A GoPro spinning at 1800rpm looks like it’s entering a wormhole to another universe
Jan 6, 2020
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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It’s difficult to come up with original GoPro footage these days. Everything’s just been done. But this is something I haven’t seen before. YouTuber Mr. Michal secured what looks like a GoPro Hero 7 Silver one into his lathe and spun it at various speeds up to 1800 revolutions per minute.
At slower speeds, it looks pretty cool, like a handheld motorised gimbal in “vertigo” mode. As the speed increases, though, so does the nausea factor. But at certain rpms, you see the rotational speed sync up with the frame rate and the shutter speed and it gets pretty interesting. At 1800rpm it gets very cool.
The video starts off fairly tame, spinning at a modest 14rpm. Then it goes up to 22,rpm then 35rpm and by 56rpm it’s already starting to feel a little dizzying. At 90rpm you’ll definitely want to be sitting down and by 112rpm it’s already starting to look a bit of a mess. But on he goes through 140rpm, 180, 224, 280, 355, 450, 560, and 710 until we start to see things sync up around 900rpm. After brief stints at 1140rpm and 1200rpm, we finally reach 1800rpm.
It’s certainly not your standard way of moving a camera, and it bothers me somewhat that it wasn’t positioned in the lathe jaws centred around the axis of the lens, but rather central to the whole camera. Of course, if the lens had been centred, it probably would’ve thrown the balance of the whole thing off and wouldn’t be able to get up to that speed and stay stable.
It would be interesting to see footage with the shutter speed and framerate manually adjusted at different RPMs to see how it affects the weird warping effects and the different patterns it would produce as everything syncs up. Shooting at a high 240fps frame rate (he’d have to switch to a Hero 8 Black, of course) with moving subjects in front and slowing it down to 24fps on playback could also make for some very interesting footage.
It’s maybe worth mentioning that you probably shouldn’t try this at home.
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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100 responses to “A GoPro spinning at 1800rpm looks like it’s entering a wormhole to another universe”
This looks insane! I love it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDMSRY3HMdM
This is exactly what I thought of when I saw it! :D
So sad he didn’t centered it right.
Okay ? thanks ????? I had too stop watching
Somehow this was actually quite funny. Put a smile on my face.
A little sad though, that it seems like the GoPro doesn’t have a fast enough shutter speed for action.
Never ever dreamed of doing that when I was into operating lathes. So neat.
Lathe clamping is different
Some people have to much time on there hands
Strange because the lens of the gopro is not in the center of the spinning machine like in the video…
Yes, the spindle-clamp at the opposite end is certainly filmed as being centred with every change of RPM…
The change in location of the objects in the distance is small based on the offset of the lens. I was wondering the same thing until I thought about it a bit.
At least once hit 90rpm when states 1800?!
The fuck are you talking about 90?…. smh
Amazed you could lower the clamp pressure so low as to not crush the camera.
Sorry. At first I thought it was a hydraulic chuck. My bad.
cant see a purpose, maybe its art? the fast rpm wasn’t a problem but the slow speeds really spun me out (pun intended)
Cat hypnotized itself watching this.
Somewhere a GoPro is asking for a couple of Tylenol.
And thats how to kill Thanos
would’ve been better if theyd centred the screen
Judging by the angle of the sun. I guess machinist day drink too.
its easy to recrate this when you eat shit on a dirtbike going 40+ and your gopro goes flying into oblivion
Good Camara
That’s a good practice for high rolls with the quad. 10k degrees or even hight ?????
that was cool , I’m impressed that the GoPo didn’t explode or fail in some way
I want a lathe that changes gears like that! I’d be changing speed just for the hell of it. Sounds like a shotgun.
That was cool. More impressed that the GoPro held up.
Sell it to them for an advertisement. Hell I’m going buy one now just because!
That was DOPE!!!! Just what i needed!!! Thank you!!!
The build quality of the gopro is impressive
Now use the hero max and test this MAX HYPERSMOOTH
I could watch anymore I started tripping lol
Must…
buy…
Gopro…
Honistly made me throw up my dinner watching it spin
Bet if you can time travel in that phase unless create enough density to withstand all of the laws of physics lmao jk
amazing
Thanks that was badass, and I got a free one!??
Another cool trick is to take video into a tv or monitor showing the video you’re taking of the monitor. Try it.
Someone has too much time on their hands.
Shall we try 10k?!
“My god, it’s full of stars!”
.. AND?? ?
You can guesstimate the fps of the camera based on the fact that it started to alias between 450 and 560rpm (must be between 225 and 280Hz). Turns out it’s 240fps – cool demonstration of a signal processing concept!
He should try turning it at 480rpm (or any multiple of 240) to then see if the image would stand still!
There are a lot of science and engineering minded girls and women out there. I hope you meant that you wish sexism and institutional misogyny had not prevented women for advancing and excelling in those fields for so long.
Anthony Ambrosio The lens wouldn’t need to be centered. If the rotational speed exactly matched the capture rate the picture would look still because every frame would be captured at the same place. However, this would require higher speeds. ie for 60 fps capture, a rotating speed of 60 RPS or 3600 RPM would be needed to look like a still image. At that point though, you’d likely have an issue with how long it take for each frame to be captured. The longer this capture takes, the more blurry the image will look.
