Digital Camera question?

[Jase]

A friend videotaped my swing with his Iphone the other day and when I watched it I couldn't believe how different my swing was from what I though it looked like. I played a lot of golf from the age of 10-21 years old but now at 33 I only get out a couple times a season. But now I have the itch to improve my swing through video. Currently I have a Canon A610 that does video at 640x480 @ 30fps and 320x240 @60fps. The 60fps is getting me by right now but in V1 Home 2.0 the video looks pretty bad blown up (pixelated and blurry). I don't feel like spending a lot of money right now and have narrowed it down to two options for digital cameras. The new canon HS line (either the Elph 100 HS $175 or 300 HS $225) or a Casio EX-FH100 (probably used). The Casio has been out awhile and I have read all the good reviews on it for taping golf swings. The main being it has Shutter Speed adjustment while videotaping at 120 fps. The Canons have 120fps but you can not control the shutter speed. Both the Canon and Casio are at 640x480 pixels.

The Canon seems like a great choice for an all around camera as well as a High Speed camera for Analyzing swings. Does anyone have any experience on the Canon HS line? Does it work well in a frame by frame program like V1 Home. I realize that without shutter speed control the club head and shaft will be blurry, but will I still be able to work with that?

[Stretch]

Get the EX-FH100. It is the best camera available (at a reasonable price) for filming golf swings.

[k14]

Yeah get the FH100, I have an FC150 and am slightly disappointed I can't see the shaft very clearly when I swing. At that price it is a really good deal and not really any downsides vs the FH25 for the usage you are intending.

[Jase]

Thank you for the advice. Leaning towards the EX-FH100. The Canon just seems like a great all around camera to take anywhere with you. I realize this is a golf forum and it seems the FH100 is flat out a better camera to film a golf swing with.

Just curious what most people think the sweet spot is with the technology we have today, and not spending too much money.

Is it 720p @ 60 fps  or

480p @ 120 fps

The casios do 120fps (and 240 but i believe the frame size is too small) but they don't have a 60 fps frame size. Read a thread where Iacas explained his ideal golf camera.

[Stretch]

For analysis, 240 fps is generally preferred I think. 448 x 336 isn't all that pretty to look at, but with a sufficiently high shutter speed you get as much isolation of body movement and shaft position as you could really want.

[k14]

60fps is too slow, I had a JVC that did 60fps and it was pretty bad. I usually only got 3-4 frames from top of backswing to hitting the ball. With my FC150 I have been using 240fps and that is great. I think it is the ideal balance between fps and resolution. It is a bit grainy but not an issue. I will probably end up buying the FH100 to get the shaft blur gone. Its only money afterall!

[iacas]

They've stopped making the FH-100 so get them sooner rather than later.

$240 at Amazon.

[Jase]

Does anyone have or can someone point me to a file that was shot by any Casio or Camera that is 120 fps or 240 fps. I'd like to import it into V1 Home 2.0 and get an idea of what it would look like.

[CuppedTin]

Start out with the iSwing app on the iPhone. It's really cheap and a great way to look at your swing...

[jamo]

Does anyone have or can someone point me to a file that was shot by any Casio or Camera that is 120 fps or 240 fps. I'd like to import it into V1 Home 2.0 and get an idea of what it would look like.

Here is one shot at 210 fps on a Casio EX-FS10, which is the lowest-end Casio high speed camera. [VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlDKRXWaI-k[/VIDEO]

[k14]

Originally Posted by Jase

Does anyone have or can someone point me to a file that was shot by any Casio or Camera that is 120 fps or 240 fps. I'd like to import it into V1 Home 2.0 and get an idea of what it would look like.

Getting a raw file is difficult, they are like 600mb for 1 min give or take. I convert with windows movie maker before I upload to youtube. Here is a video taken at 240fps with my FC150

[Jase]

Thanks for the clips. K14 you were right that I was looking for a raw file to check out. Can see file size being a problem as you mentioned.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by k14

Getting a raw file is difficult, they are like 600mb for 1 min give or take. I convert with windows movie maker before I upload to youtube. Here is a video taken at 240fps with my FC150

The camera compresses files. You can't really get raw video, just the AVIs.

