This page includes contributions by Matt Gray.
Ordinary video is customarily 25 (Europe) or approximately 30 (USA) frames per second (fps). Slow-motion cinema, also known as overcranking, is achieved by using a special camera which can record events at higher frame rates, such as 1000fps. When this video is then played back at the usual frame rate, it appears slowed down.
Some practical options available to our class are:
- Modern iPhones can achieve 240 frames per second.
- We have two Edgertronics high-speed cameras, capable of up to 18,000 fps. This camera does 720p video at 1000 fps.
Because the exposure time of each frame is so short, high-frame-rate cameras generally require a lot of light. A lighting kit or bright sunshine is essential for good results with slow-motion cameras. For very high speed cameras, it is essential to have lights without any appreciable flickering.
- Edgerton Documentary developing strobe light & using it to capture fast movements
- Edgerton stroboscopy, 1940
- Slow-motion as an analytic tool for "microexpressions"
- Slow-motion is widely used for analyzing ballistics and other very short events (gunshots, impacts, etc.). However, it can also be used for analysis of ultra-fast facial expressions.
- Paul Ekman on microexpressions
- David Matsumoto on A-Rod microexpressions
- Miscellaneous Slow-Motion Experiments on the Internet
- There is all manner of slow-motion tomfoolery on the internet.
- Time Warp: Water balloon hits face
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- Bill Viola: The Passions, at the Getty
- Sam Taylor-Wood, Hysteria
- Rachel Talibart Uses high-speed photography and telephoto lenses to catch waves:
- Guillaume Panariello
- unconditional rebel - siska (music video)
(music video)
- Adam Magyar, Stainless
- High-speed recordings of people on subway platforms.
- Stainless - Shinjuku
- Stainless, 42 Street
- Interview with Magyar
- Luke DuBois, Vertical Music (2012). A chamber piece written for 12 players, lasting 4 1/2 minutes. Each musician was filmed individually in several takes using a high-speed (300fps) camera and an extremely high definition (1 MHz) analog-to-digital audio recording setup. When played back at 30fps, total time is ~45 minutes.
- Julien Maire, Double-Face and Ordonner
- French new-media artist Julien Maire plays fun on the concept of slow-motion cinema in these elaborately conceived simulacra, which are not actually presented in slow-motion. In one live performance (Ordonner), he heaves "heavy-looking" cardboard boxes which are in reality filled with helium balloons; their slow, gentle tumble through the air is a near-perfect imitation of slowmo video. In Maire's Double-Face performance, a coin tossed in the air tumbles ever more slowly until it eventually comes to a rest in mid-air; in fact, the coin is controlled by a mechatronic suspension system with nearly invisible guy-wires.
- Double-Face
- Ordonner
- The Dancing Pigeons, Ritalin (Music video, 2010)
(Music video, 2010)
- Steve Giralt, Burger Assembly (slow-mo plus robot arm) Vimeo
Springtail Collembole insects, via BBC
- Phantom cameras can achieve about 1.4 million fps.
- Spinning mirror systems can achieve 3 million fps.
- This camera can capture neurons firing, at 100 billion frames per second.
- This trillion-fps camera from MIT can capture the movement of light as it travels.
- Ultra-slow-motion with Machine Learning interpolation
Special things happen to sound when it is slowed down and time-stretched. The best-known example of this is the "800% slower" Justin Bieber track, U Smile. Note that the time-stretching preserves the original frequences of the audio, rather than causing the pitch to drop into the infrasonic range.
Zach Poff has Resources for Exploring Ultrasound. For example, Bioacoustics researchers and hobbyists use portable bat detectors to lower their pitch into the human hearing range in realtime.
See What Happens When You Tickle a Rat - Ultrasonic laughter. Male mice make "courtship songs". These researchers used machine learning to recognize their calls.
Brian House has made "macrophones" that capture infrasound (ultra-low frequencies) and speed it up by several octaves.