It’s a CMOS sensor, not a CCD. So there’s rolling shutter to deal with…
Ludovico Verducci Glad someone brought up the RPM vs FPS inconsistency. That being said, there are ways to minimize the motion blur. I’m fairly sure gopro has an advanced setting where you can adjust your Shutter-Speed without it effecting the frame rate. This is how you adjust the shutter angle. The smaller the shutter angle, the less motion blur. Think Saving private Ryan brought to the extreme.
Ludovico Verducci it’s easier to have to less exposure than more. Yes, the GoPro will have quick enough response
Thru a wormhole!
eureka you may be on to something here!
Thank God for my ability to fast forward to last minute
Gosh I’m dizzy
this should come with a health warning! ?
Wow … now everyone can view how I see the world after too damned many tequila shooters. And they wonder why I sometimes stagger a little bit.
Cool
That has got to be one of the dumbest videos I have ever skipped through…..
They all Made me sick I skipped to the last two
Be cool if you could put the video on your phone then put the phone in the chuck to make the video stay still
Wow
Anyone else almost puke?
I’m impressed that a GoPro can function under the g-load.
I would’ve guessed that above a
certain speed the framerate would be slow enough that it wouldn’t look like rotation anymore, just random angled shots due to the strobe effect. But I guess the software tries to smooth it out?
If this were a camera using film, (or a really fancy digital camera), yes. But a frame on a digital camera isn’t captured all at once. You can prove this to yourself by getting out a cheap camera (like the one on a smartphone) and recording a video while rapidly moving the camera left and right. If you watch the video back, it gives the world a “wobbly” effect. Essentially, it captures the image one row at a time, so row 0 is at a different time than row 1, and so on and so forth. Here’s a great video explaining the effect: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dNVtMmLlnoE
If the GoPro did capture a frame all at once, I believe that 1800 rpm would appear to be a camera rotating clockwise very slowly (assuming that the shutter speed is much greater than the rotation speed).
lol! machine shop.
I can’t believe I just watched that. Interesting spin on the GoPro. No pun intended Jonathan
So thats how they did this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksuPdtwHCE4
exactly what I was thinking
Stuck it in a lathe! ?
Just here to say I’m shocked he was able to get the go-pro to actually start recording, and the battery lasted long enough to make an 8 minute video. ?
From too much to drink to another Batman scene transition.
That was almost exciting
@6:24 see 1400 rpm
With an independent chuck they could have centered the lens. Also a shame they didn’t have variable speed, probably could have synced the image up like an old TV.
Alex why?
Already seen it on yt, but thanks for embedding the video rather than just pulling it from yt, more media sights should be like you
What’s a wormhole ??♂️
Another name for an Einstein-Rosen bridge …
DMT trip at 1800RPM????
I’m surprised it can handle that kind of centripetal force
A 4 jaw chuck. Why not center the lens?
Why does it change directions at 1400? 60Hz lights? I think I know what we will be doing at work tomorrow.
How does one know what what a worm hole looks like lol
Should have played a bit of doctor who theme in the background…
Very cool!!! Thanks for doing this
I’d love to see this done with a horizontally mounted Insta 360 One X!
It would be interesting to see how long the FlowState stabilisation could keep up, that’s for sure! lol
I felt like I was supposed to die while I watched this. I made it. But I no longer feel feelings.
My ship got stuck in a wormhole once.
It didn’t look like this at all.
? I couldn’t watch for long
Surprised the centrifugal force didn’t damage anything in the GoPro
Now I know what my wheels see when I’m driving down the road ?
Even changing the background and holding it at that speed longer would be cool
Wee!
I’m surprised it didn’t mess with the chemicals in the batteries.
best vid ive seen this year, very surprised gopro dint fall apart or fail to record at those rpms
with 3600RPM theoretically the video would become an image, bc of the 60FPS cam (my calculations might be wrong)
No, I don’t think so… I believe the reason the image “stabilizes” because the camera makes one full rotation over the time period of a frame capture. Let’s look at the 1800 FPS footage. We can see that it A approximately appears to be an image rotating clockwise. Now, if we look at the footage of the camera at slower speeds, like 14 rpm, we see the footage is actually rotating counter-clockwise. So, at 1800 rpm the camera is completing just short of a rotation per capture (because the footage appears to be rotating backwards). I believe that if the camera were to rotate slightly above 1800 rpm, the footage would appear still.
At 3600 rpm, as you suggested, I believe that the footage would still look very blurry (rolling shutter effect) but it would appear to rotate clockwise twice as fast as it did at 1800 rpm.
her a musicvideo i made 2014 with the GoPro spinning on a car wheel
https://vimeo.com/84162988
here a music video I did 2014. just made with a GoPro spinning on a car wheel.
https://vimeo.com/84162988
The lens wasn’t centered in the chuck jaws but on the spinning axis of the jaws. That’s why the end point of the lathe stays in the center of the image. For the window to be in the center of the image, they would have had to move the lathe in line with the exact center of the window pane. May have been hard to move a 500 kg machine around the shop and raise it by a meter in height…
Also, you can tell that the recording speed of the camera is around 30 fps, Proof of that is the synchronising of the image. Any rotational speed on the lathe that is an exact multiple of the camera’s frame rate will show the objects at the same place in a given period of time. Look at the window at 1800 rpm. It slowly moves clockwise (same rotational direction as the lathe) so the lathe’s speed is slightly faster that a multiple of the camera’s frame rate.
4-jaw chuck needed for centering of the lens