Here are a few files y'all can get for awhile:

http://thesandtrap.com/b/1.avi (23 seconds, 18.1 MB)

http://thesandtrap.com/b/2.avi (38 seconds, 29.9 MB)

They're indoors, so they're not as clear as you can get outdoors with a faster shutter, but they show things pretty well.

This video shows two videos that were shot at 120 FPS, i think. I scrub through them quickly, but still... "Weight Shift" versus "Pressure" . Also, YouTube compresses them, so you'll have to live with the two .avi files I linked to above. ;-)

240 FPS, I think: Furyk Feeling .

240 FPS: Hit and Stop/Weight Forward Drill .

[k14]

Yeah I think you know what I mean, the uncompressed avi/raw video file. MJPG to be specific

How come your files are so small? I just checked and a 71s video is 440mb taken at 240fps.Not quite the 600mb per minute I said but not far off.

[Stretch]

Hey Erik. What default settings (ISO, shutter, aperture) do you guys typically use shooting outdoors in reasonable light conditions? For example this clip of James recently:

Reason I ask is I'm getting quite a bit of noise/grain in my videos and although I've played around with the manual controls on the FH100 I haven't yet found what I consider to be a good "baseline". Pretty sure it's operator error rather than any major difference in the capabilities of the FH100 and FH25.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by k14

How come your files are so small? I just checked and a 71s video is 440mb taken at 240fps.Not quite the 600mb per minute I said but not far off.

I don't know what you're doing, but we don't even see files reaching 100 MB very often... the only times we get those are when we record two swings with a long pre-shot routine in the middle. These are straight off the camera. I don't know what you checked, but it seems wrong.

Originally Posted by Stretch

Hey Erik. What default settings (ISO, shutter, aperture) do you guys typically use shooting outdoors in reasonable light conditions? For example this clip of James recently:

Reason I ask is I'm getting quite a bit of noise/grain in my videos and although I've played around with the manual controls on the FH100 I haven't yet found what I consider to be a good "baseline". Pretty sure it's operator error rather than any major difference in the capabilities of the FH100 and FH25.

Auto ISO. 240 FPS (of course). 1/2000 ideally at a minimum, but 1/4000 or even faster if it's sunny out. Aperture you don't really set. There's another setting I'm forgetting but those are the basics. You will get some noise, particularly with the FH100, which has a slightly smaller sensor size than the FH25 IIRC.

[Jase]

Stretch, from my research on the EX-FH100 people say you have to adjust the ISO manually if you speed up the shutter speed. Auto ISO with a higher shutter speed tends to produce dark and grainy pictures. Well at least darker and grainer than if you set the ISO yourself to a higher setting.  Can't remember exact settings

The following was cut and pasted from a digital camera forum (not sure if linking is allowed to other sites)

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1015&message;=38026140&changemode;=1

"Just shoot at about 1/10,000 sec exposure in bright sunlight. You may have to manually increase the ISO as for my FH100. If ISO is left on AUTO my FH100 gives very dark images. I increase it manually to ISO 800, 1600, or 3200 and the images are bright. Indoors does not have enough light for short exposure times like 1/10,000 sec and there will be motion blur.

The camera that you buy should have a very fast shutter. My FH100 does an excellent job. Be aware that FH100, like most other CMOS cameras, has some minor Jello Effect which tends to give a slight false bend to golf clubs. I tested the Jello Effect for my FH100 with a rotating bar."

Also what Erik mentioned about the about the FH25 having a bigger sensor, better optics etc.

Is there a way to download youtube videos and then import them into V1 Home 2.0?

[iacas]

Originally Posted by Jase

Is there a way to download youtube videos and then import them into V1 Home 2.0?

You won't get them in their native .avi format.

Analyzr has a built-in YouTube downloader. ;-)