I was asked by a colleague for a video camera recommendation - something high speed, like 960fps - this will be used for learning/industrial type videos so picture "prettiness" is not a factor. I would say 1080p is a must, and 4K might be beneficial, but i think would just provide issues for them in post. I was actually going to suggest to him the new iphone as it does some decent high frame rates and wont cost a fortune. He did not give me a price point - but I would say under 3-4k USD would be in the ballpark.

thoughts?

Well, that's a pipe dream. For those frame rates and resolutions, you're not going to find anything in the $3-4K range. More like $50-80K.

The FDR-AX100 does 720x1280 at 120fps and costs $1,800ish. I think this camera is the best at this frame rate and price point.

If you don't need 1080x1920, then you can get those higher frame rates from the NEX-FS700, which is still going to be outside your budget, but maybe for about $12,000 with some external recorder. You may not like the resolution still, but take a look at this camera. After that, you move up to the Sony F55, then to the Phantom Flex, which, as I understand it, will require an expensive suite of computer stuff to process the footage.

Mark

960fps - I would say 1080p is a must, and 4K might be beneficial - I would say under 3-4k USD would be in the ballpark.

I would say, keep dreaming :) Such a camera doesn't exist for that price. A option would be the JVC GC-PX100 which can do 120fps, 240fps and 300fps at 640 x 360 resolution, as well as 420fps and 600fps at 320 x 176 resolution

You might be able to rent a Phantom 4k with a camera op for 4-5k for a day. It makes a beautiful picture.

I have the JVC GC-PX100 (sigh). I got it specifically for the high-speed feature because it allows you to zoom while recording and also adjust exposure. Other cameras I've tried lock the exposure and zoom setting once you start recording. Two major issues I have is that (1) the resolution claims seem to be off, the image quality just doesn't compare to other cameras with the same stated specs. Not sure what's going on, but I was dismayed, found it unusable, and (2) the claimed frame rates get you half what other cameras are doing, in other words, if you set it for 120fps, you are getting the same slow-mo effect that other cameras give you at 60fps. So, since I like to shoot at 120fps, I had to go up to the next level (240) on the JVC. Weird. (long pause while I try to think of something good to say....) It's got a small form-factor, is light-weight, has HDMI output while recording.

If you want to buy mine, I paid $1,200 for it in Japan, I will sell it for $500. My version does not have the WiFi feature but does include the EVF. PM me. Okay, $400.

Don't buy this P.O.S. Thus endeth my public service announcement.

Mark

You may be able to get a FS700 pre-owned body only for $4,000 ... I know you can get them in the UK for £4000.

I second the general sentiments above. Without a massive budget increase, one or other of your criteria will have to be compromised.

Most obvious choice if it's for "learning/industrial type videos so picture "prettiness" is not a factor" is the FS700, but that will compromise picture resolution for HFR. But up to 240fps it's difficult to notice on real world material, even 480fps isn't too bad, though the compromises really are showing by 960fps.

But what other cameras even do 960fps at all, except ones costing many times more?

Don't buy this P.O.S.

So much for specs... :) Is the camera also not usable for analysing movement? Like a dance or sportcoach that wants to view certain events in slomo, is the image quality really that bad?

Noa, I hate to make such a report, but in my opinion, that camera made me feel like JVC really got one over on me. Reviews said 4.5 stars. In the showroom, I played around with the camera twice before deciding to buy it, and then bought the Panasonic DMC-FZ200 later the same day! I was in a crunch to get better slow-mo and it was a bit of an impulse buy. I know they promote it as a camera to review sporting activities, such as a coach using it at a practice, etc. But the screen is very small, so I'm not sure how well that would work in reality, as far as reviewing a players actions. I'm used to using the Casio line of high-speeds, getting 120fps at SD resolution (640x480). I can live with that, but wanted to be able to zoom while recording and not have the exposure get locked-in. The JVC image quality is not (in my opinion) what I would have expected, it is somewhat less, or looks like half what they say. Like it was 320x240 and then up-rezed or something. I don't know. I tried to get the best out of it and finally gave up after getting the BMD Hyperdeck Shuttle 2 and still not liking the image quality. I can tell you this, I got much more use out of the FZ200, in fact, I'm on travel now and have the FZ200, Sony FDR-AX100, GoPro 3 Black, Canon 7D and Canon XF305. These are decent cams. Actually the AX100 is understated by Sony as they market it as a "consumer" camera. Best value I've had in cameras.

Mark

These Digital High Speed Video Camera | Phantom Miro M/R/LC320S (http://www.visionresearch.com/Products/High-Speed-Cameras/Phantom-Miro-M320S/) are excellent, and nowhere near the price of Flex 4k etc. - but still not cheap!

Steve

You might also want to factor in the value of your time. As your frame rate and resolution increase the data requirement increases proportionally. The really high speed cameras that have decent resolution usually write their data to volatile memory pending download to more permanent storage. Take the throughput and storage requirements into account since it affects your productivity. A Phantom 4k with a couple of cine mags would let you shoot nearly all day so you could be fairly productive.

Also take into account your lighting requirements. As you get above 100 fps you can forego the 180 degree shutter and use a shutter speed equivalent to your frame rate but that can still mean a lot of light when you get up to your 1000 fps target.

