As a new intern at Picture This, I’ve discovered a crazy exciting opportunity: taking available equipment home over the weekends. This first weekend, I just about flipped at the chance to take home the Sony FS700, a fantastic camera that stands out to me because it records video as fast as 960 frames per second, played back at the users choice of a standard frame rate (30, 24, 60, etc).
For my purposes (publication to the Vimeo), I chose the slowest frame rate that could maintain a pleasant 720p resolution: 480 fps. While I tried a few tests in 960 fps (the max resolution in 960 is SD), I didn’t see enough of a slo-mo “wow” difference (compared to 480 fps) to merit giving up that much resolution.
Ironically, after I spent a few days with this camera, I ran into a cameraman who’d used the FS700 for sports television. For him, the 240fps setting (up to 1080p resolution) worked great, though the lag time between clips made it difficult to capture every critical moment of action in the game. (Immediately after the camera captures frames live, it pauses to “record” to media, creating significant chunks of time where the camera is inoperable. The consecutive record time in slow motion is also significantly limiting: when I recorded a brief matchbox car scene with my brother in 480fps, the recording automatically stopped just short of the second that I wanted to stop recording.)
All the aforementioned said, I need more than a few days to get into this camera! With limited time over the weekend, smashing food became a priority. Some may debate whether or not it was worth the mess, but in my opinion, the half hour of cleaning was nothing compared to the fun we had!
