This from Michael Hession at Gizmodo. It really is a great idea – he has used the stills burst mode (the fastest ever on a DSLR) of the Canon 1D X to piece together a short video at 14 fps. The video has the dynamic range, resolution and overall quality of photographs. It is a massive step up from the video mode but of course 14 fps is shall we say – a retro frame rate.
However I actually think it is a valid style. It has a certain appeal, a certain old Super 8 magic to the motion – but from a far larger sensor.
What I have suggested to Michael is to try Twixtor on this.
What Twixtor does is to create synthetic frames between real frames. Adding extra frames gives you a higher frame rate – as high as 600fps – which it then plays back at the standard sequence timing of, say 24fps to produce smooth slow motion.
Twixtor could be used with the 14 fps footage to produce smoother looking 24p, by adding just an extra 10 frames per second.
5K 24p on a $6,800 DSLR? I’ll take two.
Whether the technique will work at all, I have no idea. At the moment it is just a suggestion for Michael to experiment with. I am sure there will be a few morphing issues on faster movement and frame changes where a lot changes from one frame to another. But Twixtor only has to insert 10 more frames per second to give 24p.
Says Michael:
“[As a 14 fps burst mode for stills] that’s so fast, it’s damn near movie-like. In fact, many of the Super 8 film cameras of yore shot only a bit faster at 18 fps. So why not use 1DX bursts as a movie camera? It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.”
“Of course, there are vast limitations to using the 1DX’s still mode to make movies. Aside from settling for a choppy 14 fps, you can only shoot in bursts of between 5-10 seconds (this might increase with faster CF cards), there is no sound recorded…”
But as a creative experiment I think it is bloody awesome.
