Vision Research is responsible for the Phantom line of high-speed video cameras. This time, they have ridiculously outdone themselves with the Phantom v1610.
1,000,000 fps should equal incredible slow motion right? Gizmodo broke it down like this: three seconds of Jell-O shot at 1,000,000 FPS and then played back at a standard rate of 30 FPS would make a video clip that is almost 28 HOURS long. Yeah, no thanks.
Practical Applications
EXPLOSIONS!
Have you ever watched a MythBusters where they’re blowing something up with C-4 and you just can’t wait to see the super slow-motion video shot of it? There’s usually a jerky three frames of the explosion itself and the rest is just debris slowly falling. This is because explosives such as C-4 have a detonation velocity of over 8,000 meters per second, which means that most high-speed cameras simply can’t catch it. The Phantom v1610 should be able to make it look buttery smooth.
Buuuuuuuut, it won’t. In order to crank the camera up to it’s 1,000,000 FPS max, you have to drop the resolution down to 128 x 16, which is only okay if you’re looking at your TV through a telescope. The camera has a 16 gigapixel/second limit, so you have to find the balancing point between the resolution you want and the speed you want. You can shoot 1280 x 720 HD at 18,100, which is still extremely fast, and if you are willing to settle for a standard-def shot at 640×480 you can crank it all the way up to 43,400 FPS, which I’m betting would look pretty amazing. There are many more options in between (Gizmodo).
No word on pricing yet, but expect it to be silly expensive. Check out this video gallery of some of our favorite super slo-mo clips. [Wired].
SPECS
The Phantom® v1610 provides a widescreen CMOS sensor and delivers an impressive speed of 16,000 frames-per-second at full resolution.
- 1280 x 800 resolution
- 28 micron pixel size, 12-bit depth
- 500ns minimum exposure with the FAST option
- 1 μs minimum exposure standard
- Up to 650,000 fps standard or 1,000,000 fps with the FAST option at reduced resolutions
- Records direct to CineMag
- Standard on-camera-controls
- 10Gb Ethernet
Via: Gizmodo, Wired
Source: VisionResearch
- MC
