Video: Casio EX-F1 shoots in SuperSlowMo

Ever wished you could reproduce those super-slow-motion shots taken by the pros. Now you can, with a catch. Casio's new EX-F1 can record full motion video at 1200fps. That's enough frames to catch water droplets fall in unbelievably detailed flight. Unfortunately, the EX-F1 scales things back to a tiny 336x96 resolution at that full 1200fps. Still, the results are startling even when set at 300fps (with the bonus of a much higher resolution) when compared to a typical camera's 30fps recordings. See for yourself after the break.

[RDS @ Jan 6th 2008 8:58PM]

Wow !!!!! 600FPS Very Very Nice. Cant wait to see this hands on.

[Deputy Doffoos @ Jan 6th 2008 9:25PM]

Amateur Porn has reached a new era

[kaztm @ Jan 6th 2008 9:32PM]

"Cant wait to see this hands on."

Here is a review, for the prototype that they produced last summer. Didn't Engadget cover this?
http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/compact/2007/09/18/7043.html

News article:
http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/compact/2007/08/31/6950.html
Casio news release:
http://www.casio.co.jp/release/2007/ngdc.html

[Josh @ Jan 6th 2008 8:59PM]

ridiculously fast...

i still like my 350D though.

[Zander @ Jan 6th 2008 9:01PM]

Video removed...

[Josh @ Jan 6th 2008 9:06PM]

glad i saw it before it went down - it was pretty interesting too, they just showed a couple demos of normal speed vs 300fps vs 600 fps

[Bryan @ Jan 6th 2008 9:00PM]

Where did the video go? It won't play for me-- says that the video is no longer available. Is it anywhere else?
-bryan

[Sageco @ Jan 6th 2008 9:00PM]

Eh? Once again the video doesn't work.
Still, the idea does sound cool.

[cereal @ Jan 6th 2008 9:10PM]

Watching them open the wine bottle in slow motion makes me think of something wrong ;)

[Tony C @ Jan 6th 2008 9:51PM]

I think you mean champagne, but yeah... Money shot... The pr0n industry is going to buy thousands of these babies!! =)

[Bobs @ Jan 6th 2008 11:28PM]

Thats what they get when they show a hand coming off a dark cylindrical shape mostly hidden off screen, it took a second take for me to wake up and realize it wasnt what i thought it was.

[Andrew @ Jan 6th 2008 9:13PM]

I could use this when I film my golf swing...

[Tachikomatic @ Jan 6th 2008 9:29PM]

So thats what you kids are calling it these days.

[Bryan @ Jan 6th 2008 9:14PM]

hmm video works now

[drsilverworm @ Jan 6th 2008 9:16PM]

"Sounds like you're excited too"

Hardly heard any cheers? Must be the mic

Not bashing the cam though it looks legitimately awesome for what it does

[ericdano @ Jan 6th 2008 9:30PM]

The porn industry will like this ;-)

[Taylor @ Jan 6th 2008 9:30PM]

I've always wanted one of these. Price?

[Blaktornado @ Jan 6th 2008 9:42PM]

Me too. Hopefully not much...

[huh @ Jan 6th 2008 10:02PM]

Is this something any hardware could do? Why is this a special feature?

[Jason Staten @ Jan 6th 2008 10:42PM]

typically, stuff gets recorded in 30fps, this is doing up to 40 times that.

[huh @ Jan 6th 2008 10:46PM]

I know, but is this a software or hardware thing? Is there any reason that hardware today - say in an n95 or iPhone - that only supports 30fps capture can't be modified to support 600fps capture? I'm sure there must be some interface bandwidth, but there must be ways to tweak it.

[Andrew @ Jan 6th 2008 10:52PM]

Aperture size has something to do with it. The smaller the aperture size, the less light allowed, the slower the framerate has to be.

Hardware-wise, most handheld cameras should be able to hit higher fps, 1200fps is pretty freakin outstanding though.

Software-wise, they will limit the iso which translates into lower resolution.

It's going to be difficult to get the framerate too high on cell phones with current technology.

[huh @ Jan 6th 2008 11:01PM]

Thanks @Andrew. You'd think a device like the n95, which has a good camera and decent cpu (for its class) could be hacked to support this feature too. But it's probably more a matter of some corporate person in Nokia deciding that it's not a feature of this product segment blah blah. Too bad.

[Taylor @ Jan 7th 2008 12:53AM]

well, it has a lot to do with video bandwidth. I know my cell phone normally records at 15fps, and it can easily be hacked to record at higher framerates (just a reg edit), but it chokes after a mere 22 or so frames per second. 1200 frames per second requires very fast capture and processing hardware, and something designed to capture 60fps more than likely couldn't capture much faster - from an engineering point of view, it would be wasteful anyway, since hardware capable of higher transfer rates probably costs more, it wouldn't make sense to use it unless you needed it. obviously the lower resolution vastly reduces the total bandwidth required, but i'd imagine it would still require a special sensor to take that many samples per second, regardless of the sensor type. and yes, like people said, if you're doing 1200 fps, you simply couldn't have an exposure that was more than 1/1200th of a second (obviously), and that requires a lot of light, a wide aperture, and a high film speed, if you want to see anything but darkness in most situations (full sunlight excepted). as an example, in a decently lit room with no outside sunlight, i might shoot at 1/100th of a second at an aperture of f2.8 (which is generally pretty wide) or so with a modest 800 or 600 ISO to get enough light. if your shutter speed is 12 times faster, you need some way to get 12 times more light to the sensor, and that would require a very high ISO and a very wide aperture - well beyond what any normal camera could do. And then of course you still need enough bandwidth to move all that data.

So i'd generally say no, it's not likely that other hardware can simply be hacked to provide this, you'd need to have special hardware not likely present in these devices. Too bad tho!
-Taylor

[thijs @ Jan 7th 2008 1:09AM]

Price at 999.99 as I read here:

http://forum.belgiumdigital.com/showthread.php?p=1703614

[Zhent @ Jan 7th 2008 1:28AM]

I wonder how this will fare in low light conditions...

[sea @ Mar 8th 2008 10:27AM]

Yes, cameraphones and whatnot should be capable of this trick, basically swapping image resolution for time resolution. I only know of one other product doing this at the moment, the LG viewty (KU990). Lets you shoot 120fps at 320x240.

[Tyler @ Jan 7th 2008 9:59AM]

Amazing...

[edgore @ Jan 7th 2008 11:19AM]

"That's enough frames to catch water droplets fall in unbelievably detailed flight."

Um, yeah, sure. I guess you could do that. Mythbusters, however, has taught us that BLOWING STUFF UP is the real purpose for using a high speed camera. I predict a direct relationship between sales of this camera and sales of M80s.

[Vexorg @ Jan 7th 2008 1:39PM]

Given the ridiculous price of professional high speed video equipment (a typical system will run you roughly the cost of a Porsche) I could see something like this going for a lot more than $1,000. I'll have to see if I can get a hold of one of these the next time we go mess around with my brother's air cannon...

[Josiah @ Jan 7th 2008 2:19PM]

"1200 fps if you drop the image size to 336 x 96"

boooo

[LloydChiro @ Jan 7th 2008 6:11PM]

This camera has real camera lenses and sensor compared to a camcorder, and it has a hotshoe and a stereo microphone input. Should I be buying this instead of a camcorder so I can have the best of both worlds? I bet the low light video performance of this camera in movie mode must be excellent.