Stefan Nell of Visual Impact in Cape Town recently tested the performance of the new Olympus iSpeed 3 camera against the 32G Phantom Gold high speed camera.
“The testing was done while we were pre-lighting a Fine Wines shoot and testing a rig for a commercial for the new Magnum whiskey liqueur. Tests were done on the standard swirling liquid shot that one sees in every liquid commercial, as well as floating letters in a liquid tank. The Phantom filmed in 2K at 1 000fps,’ explains Nell.
He notes that the iSpeed 3 can be regarded as a cost effective high speed option if shooting in an 8bit colour space such as 5D. “However, the Olympus is not an alternative to the Phantom as a stand-alone product in its current form. Having said this, the iSpeed3, which shoots 5 000fps at 1280 x 720P, performs surprisingly well when considering the sampling rate as compared to the Phantom.
“There is however work to be done in order to remove the Bayer patterning associated with CMOS sensors and high speed acquisition. We ended up using algorithms normally applied to Phantom files to clean up the images.
“All things considered we are satisfied with the results of the Olympus and believe that this camera has a very definite place in the lower end high speed market,’ comments Nell.
Ideal applications for the Olympus are lower budget productions that require high speed imaging, such as music videos, low end retail commercials, corporate videos and military and industrial applications.
The camera will be available for rental from Visual Impact and sales can be arranged if required.
Nell is currently on the development team for a 12bit version of the camera to be released next year.
