Cost of entry to 1000 FPS capable cameras?

I was thinking of a new way to market one of our products and I think showing it in action compared with a factory plastic part would get some buzz going.

The event I want to show in detail happens 34 to 50 times a second. I think if I could show that at 1 event per second, so at least 24 frames (standard video speed) multiplied by 34 events per second I need 816 frames per second.

I have been googling my butt off and I'm not getting anything really. A bunch of youtube videos showing video at 1000+ FPS, but I want to know how much it costs for ME to do it.

Most cameras that come up in my searches are 120 FPS capable. I don't think that would do the job.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

We have a Sony Cyber-Shot camera that does 1000 fps . . . model DSC-RX100M4 I believe. It gets used all of the time in our shop and when troubleshooting high speed machines.

Note that you need really good lighting and image resolution at 1000 fps is less than HD but plenty clear for what we needed. I'll see if I can link to a short movie clip taken at 1000 fps with this setup.

I use LED lights with adjustable color temperature and intensity for my product pictures. They seem to work pretty good with my DSLR.

I'd love to see one of your videos.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083SLZ6JT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I took a chance on these and really like them. they're even great for working on intricate stuff like PCB repairs and stuff that's hard to see.

I still have my old Hycam 10,000 FPS camera, not sure you can get film for it anymore, its available if you want to borrow it, LOL.

Check this one out. Last I heard they were made in Canada. High-def at over 1,000fps and depending on features, around $3500
Store - Kron Technologies

Garwood said:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083SLZ6JT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I took a chance on these and really like them. they're even great for working on intricate stuff like PCB repairs and stuff that's hard to see.

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Now I'm curious about what you make.

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I looked at some of the videos that we have and at the faster frame rates the resolution is pretty low and while I thought they looked great 5 years ago - in today's world of 4k and HD - unless the newer Cyber-Shots have improved resolution over ours, I would step up a bit more. I'll verify the model number of our camera when I get back in the office tomorrow.

High frame rate video cameras are mucho expensive, if you really want to go that route it might be best just to rent one for a day... The cheapest high framerate camera I know of is the Chronos 1.4 which costs about $3,500

However there are likely some WAAAY cheaper way to do this:

You say this action happens many times per second? Does it happen at regular intervals, like a reciprocating motion or something?

If so you can simply use a regular video camera of whatever type and use a strobe light to illuminate the process in 'stop motion' so you can capture it. A strobe light running at a very slightly different frequency than the process will make it look like it's happening in slow motion. It may take some fiddling with the frame rate of the camera to get acceptable video without flicker, many pro/prosumer mirrorless cameras have 'overcranking' or 'undercranking' where they let you change the framerate of the video in small increments, usually up to 120/240FPS and down to at least 24fps, sometimes lower.

Alternatively use a standard DSLR, LOTS of light and a very fast shutter speed. Shoot multiple bursts of photos of the process in action with the camera very well locked down in one place on a tripod, then stitch the individual frames back together in the correct order as frames in a video... This would actually be very easy to do and it's possible even a cheapie point and shoot camera (rather than a DSLR) would let you do this. Any basic video editing suite will let you do this stitching, even the free ones like iMovie.

BTW: for high intensity lighting it's pretty hard to beat a nice sunny day for cheap and cheerful! Stretch a thin white sheet over top if you need diffuse light, white sheets and white cardboard work great as 'bounces' if you need more light.

Cole2534 said:

Now I'm curious about what you make.

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Playing card holder for your bike to make "engine noises".....

+1 on strobe lights if you can get the effect you want. For high speed cameras we use i-SPEED 3 High-Speed Camera - High Quality Durable Dependability High Resolution but you'll find the prices on the high side. We use a camera that can do 1 Mfps and that's not a typo. You can buy faster. You need a lot of light up there; if you happen to live on the surface of the sun, that's about right. However, you can rent these things. A lower spec camera might be had for a week or two for a not crazy amount of money. I shoot at 4000 fps often and the light requirements aren't that bad.

Sylvania SunGuns, in multiples, were a common high speed continuous light source. At 650 watts each and most of the output in the infrared, heat was a non-trivial problem. Other tungsten halogen lamps are readily available often as "work lights".

