Professional High Speed Cameras

[florian80]

Hi,

I am looking to take some high speed video with a camera that also delivers a good resolution. I have used the Casio Ex-f1 but the high speed quality is simply not good enough.

I know there are some amazing cameras like the phantom that costs probably $150.000. What I am wondering if there is something in between in the $2000-$3000 price range maybe that will allow me to take high speed video with a good resolution.

Does anybody have any info on this subject ?

John...do you use the phantom or what exactly do you use ?

Thanks,

Florian

[johnyandell]

We use the phantom, but we rent it from the same guys who the networks do. At 120 frames per sec, the Casio exilm is great for the web, and we are going to be putting up a bunch of that. As for intermediates, no clue...anyone else?

[florian80]

ok. which casio exilim are you using ? i use the ex-f1 but it only films at 480x360 quality in high speed mode.

i sent you a private message maybe a week ago about something else. did you receive that ?

thanks

florian

[stotty]

I have a Sanyo Xacti, a budget priced camera. I am looking to upgrade within a similar budget to Florian. I'll be interested to see if any members can suggest models or give advice, too.

[tennis_chiro]

High Speed Options

I've been using the Casio ExLim FH-20 for 2 1/2 years. I even had a repair done through the Amazon warranty - excellent service there. I had to pay about $500 with the warranty originally and then I saw it drop below $300 before they discontinued it. Now you find it selling used at a premium on eBay. It has a great feature that you can go in and out of high speed from 30fps to 210 fps at 480 by 360. This is usually good enough for anything except professional work or the high quality kind of stuff JY does in what he puts up here on the site. (But those cameras are really expensive.) Being able to toggle between high speed and regular is fabulous because it takes so long to play back extended high speed shots. With this feature, you just go into high speed as the stroke is being executed; you rarely need it as the ball is going back and forth across the net. Of course, you can still play the 30 fps part of the clip back in slow motion. The other thing that is great about this camera is that it has a 20x optical zoom and in playback you can use the zoom to go in on something like a grip or grip change.
You also can shoot at 420 fps (224x160) or even 1000fps (224x56). The 420 can be useful for looking at the snap on a serve or wrist action at impact on a groundie or volley, but 210fps is adequate for almost anything.

If you go on Amazon or eBay or the Casio site, try to look for the optical zoom, the size of the LCD screen (3" on the FH20) and what the storage media is. The FH20 uses a SD card that is great for taking the files right over to the computer and the files can be read by Quicktime on MACs or Windows machines and on Windows Media Player on Windows machines. However, it you are looking to run the camera live from your computer as you record, then you have to use a camera with FireWire. The speed with which you move an SD card from the camera to the computer kind of makes that superfluous for the tennis instruction.

Check all those specs on the new Casio cameras (which are mostly under $300 last time I looked). One of the disadvantages I saw was a maximum record time of 29 minutes. I've been looking at Dartfish for the match tagging application and there I would want to be able to record at least a full set on an SD card. I don't think you can do that with the new Casios. But Warren Pretorius turned me on to a couple of other cameras for that.

The Sanyo VPC FH1A looks pretty good with up to 600 FPS slomo and pretty good resolution at 240 FPS as well as shooting HD at 60 FPS. It doesn't appear to have the built in memory, but takes the SD cards. It also is set up for iFrame (whatever that means). It comes in around $600 before you start talking about additional memory cards, batteries or warranties.

The Canon Vixia HF R21 comes in a lot cheaper at $450, but it doesn't have the high speed slo mo, or anything more than 30 FPS as near as I can tell. (It does 60 interweave so maybe it has 60 FPS slomo). It does have the built in memory so it can shoot for quite a while with a card in it.

The quality if these cameras is really high and should be fine even for your website, Florian. (If you need more details, just check the company's websites for specs.) You shouldn't need to spend that much money unless you have to have commercial quality film clips. 60 FPS will show an awful lot in slow motion although not as much as the 120 to 420 fps we are talking about in these other cameras. Also realize, you need good light to shoot high speed video. Outdoor night lighted courts don't give enough light for these high speed cameras. I've done it, but it doesn't come out very well. Good indoor lighting (a lot less than daylight) should be fine though!

