During the summer of 2020 as commerce ground down to a near standstill, many of us were forced to remain in our homes and not able to venture out. The one bright side of that for me was that my studio space is literally within the garage of our home. For some time, I had been hoping to apply the techniques I had learned creating artistic images with liquids directly towards more commercial applications. More specifically I was planning on creating video based projects using the high frame rate capabilities of the Sony RX100V. I have been exploring high speed video for a few years. The Phantom cameras are amazing instruments, however access is very hard to come by and quite costly to rent for experimentation purposes. 

The goal of my testing is to create professional quality slow motion product videos as comparable as possible to high end Phantom captured sequences. Some of the aspects necessary to making high speed video productions are the inclusion of automation, motion control and high output continuous lighting. I had already been using an Arduino for controlling timed events with a high level of precision. Controlling solenoids and even camera triggers leaves me free to finesse the more creative aspects of image creation whether still of video. 

One obvious way to enhance the dynamics of any video project is to move the camera. Pans, trucks and dollies - Oh My!  Much of my motion has been obtained using pneumatics. They are economical and fast, however speed control is harder than using motors either steppers or dc motors with encoders. 

Lighting for high speed video is another significant challenge. Considering that in order to achieve good super slow motion you are shooting at an effective shutter speed of at least 1/1000th of a second. Now imagine that you may want a reasonable level of depth of field and in order to prevent streaking as much as possible your effective shutter speed has to go well beyond 1/2000th of a second. We've always had large tungsten lighting. We know that they can be very hot and costly to operate. LED lighting has been moving very fast as output levels rise and color quality has improved. High quality LED systems can also be very expensive, however any competent DIYer can assemble a high output LED source for less than $100 US.

This video, Pouring Brew is the first effort of the season. The pour itself has been automated in order to keep it consistent and controllable. I had not tried to move the camera or set in this series.

The next challenge for me was in the editing process. I had played around in editing programs before, but hadn't explored such features as speed ramping and even higher level retouching and color editing. 

Taking on these projects has been both challenging and rewarding. The knowledge gained will be valuable for future projects for myself and potential clients seeking to add more splash to their product's visual inventory.

Thanks for watching.

Jack