Conrad Hoffman said:

+1 on strobe lights if you can get the effect you want. For high speed cameras we use i-SPEED 3 High-Speed Camera - High Quality Durable Dependability High Resolution but you'll find the prices on the high side. We use a camera that can do 1 Mfps and that's not a typo. You can buy faster. You need a lot of light up there; if you happen to live on the surface of the sun, that's about right. However, you can rent these things. A lower spec camera might be had for a week or two for a not crazy amount of money. I shoot at 4000 fps often and the light requirements aren't that bad.

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Ok Conrad, you can't drop drool inducing specs like this and casually claim that you shook at 4K FPS regularly and then not show us video!!!! I for one want to see some of that footage!

I'm also really curious what the applications are for using high speed cameras like this regularly?

I have often wished I had capability like this but I would mainly be using it just to add some zing to my youtube videos... I have a camera that will shoot 720p at 240FPS but that's the best I got. I looked into higher quality/framerate cameras but just couldn't justify the cost for my needs.

Conrad Hoffman said:

.... I shoot at 4000 fps often and the light requirements aren't that bad.

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4000 fps raw in 1024x1000 24 bit color real time without a lost frame is a pretty fat data pipe. Even if held inside a lot of data. (4000x1024x1000x24 per second)
Light years past USB or Giga-E.
Strobe or sampled different of course but then you may miss the event you want.
A 1 inch sensor will need a lot less light than a 1/3 inch since the sites are larger and up gather more photons.
Bob

Well, mega fps cameras are often monochrome and resolution goes way down as the speed goes up. I think I get 912x684 at 4k fps. At a mega fps you're talking only tens of pixels unless you spend crazy money. I can't show most of what I shoot for work, but it's typically things like tiny solenoids to see how the plungers move. IOW, not terribly exciting to most people. Definitely a research tool, not a sales tool. Something to remember is that everything gets stretched out, including the time when nothing is happening. It's common for me to shoot a gig of data and edit it down to maybe a few hundred frames when the thing of interest actually happened. What's really annoying is when two things happen a few seconds apart. If you don't cut out the middle you'll have a huge dead time.

CarbideBob said:

4000 fps raw in 1024x1000 24 bit color real time without a lost frame is a pretty fat data pipe. Even if held inside a lot of data. (4000x1024x1000x24 per second)
Light years past USB or Giga-E.

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THIS . is sooooo funny!

"perceptions, expectation, and over-hype" applies.

Hong Kong's then still-legendary Salon Films. I' m Project Managing part of their then-BRAND-new migration from film to digital

Kong Kong Tel sales execs still thought in terms of how many Tai Tai gossiping at once they could get on one link, soooo. sold Fred Wang "really BROAD BAND! 24 Tai Tai cross-border "DS1" to the studio in Shenzen.

I get a call.. Fred's folks have a problem...

"Bill, do we need the next step up? 45 MBPS?"

"No, Fred."
"I can beat even their best fibre-optic OC12 cheaper for you!"

"What kind of circuit?"

"Motorcycle courier with saddlebags."

Conrad Hoffman said:

Well, mega fps cameras are often monochrome and resolution goes way down as the speed goes up. I think I get 912x684 at 4k fps.

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You bring up a great point on monochrome.
Most do not understand that color cameras do not actually have that resolution as specked. There is a grid out front to make color.
RGB and all I know as a photosite is photons hitting me, don't understand colors plus that thing up top splits not so evenly spaced to us on the chip floor.
For accuracy in measuring or fine detail one wants black and white even at at 1/4 the resolution. Added plus, less bandwidth or storage.
Do not confuse this with color cameras running in monochrome mode.
Color is of course cell phones and such so a bigger market and volume production costs on the sensors so buying 8 times the pixel count can work but then that data stream.

And then, fill factor, lens distortion and all sorts of other crazy stuff that only just this side of insane people spend sleepless nights over and then haunts their dreams.
Wake up for no reason with a what or why and where is my computer? "Go back to sleep hon, I have a bug in my head and I'm going downstairs for a bit."
Another endless rabbit hole designed to drive you off the deep end.
Bob

I made this right after I got a new Sony RX10 IV last summer:
YouTube
960 fps

Not to get too far off subject, here's a YT person that does a lot of filming in high speed. They also list the equipment most of the time they use and where to get it. YouTube

Ken