Good luck with it.
don

[johnyandell]

Florian,
Thought I responded to your other message but in any case the answer was worth talking about on the other thing.

So far as I know there is only one exilim, the one Don is talking about. It's an older model and yeah the box works high def on the web, but not really bigger.

John

[stotty]

This Casio EXILIM EX-ZR100 looks interesting...you can switch between fps speeds...as don suggested in his post...and it is surely ample for the requirements of most tennis pros...it's certainly the camera that tops the list for me so far..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzX5xnSznZo

[florian80]

Thanks for the great info guys!

Ive been doing a lot of research the last couple of days trying to figure out how i can shoot slow motion with decent quality indoors. Turns out it is difficult but not impossible to do indoors.

The amount of light you need is insane. In addition to the indoor court lighting i ended up using about 3000W worth of halogen lamps. But then the footage still didn't look very clear from my Casio EX-F1. It looked sort of grainy.

Turns out there is a cool little program that helps you clean up your videos. It is called Neatvideo and anybody interested can find information here: www.neatvideo.com

It certainly helped a lot and this footage should be good enough to use for my website. Here is a link to some of the raw footage so that anybody interested in Neatvideo can see what it does.

This is just me and the video guy messing around and trying things out while shooting a video for the one-handed backhand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qN6xIQ9oY8

Cheers

Florian

[blake_b]

Hi Stotty,

Did you ever get the Casio EXILIM EX-ZR100? If so, are you happy with it?

Thanks,
Blake

[stotty]

Hi Stotty,

Did you ever get the Casio EXILIM EX-ZR100? If so, are you happy with it?

Thanks,
Blake

Hi Blake!

I still have my Xacti and have not upgraded yet. The Xactic does the job. But I love gadgets and would like to upgrade just for the thrill of it. The Casio EXILIM EX-ZR100 would my ideal choice.

The only real downside to my Xacti is that it will only record in high-speed for ten seconds at a time...which can be a pain.

[blake_b]

Hi Stotty,

I have been doing some extensive research on cameras, and on some of the golf forums, I found an issue with the EX-ZR100 and it successor the EX-ZR200. Casio has removed the manual shutter feature while in video mode. This caused blurring of the golf club. For more information you can watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNut_kshlYM

I ended up purchasing the Casio FH-100 on ebay.

Thanks,
Blake

[DougEng]

High Speed Cameras

Casio produces the best ones for a low budget. As far as I know, there's no intermediate high speed cameras in the $1,000-10,000 range. Generally they run at least $15,000 and higher into six figures (especially if you want high resolution).

The Casio series as I know ran:
Casio Exilims:
EX-FH1
EX-FH20
EX-FH25
EX-FH100
EX-ZR100
EX-ZR100w
EX-ZR200
etc

Several of these are older editions but are still unmatched on the market. Casio is well ahead of the times.

I had the FH20 (or 25), FH100 and ZR100. The last 2 I still use side by side for synchronized analysis at 120 or 240 fps. I sold the FH20 on Ebay since it films at 210 fps and synchronizing was harder. Besides, it's easier carrying 2 smaller pocket-sized cameras. David Ramos at USTA (Boca Raton) PD uses the FH1...not sure now, but I'm sure he still uses it.

The lower the number the bigger and clunkier and the original price was more
($1,000 for FH1, $500 for FH20, $250 for FH100). The FH100 and newer ZR100
shoot at 120 fps and 240 fps at 432 x 324. But I find that good enough for any analysis. Zoom capacity changes too with larger cameras around 80x and smaller around 60x...digital + optical.

Blurring is not an issue but focusing can be in video mode. And they don't focus or process that quickly (in which case you need to start spending $3,000+ on a nice Canon SLR, etc).

They are hard to get and the prices increase for used cameras (typically sold as much as 50-100% higher than original price).

[gsheiner]

I use the ex fh25. It's great. I shoot at 240 fps and it has an adjustable shutter speed. Within a few minutes on my computer, I can have my images right next to a clip from the archives. You don't need motion pro --just use 2 quicktime images side by side.

[johnyandell]

exactly. QT clips rule.