Casio EX-FS10: faster than a speeding bullet
At the Consumer Electronic show Casio announced the Casio EX-FS10 — a super-fast shooter. How fast is it? The cliche is faster than a speeding bullet. In this case it is quite close to the truth.
It can shoot stills at 30 frames per second. It will also shoot at 1,000 frames per second for video. That needs some pondering.
If you can shoot stills at this speed you can take shots of a balloon bursting. Indeed, at the launch, Casio did just that.
In Australia at the moment there is a television advertisement — whoever knows what product they are for? — using as a central feature a balloon full of water being burst.
First the rubber peels back and then the water slowly spreads in a marvelous cloud of spray. Only saw it with the sound off because they ran it during the cricket.
To do this in the past needed seriously expensive and heavy equipment.
Now everyone can do it.
Why it is important is that it adds another dimension to photography. Casio makes much of the fact that you can chose the perfect shot and use that. No doubt true but that is not what it is about.
In 1948, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) defined high-speed photography as any set of photographs captured by a camera capable of 128 frames per second or greater, and of at least three consecutive frames. At 300 frames this is well with the definition and to spare.
It has practical and artistic uses.
The first, probably, came in 1878 which was a long time ago. Until then painters made painting of racehorses running with their front and back legs extended at the same time. You can see them in almost any art gallery. (The horses also appear to have smaller heads than is normal but the is not what this is about. It is the front legs and the back legs extended.)
In fact, horses never do that. In 1878 Eadweard (that is the correct spelling) Muybridge made an investigation using the equivalent of a high speed camera — in fact many cameras linked together — to show conclusively that was not the way horses run. And painting of horses changed overnight to reflect this new truth.
Yes, we know you are not a racehorse. But suppose you play golf or tennis or pretty much anything? Would you not like a detailed frame by frame photograph of what you do which will be far, far more revealing than even a top expert watching you?
Quite so.
And this will be the primary use for this amazing — correct word but astounding would also be acceptable — camera. And if you used it in video you would have slow motion so beautiful it would make you weep. But not always. It was used in a movie made by Harry Towers in Hong Kong of a naked woman running along a beach. Bad idea. She looked terrible.
But a race car coming into a corner, race horses coming out of the gates, school children coming out of school — the limitations are merely your imagination.
This development was not seen as the prime marketing motivator by Casio. They chose to go big on some software that lets you integrate stills with video or vice versa. And, in this, Casio managent is wrong. The grabber is the slo-mo which will allow you to take pictures faster than a speeding bullet — and in video that is literally true.
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January 9th, 2009
Eadward isn’t the correct spelling. You an choose between Edward (birth name) and Eadweard (adopted name).
Stephen
January 9th, 2009
You are quite right and I stand corrected. Your site http://tinyurl.com/7at2fh covers the subject excellently.