How did you arrive at that target frame rate? Does the manufacturing process makes sense, time-wise, for that frame rate? If you are also troubleshooting a manufacturing step then much higher frame rates might be needed to isolate a particular issue.

Photron is another vendor. Their cameras seem to be in greater use in the manufacturing and defense sectors and they have some extremely high speed cameras. None of these would be in your budget range for purchase, but rental should be an option.

Thanks for all the input. I normally don't shoot anything faster than 50/60fps - haven't needed to - though I suppose if I had use of a camera that shot 960fps I could come up with something to use it for pretty fast.

My colleague said he was looking for a high speed camera, and I listed off a few that do 120fps well (though usually with a res reduction) and he then said he would like 960fps - and i told him that as far as I knew there would be nothing in his price range that could do that, but would look into it. which is why I thought I would ask here; as I certainly don't know about most of what is currently available (such as the phantom camera mentioned above).

I am pretty sure that they can not buy used equipment - as it is for an educational institution and they actually have rules against that sort of thing (must get a certain number of quotes from local authorized vendors before purchases over a certain amount can be made - etc).

But i do like the rental idea, especially if they do not need high speed on an ongoing basis: it might be wise for them to get a decent dslr (or mirrorless) which they could also use for stills, and with something like the a7s that can do high(ish) frame rates (120fps) and it also has low light capabilities that would be beneficial with the high frame rates and probably almost all indoor shooting under questionable lighting, and then just rent a high end camera for a day or two that can do the 960fps (or higher) if they really need it.

That Phantom Miro looks nice. The FOR.A Company has one that shoots 4K at 860 fps, the FT-ONE. Costs $95,000 without lens. They also have the VFC-7000, which does up to 700 fps at 720p, for $19,100. At 700fps, the internal memory gives you 9 seconds of recording time.


For.A FT-ONE Full 4K Variable Frame Rate Camera FT-ONE B&H Photo

For.A VFC-7000 HD Variable Frame Rate Camera VFC-7000 B&H Photo

so my colleague that was asking about the camera went and found a camera on his own. up to 18000fps and a price tag of only $5,500.

edgertronic (http://edgertronic.com/)

one of my favorite things about the camera is the ability to trigger the camera after an event to record it - (thanks to the buffer)

18000? I just looked at their demo and while the slowmotion looked great I would expect that 18000 frames per second would allow much slower motion, it more looked like 1000fps slowed down.

I couldn't get the video to play, ultra-slow connection here (feels like I crawled through 7 miles of broken glass just to get my DVinfo fix :-)

From their web-site, it shows that the high frame rate of 17,791fps is at 192 x 96. At 700fps, they are doing a more respectable 1024 x 720.

That cam could work for what they're using it for, with the required tethering to a computer, ability to control lighting. For run & gun I wonder if you just connected the cam to a small laptop in a backpack, whether that would be practical.

Mark

one of my favorite things about the camera is the ability to trigger the camera after an event to record it - (thanks to the buffer)

Almost all high speed cameras do this.

Steve

so my colleague that was asking about the camera went and found a camera on his own. up to 18000fps and a price tag of only $5,500.

edgertronic (http://edgertronic.com/)
Call me suspicious, but their link says
Up to 18,000 frames per second.

720p @ 700 frames per second
Which just leaves me a bit suspicious that whilst it may do 18,000fps - it's going to be at a lot less than 720 resolution........

{EDIT - Sorry Mark - posted before looking at page 2 of thread - you're obviously ahead of me!}

Yeah that's the usual tradeoff with these types of cameras. Only so much data can be written per time slice, so resolution is traded for frame rate. The trigger is another feature you would expect to find.

I recalled that Egertronic name, from back when they were raising money on the kickstarter program. Good to see they are now making them. I like the idea of more competition in this area.

Not many details to be found on the Egertronic, they say it will have a codec that is widely compatilble(?). Okay, which one? My little Casio high-speeds store the clips as .avi files, and these are rolled into a progressive 29.97 frame rate. So when you play the clip back, it's already playing back in slow-mo, without doing any stretching on the NLE timeline (Sony Vegas at least). Now, the FDR-AX100 is totally different in that regard. It saves the clips at the actual frame rate of 120, so when you play them back, they play in real time with no slo-mo effect. I have to drop on the Vegas timeline and do the stretch thing to make it playback in slo-mo. For my purposes, I think I rather like this method of doing it. I have the 120 progressive frames to play with. With the camera's HDMI output, it would sure be nice to get uncompressed, 120fps off the Sony, but I think it's a compressed output and don't know how to determine anything else about that signal since Sony won't say.

Mark

Edgertronic, most of their videos are 500 or 700 fps which is what the camera does in the 720p range.

They have a video at close to 5000fps and you can see how small the frame is.
videos ? edgertronic (http://edgertronic.com/videos/)

Personally I think 500-700fps at 720 for about $5500 USD is a good price.

There's also the fps1000 which is 550fps at 720p and 200fps at 1080p. The price tops out at a suspiciously low $1600 USD equivalent. There videos seem very low resolution.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1623255426/fps1000-the-low-cost-high-frame-rate-camera