Last week I had the opportunity to direct an international, consumer video for Phonak hearing aids and work with the Phantom camera. For those of you who haven’t heard of the Phantom (I was in that boat until a couple months back), let me give you the nerdy, tech lo-down. It’s a HD video camera that can shoot 1000 frames/second at 1920 x 1080. 1000 frames gives you ridiculous slow motion. RIDICULOUS. Like “stop a bullet” slow-mo. At this frame rate, you can only shoot in 4.5 second bursts. That seemed like it might be a bit too short until I learned playback of those clips at normal speed goes for over 3 minutes.
I worked with DP Greg Wilson shooting “wildly-dressed” dancers (that’s as much as I can say for now. I’ll post the video when it has been officially released). The results were pretty cool. During aggressive, almost-frantic moves, we stopped the dancers in their tracks.
The Red One camera has already been a great tool for photographers as they dive even deeper into the world of video. The Phantom opens up a couple extra doors. Though you do need a mother-load of lights (we were up over 120k in the wattage department) that can start to melt whatever it is you’re shooting. People included
Here’s a pic of the camera setup:
