Part II - some high speed video
Posted on 06. May, 2008 by Beate in Cameras, Casio EX-F1
(using Revver and Wordpress for the first time and a totally new site, no idea how the movie display will work out; will edit if necessary)
Since I am mainly concerned with outdoor photography - flowers, bees, you name it - I searched for suited subjects in the woods.
How about earthworms? At 600 fps! To my opinion, the images look satisfactory, considering they were taken during heavy rain in a dark norwegian wood. Another good news is that they do not seem to be affected by focus hunting, see below.
I tried 1200 fps as well. The biggest problem here, besides less than mediocre image quality under the given lighting conditions, is the difficulty to align the action with the tiny field on the screen which represents the “region of interest” from which the images are obtained. You will be fine with earthworms, but not with rapidly and erratically moving targets. For about an hour or so, I aimed at insect catching swallows above a lake. Even though I knew approximately where they would appear, I did not have a chance to catch them on high speed video. The comparatively slow focus system of the EX-F1 does not make things better. Lazy magpies are fine, however, slow focusing is a problem also here.
What else do I have to complain about when handling of the EX-F1during video recording is concerned? Placement of the recording button comes to mind. It really does not help with mechanical stability, especially at the beginning of a clip. I wish it would have been placed on the front of the grip and not on the back of the camera.
Another problem is the remote control. I have not figured out how to use it for video recording, it seems it is just for still images. That is extremely bad with HD clips at 30 fps. However, for the time being, HD recording seems to be affected by focus hunting at the beginning of every single clip, so the initial frames have to be discarded anyways. Maybe Casio knew that and did not find a fix and has therefore decided to not make a remote control for movie recording. Just kidding. So far I have the impression that the high speed recording is not affected by the focus hunting problem apparent during HD video. More on the latter later.
Stay tuned!
