV right there.
Feeling pretty confident about this?
- Man, I've flown in like the jungle.
Think about flying in vines.
- [Potato Jet] Dude that must be so hard to see in.
- Yeah, yo dude, your first pass is chill.
You know, you kind of see your line.
And then the second pass, you'll just send it.
- Well I'm glad I'm not flying this one.
This is, I, I'd totally get knocked down
by one of these like little
ghost branches. - Whoa, whoa, first of all,
you're here to fly this.
- I'm the battery charger today.
♪ Take me to a place, goin' up ♪
♪ Got me on a way, goin' up ♪
♪ Oh la la la, I guess I caught a fire ♪
♪ Oh la la la, oh my oh my, goin' up ♪
You don't even need FPV, you just do this.
(Potato whooshing)
There we go, basically FPV
right here. - [Friend] There you go.
- [Potato Jet] Your job is basically useless now.
- Dude, your hand movement is very bad.
(Potato laughs)
Show me a power loop.
Oh, that's a really tight one.
- These are for you.
And Sam, this is for you.
- Wait, what?
Did it only come with one bullet?
(Sam yells) (Potato cackling)
(person shouts)
- (laughs) Oh dang it, small but fierce.
- That's what she said.
- Changing the resolution horizontally
actually doesn't seem to change the amount
of frame rates you, we can get.
It actually is all about the vertical resolutions.
Whoa!
(chuckles) With a pinky out?
- Time to get your potato mashed.
(fire whooshes)
(group shouts)
- Let me do one more where I just like really underexpose.
It's gonna be dark,
but hopefully the fire will just be in there.
'Cause that's one thing I noticed with these
is you really have to like protect the highlights,
or else, it easily clips.
I wanted to make a shockwave like right here.
(gun pops) (Potato grunts)
- [Group] Oh!
Can you guys shoot me in the cheek?
- Wait, which cheek?
(fire whooshes) (gun pops)
You didn't even flinch, Gene.
- [Potato Jet] Oh! - [Sam] Oh that's like matrix
shit, dude.
- I think we have enough footage to just make a trailer now.
You know, this-
- "The Spud-inator".
(Potato laughs)
(dramatic, epic music)
He knew too much.
This summer, this potato will get baked.
(Sam grunting)
- [Potato Jet] This one right here.
(Potato and Sam laughing)
(dramatic, epic music)
(indistinct)
(Friend grunting) (person laughing)
Even at T1.5, we're starting to fight some
of the exposure here,
but I think one of the things we can do is always open up
to like a 345 degree shutter.
- So when I'm shooting liquids, I'm,
I always run like 220 or even 320,
because I want the liquid to join itself and be more fluid.
So like all those fluid pours I've done,
those are all at 320 degree shutters.
- All right, so you're gonna not hit the camera. (chuckles)
(energetic lively music) (Potato whoops)
(laughs) Oh my god. (laughs)
So this is the Phantom camera?
- Yeah, the OG.
- [Potato Jet] The OG
Phantom camera? - The Phantom HD Gold.
- But the nice 4K one is, what, you like,
200 something thousand
dollars? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Forever, this has been the industry standard
for getting like the crazy slow-mo in cinema.
In film, we'd have this big Mitchell camera,
thousand foot mag right?
And you'd go, "Okay, rolling."
(whines) We'd get up to speed,
and the thing would whine and sound like it's gonna blow up,
and you get three seconds of roll time,
and then you'd just hear film flapping
inside of it, and you're done.
This is 1500 frames in 2K, but only like six seconds
And then you have
to stop- - Oh so these are bursts also?
- Yeah, you have to stop,
and then dump to the memory card.
- [Potato Jet] That's the memory card?
- This is a mag.
Look at all the pins.
So now it's buffering.
So we're like, "Oh cool, big thing, boom."
And then I hit the button, the mag reader,
look it's got the same plugs on it.
And we give a laptop out when you rent it,
'cause it has your custom software on it.
And then it comes with like all these freaking cables.
- I've been around Phantom cameras,
but they're always like pretty complicated.
You need to come with like a lab suit, and a laptop.
And like- - Yeah, I mean
this comes in three big cases. (chuckles)
Lab coat included in the rental kit.
And then the footage looks amazing.
The Wave that we have I think is a less dynamic range,
and you can't black shade in camera,
so you've gotta do all that in post.
So there's the Wave.
- This is shaped more like a black magic pocket.
It looks like it's all designed just for cooling.
- The problem with the Wave is you had
to transcode all their files only through their app.
So this is now just straight ProRes.
- [Potato Jet] Yeah, they really seem to have designed this
for like drone stuff almost.
- Yeah, I mean well look,
there's a Molex connector for power.
That's not cinema. (indistinct)
Not cinema!
- You want a Lemo?
- Yes!
- This only draws, like,
I think they said 40 watts or something.
- Okay. - So you know 100 watt
hour battery, you're good for a few hours.
So it's definitely a lot simpler than that. (chuckles)
Definitely need quite a bit of light,
and also the light needs to definitely be anti flicker.
We did one shot with a aperture at 300D.
- Yeah, the apertures are flicker free.
Obviously any of the old HMIs with electronic ballast
can go into flicker free high speed mode.
I mean honestly when I'm shooting high speed it's M18s.
- But then you go and just film
like a regular light in the house.
One shot of Derek jumping into the pool,
and you just like on, off, on, off.
