Film and Digital Times - June 2007 - (Page 5)

Phantom Menace From Siege of Troy and Red Menace, we turn to Phantoms. Lines were long at NAB 2007 to catch a glimpse of two new Phantoms from Vision Research. These cameras enjoy a large and successful niche shooting high speed (slow motion) for commercials, sports and effects—and will probably be used for mainstream production as larger storage becomes practical. A removable, paperback-book-sized 512 GB Phantom CineMag was just introduced. The Phantom HD camera has a single 35mm size CMOS chip, PL mount, and runs 1-1000 fps at 1920x1080. The Phantom 65 has a 65mm single CMOS chip, Super PL mount, and runs 1150 fps at 4K. Shutters are adjustable to 1/500,000 second. The Phantom 65 formats are 2.28, 2.35, 2.21 and 1.85. Of course, you can crop any way you want in post. The uncompressed images are stored to internal RAM, and then downloaded to a Phantom CineMag or disk array. When shooting with the HD camera at 1920x1080, each frame is about 2.8 Mbytes (10-bit log representation of 12 or 14 bit linear data). You can store about 182,000 frames on the 512GB CineMag. At 24 fps, that is just over 2 hours. You can record directly into the CineMag at up to 400 fps, letting you shoot just under 8 minutes. At 1000 fps, you must record into camera memory, then “upload” to the CineMag. So, with a 32GB camera, you could record for about 9.7 seconds into camera memory. It takes about 25 seconds to upload this to a CineMag. Phantom 65 math: 4096x2440 is approximately 10 Megapixels (and a larger aspect ratio than typical 4K). At 12-bit depth, and then coverting to 10-bit log for the CineMag, you have 12 Mbytes per frame. You can store about 42,600 frames of this size in a 512GB CineMag. So, if you are shooting at 24 fps, that means 1,775 seconds or about 29 minutes. At 60 fps, you can shoot for 11.8 minutes— about the same as a roll of film. You can shoot directly into the CineMag up to 90 fps; above that, as with the HD camera, you must first shoot into camera memory, and then upload to the CineMag. The HD camera has a PL mount for 35mm format lenses. The 65mm camera has a Super PL mount similar to the Arri 65, and uses Mamiya, Arri-modified Hasselblad lenses and rumors hint at a Panavision mount to accept Panavision 65mm lenses. The clever thing about the 65mm CMOS chip is that bigger pixels catch more light—so a 65mm sensor capturing 4K images can be rated at about 550 ASA. In May, a month after NAB, Vision Research, AbelCineTech, James Mathers, the Digital Cinema Society and the ASC treated us to an evening of hands-on training, delicious dinner, sample footage, and a beautiful live demo by Director/Cameraman Jerry Simpson. Staged at his Eastlight Studios, formerly the dreaded Talking Dog Studios of Tales from the Darkside notoriety, Jerry shot 3 Heineken bottles swinging slow motion through sheets of cascading water at 500 fps. It was lit with his custom, dimmable 25Ks (5x5K units). An interesting footnote about lighting for high speed: tungsten bulbs flicker as the 50 or 60 Hz AC current ebbs and flows through the filament. Bulbs larger than 2K don’t have as much time to cool and darken between cycles. DC, of course, doesn’t flicker at all. Electronic ballast HMIs are usually good under 10,000 fps, but sometimes a hot spot will be seen shifting in shot. Vision Research was founded by Charlie and Marjorie Jantzen in 1950 as Photographic Analysis Company. With their Photec film cameras, they specialized in “Research Through Photography,” rocket launches at 10,000 fps and projectiles hitting things. In the 1990s, their high-speed cameras caught the attention of commercial directors, clients and movie moguls. Beer and soda shots could not be conceived without slow motion. With this long history of high-speed, Vision Research has grown in the last 12 years to over 80 people. All their cameras are built and developed in-house, including the CMOS chips. I expect Phantom will soon be required reading on line 193 (camera rental) of every AICP bidform for tabletop, car or fashion commercials. Not only is the gratification instant, the image is gorgeous. You can rent one from AbelCineTech, TCS Inc (www.tcsfilm.com) and Dalsa (www.dalsa.com). June 2007 5 http://www.tcsfilm.com http://www.dalsa.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Film and Digital Times - June 2007

Contents
Red, Green, Blue
Aaton Penelope
Phantom Menace
Oil at NAB
Cooke Tour: How to Build a Lens
Lighting with Paint

Film and Digital Times - June 2007

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