Ultra slo-mo videos from Make Faire

3ric Johansen emailed me about this terrific video he made with Nathan Pegram using Intellectual Ventures' Phantom camera at Maker Faire 2010.

We conducted some pure hackery in order to make these videos. The first key part was having a "Nanoflash SDI recorder". This standalone recorder can do real-time compression of 1080p content onto compact flash. In order to film and export video at a fast rate, we needed some other method than our typical "wait 15 minutes for gigabit ethernet" process. So we wired up this recorder to the Phantom, along with a linksys WRT54G access point running rogue firmware. The rogue firmware (which runs linux) enables us to make custom web applications which run on the access point. We built a [very simple] cgi which controlled one of the LEDs on the front of the AP. We then did more of our 'hotel soldering' to wire up this LED to the nanoflash recorder. Tada! We now have software control of this standalone recorder. Besides being useful for doing live demos, this mod/hack will enable us to take highspeed video and export it at a very fast speed. We still need to build an application which will sync the playback from the Phantom with the recording on the Nanoflash.

Music: "Raise Riddim" by I.D. & Baobinga

• [Felix Mitchell]

  The orange balloon in the second scene is so beautful. I wonder if he used a special balloon to stop it popping.

• [pixleshifter]

  Always with the balloons in these slo-mo videos.
  There’s so much more you could capture with this great gear, balloons have just been done to death.

  • [jackie31337]

    I think it’s because a balloon-shaped blob of water slowly disintegrating as it falls on someone’s head looks really cool. Getting to see water behave in ways we’re not used to seeing it behave is cool too. That’s probably why there is so much footage of astronauts playing with balls of water in zero gravity, too.

    I’m sure plenty of other things would look cool in super slow-mo, but what?

• [deadundead]

  Yeah, that’s like saying “look at this video game hack a guy made from the components of an XBOX 360. It’s called…an XBOX 360.”

• [Angstrom]

  at first I thought “hey great a hacky way to capture high speed footage”, until I googled about thier solution and found out that the “Phantom” referred to is actually this one
  http://www.visionresearch.com/index.cfm?sector=htm/files&page=phantom_v12

  some more searching tells me the rough price
  “Phantom camera line from $50,000 to $150,000 ”

  Ok, so slow mo’ is still slightly out of my reach then

• [Anonymous]

  @#3 no shit, the nanoflash sdi recorder is nothing to sneeze at $2800+ either.

  I think I’ll stick to casio exilim thank you very much

• [zish]

  Wow that gave me some powerful flashbacks!

• [hinges]

  I really like the colourful scintillating artifacts where tiny reflections/refractions of the sun in the water blow out individual colours on the sensor. Makes the water look like some kind of magic rainbow jelly.

• [CoquiELF]

  Totally beautiful. I echo hinges. Lovely light effects.

• [Anonymous]

  @pixleshifter We offered to film whatever folks wanted to have filmed at maker faire. We spent two days working with makers brainstorming and filming whatever. That video is the best shots we got – - but we might someday show up at an event with the same offer.

  There are several balloon shots as we know they work & thus brought supplies for that. :)

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  What does it say about me that I sped it up to watch it?