Ask anyone who has ever worked with HD high speed cameras and you might hear them describe the camera as being big and bulky that requires a desktop computer to control it. The operation of the camera is complex and the back end is time consuming. The new Phantom Miro LC320S has set out to challenge all of these assumptions and even more.
Firstly, the Miro is small and compact. At 19×9.8×10cm and weighing in at around 1.5kg (3lbs in the old money) without a lens or accessories it can really be thought of as a pocket rocket. But don’t let its small size and light weight nature fool you into thinking it is a toy. Far from it. Based on its bigger brother’s chip (the Phantom Flex) the Miro is capable of shooting 1500fps at 1920×1080 and if you down the resolution to 1280×720 it can shoot up to 3000fps.
In order to keep the shoot running smoothing, included in the cost of hire for the Phantom Miro LC320S is a camera technician. The technician can control various aspects of the camera’s operation from a laptop so there isn’t a crash course in how to operate a new piece of equipment the day before the shoot.
The technician’s role is also that of Phantom data management that then frees up any other DIT on set so they can concentrate on the other cameras being used.
The camera records to an onboard CineFlash drive that can be offloaded by the technician. The CineFlash allows for 10 runs of 2.7seconds real time at 1500fps to be recorded before a mag change is needed. This may not sound like a lot but remember that 1500fps being played back at 25fps sync speed equals 60 seconds. So if you record 1500fps in a 2.7 second real time burst you will get around 3 minutes of footage playing back at 25fps.
The files that are written to the CineFlash are called Cine RAW files that can be imported directly into DaVinci Resolve and further transcoded to produce a Apple ProRes 444 or Avid DNxHD file. When coupled with the Sound Devices Pix240 it is possible to walk away at the end of the shoot day with either an Apple ProRes Proxy or Avid DNxHD proxy file of all the slow motion footage that was captured during the shoot.
If you are after a higher ProRes or higher quality DNxHD file The Visionhouse offer transcoding of the Cine RAW files at an additional cost post shoot. If you are interested in choosing this option please let us know during the booking process so we can include an estimate of the cost for transcoding on the quote.
James