And it's so distracting,
but it's funny how you just can't really see it
with your eye.
- Not at all.
I've shot a lot of product in high speed.
You know, Apple laptops and things.
We're not shooting wide open
because we need to have the product completely in focus
or mostly in focus.
I always find myself at like T8, at 1000 frames a second.
So you just have to flood everything with light,
so that's why HMIs a lot of time.
You know, make sure to allocate for your lighting budget.
- [Potato Jet] Yeah, yeah.
- We can rent you those too,
and any of the bigger tungsten lights
will work in this. - [Potato Jet] Yeah,
1000 and over.
- [Sam] There's like almost no video assist tools,
so definitely want a monitor that has
like your Wave form and peeking.
- So the Wave, you would see a lot of noise,
even like in your mid to low shadows,
and I don't see as much there.
- Oh! (person groaning)
Some shots look really cool in slow motion, and some shots,
it just looks like it's just going really slow.
I feel like this train's- - I think it's just gonna
look really slow.
- Unless you have like debris or smoke or something,
I feel like it's gonna look really-
- Jump on the tracks!
(Potato laughs)
No it's fine, when it hits you and you go flying,
I'll totally get it.
- It would actually be a a better shot,
if like my guts are just being
ripped apart in (person play-shouts)
1000 frames per second.
We should totally from a fart
in 1000 frames per second. - Oh dude, no.
This is a really slow train.
You know what you can do is
just time this to house music.
So it's like (vocalizing beats).
(Potato laughs)
(energetic house music)
- What I like about super slow-mo though
is that you don't have to be very stable with your shot.
Like you could have the shakiest camera movement-
- [Person] Dude, it's so good.
- [Potato Jet] and it just looks like
you're a steady cam operator.
- Oh yeah. - [Potato] Another thing
I noticed is when you're filming high speed,
like usually you have your lens wide open
so you have a very shallow depth of field
and when you're trying to get a close up of something,
like keeping that focus in is really tough.
But the beauty of slow motion is that
you only need that subject to be in focus
for like a split second.
- [Person] Split second,
yeah. - [Potato] And then you just
slow-mo that split second,
and it looks like you're an excellent focus puller.
(Potato chuckles) - You're like,
"I nailed this."
This will be a really interesting low light test
'cause it's like 8:17, 8:15 PM right now.
- [Potato Jet] I'd be curious on how much grain we get
if I try to boost this up a little bit there.
- [Person] Way, way better than the Wave.
Like, miles better than the Wave.
- I mean considering that it's made by Freefly,
and the size and weight of this thing,
it really seems like they had FPV drones in mind.
Let's try out this lens too.
It's a 7.5 mil, F2.8 fisheye lens.
This thing was like super cheap on Amazon.
(bright, relaxed music)
Right, so just to get an idea
of how slow 1000 frames per second is,
I'm gonna play you a two second clip, and here we go.
All right cool, so now I'm just gonna take that same clip,
that two seconds, and replay it back in slow motion.
And while we wait for this to finish,
I'm just gonna read some comments.
Linkshandler says, "Weekly uploads would be awesome."
So yeah, I actually am working on trying
to figure out the workflow so that I can put out
weekly videos consistently without losing my mind. (laughs)
Alexander says, "This looks incredible.
Also sorry, is Gene getting more and more swole each video?"
Well thank you, I have been working out,
but realistically you were just noticing
that I shrank my shirt too much with the dryer. (laughs)
"Forget the camera, damn, it's just nice to see you guys."
Well thank you Mark cawabungwas, I'm happy to see you too.
"You're one of my favorite YouTubers.
Probably end up getting that dog leash."
Yeah, if you haven't seen,
there's this random dog leash that Carrie found on Amazon,
and it is the best because it is hands free,
and it's just, if you're a dog owner, you gotta try it.
If you're ever gonna buy anything
from one of my recommendations, it's this.
If you have a dog, link in description.
"Adult men giddy likes school children, love it."
(chuckles) Yeah, that is pretty much the foundation
of this channel pretty much.
"We need the a6700 review."
Yeah, it does seem like a pretty cool camera.
I've just been a little busy lately,
so I have not had a chance to check it out.
But first impressions, it seems like a pretty good budget
10 bit option, so I definitely want to check it out,
and see if it's something I could recommend.
"Glad to see Sam is doing well."
Yeah, it's been really nice having him be involved
in the videos again lately,
and protecting us from those evil ass bubbles.
And finally we reached the end of the two second clip
at 1000 frames per second.
(whoops) All right.
I really need to quickly cut the camera though.
Every time, I just let the camera sit for a few seconds,
it's just like tons of data.
Well that's enough risking $20,000 per flight.
Everything's self-contained,
so it's just as easy as flying pretty much any other camera.
Other than that,
you don't really have to do anything different.
But my overall thoughts,
I just love having like a miniature Phantom, it feels like.
I dunno, you can take it around town
or put on a drone and all that.
And just the fact that it's super simple and easy to use,
and honestly I'm like, it's a lot of fun.
I'm really sad that I have to send this back.
Like, I want to keep playing with it.
Anyways, we're gonna go ahead and wrap this up
with some shots of the dogs drinking water,
because Carrie says apparently they don't actually scoop
like a spoon for water,
they use the bottom of their tongues or something.
- Yeah, it goes under.
- Oh yeah.
- Like this, not like this.
- [Potato Jet] We need to see it to believe it.
(contemplative, cool music)