Slow motion technology has been making huge leaps into affordability recently, and now that the Casio Exilim EX-F1 (check the review on luminous-landscape.com) is publicly available, youtube has suddenly been flooded with new high-FPS content, and I think we can safely say that slow-mo has hit the mainstream.
With Sony’s CMOS cameras we’ve had affordable slow-motion available for over a year, but the tape-based workflow was time-consuming and unintuitive, so required a bit too much effort for the general home user. However, the EX-F1 records to SD card, so you can post your captured files directly to youtube, and we’re seeing the results of that right now.
600FPS really seems to be the sweet spot for this camera, it’s getting into the realm of serious slow motion, but still has a reasonable amount of resolution available – 512×384 – absolutely perfect for Youtube or VJing.
The Luminous Landscape review says: “600 FPS and 1200 FPS are fun to play with, but frankly the image sizes are too small to do anything with other than to use in a high-school science fair project.” I couldn’t disagree more. Perhaps for a photographer, with no video production skills to speak of, they’re too small to do anything with, but I can’t imagine any visualist looking at that 1200FPS footage at 336×96 pixels and saying “nope, I can’t think of anything to do with that”.
This isn’t just useful for VJs though, looking through those youtube videos you’ll notice certain themes emerging: Archery, skateboarding, machinery, technology, athletics, violence, arty stuff… Accessible high speed video is going to change a lot of industries for a lot of people, and those who are best with video are going to be able to take advantage of it.