Time Lapse & Slo Mo

[garthulu]

I'm gonna be shooting a trippy little short film pretty soon with some extreme slow mo and time lapse stuff. I've seen some cameras that go up to 70, maybe even 80 fps. Does anyone know of any faster ones? And what about intervelometers that allow ANY desired intervals. Thanx.
garth

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[Konton]

I think the standard slow-mo speed is 64fps. many of the pro cameras have that. I have two actually levers that says "slow-mo" on my MS45 bell & howell. I wish I knew what they did.

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Konton the Grey

[Cranium]

Seems like you'd be able to make an intervalometer fairly easily yourself.
The other option I've thought about recently is getting an old drum machine that has a trigger output. Do a little math and you can program the trigger to just about any rate you'd want (and to get fancy, you COULD do ramps this way)
Check out the BOSS DR55 and DR110. I think they both have trig outs, and they're small and run on a couple AA batteries.


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Mikel Z

[Matt Pacini]

Interesting idea about hooking an intervalometer to the single frame input.
Does anybody know if you can actually crank the camera up really fast using this?
I mean, is there some physical or electrical limit that the average Super 8 camera is going to be able to do?

Because I would love to use one of my Nikon Super Zooms as an effect camera, and run it at like 250fps for explosions, etc.

Matt Pacini

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[tom hardwick]

Most super8 cameras run wild (ie ungoverned) when in the slo-mo mode. My 1014E runs at a timed 62fps whereas the blurb claims 54fps(a slowing down of three times when projecting at 18fps).

Running at 62 fps makes not the slightest difference to the exposure settings of course, as the automatic two stops extra are automatically applied by depressing the slo-mo lever. But then I always shoot with locked aperture anyway.

I built an intervalometer from widely available plans. It all fits inside a "returned 35mm slides" box, and is powered by a pp3 (9 volt) battery. This runs the 1014 at anywhere from 9 fps right up to one frame every 2 minutes, and the beauty is that this is infinately variable.

This variability was especially useful for filming boats in locks. The lock takes an age to fill with water to raise the boat to the next level, but the lock gates open pretty quickly. So all I did was ride the fps knob, speeding the camera up when the gates were going to open and slowing it down as the boat rose up in the water.

This change in frame rate is completely un-noticeable on screen by the way.

So no, the answer is that you can't get an intervalometer to run your camera faster. You could try over-volting it and that'll make a small difference, but don't run the camera long in this state.

tom.

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[mattias]

> Does anybody know if you can actually crank the camera up really fast using this?

probably not. single frame exposure is usually done at 18 fps, so i would be surprised if you could get over 15 fps or so.

/matt

[Cranium]

I've tried it with an XL400 a few years ago. I can't recall exactly what happened, but it didn't work. The shutter is electronically regulated to be the same in single as at 18fps.
I was actually referring to ramping the timelapse capture. I meant to grab an old Korg drum machine from home last night and fiddle with it at work to make sure it would be effective, but I can't see any reason it wouldn't. Sweet... an intervalometer that can be programmed to do odd/complex timed captures (6 frame bursts every 60 seconds? You name it...)


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Mikel Z

[#Pedro]

Normally, movie cameras have and magnetic shutter release (relay) to start the motor and exposure correct right from the first frame. But nevertheless, the first one or two frames are critical with most cameras or weak power supply to get overexposed. Once triggered, the camera is running and exposuring "on the fly" without activating any shutter relay. A govenor disc contact is always reporting the actual shutter angle and allows to stop the camera with closed shutter, using the relay again.

So it is absolutly impossible to even run the camera at it?s normal framerate over the single frame input. With every time activating the single frame mode, you start and stop the relay trigger again. If you can do 2fps or 3fps this way with smooth exposure, you?re lucky! The starting moment is the biggest stress for a camera mechanism.

What you can do, is very variable time lapse with significantly less than 1 fps, using an external control unit and an external power supply that provides the neccessary current.
This control unit can be rather cheap and primitive, using a timer circuit NE555 (bipolar version, for 5 V or more) or ICL7555 (c-mos version, working from 2 V on) and following it?s standard applications. One transistor and one relay, and you are set up.

Pedro

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