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Filming TV screens at 380,000 fps shows exactly how they produce “moving” images

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Modern display technology is pretty amazing. It’s come such a long way since its early days of black & white. And since shifting from the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TVs of the 90s to flat panel Plasma, LCD and OLED technology, they’ve come even further. But how do they actually draw that image on the screen and make it look like things are moving across the screen?

Obviously, pixels themselves do not move. It’s all an illusion. Still images played back rapidly, and our brain’s persistence of vision takes care of the rest. But you don’t really see exactly what’s going on until it’s filmed at over 380,000 frames per second and slowed down. Which is exactly what Gavin and Dan at the Slow Mo Guys have done.

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How to record slow-motion sound for a tomato exploding at 60,000fps

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Have you ever wondered how ultra slow motion videos get their sound recorded? They don’t just record the real sound and slow it down along with the footage. In this video, Destin Sandlin from Smarter Every Day walks you through the process of recording sounds for slow-motion videos. Particularly, for a tomato exploding at 60,000 fps and a few other fun slo-mo videos.

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This hypnotizing video of slo-mo lightning took 30 days, 20,000 miles and 10TB of data

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Thunderstorms are awe-inspiring, whether you watch them live, in photos or in videos. But videographer and photographer Dustin Farrell has made a slow-motion video that makes thunderstorm more enchanting than ever.

Dustin chased storms during the summer of 2017 and collected his best shots in a short film titled Transient. It shows lightning in slow motion and turns a sudden flash of light into a hypnotizing electrical drawing in the sky. If you enjoy watching the lightning, you’ll enjoy it even more in slow motion.

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The secret to filming fast moving objects at 25 million frames per second is mirrors

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As much as I love going out and using gear and creating stuff with it, I can’t help but get excited about the geeky technical side of photography and video, too. This particular video from Curious Droid talks about ultra high speed cameras. And while the Panasonic GH5 with its 180fps 4K footage is quite impressive, we’re talking cameras that shoot millions of frames per second.

I had wondered in the past how cameras had managed to track objects in slow motion moving at or over the speed of sound. And we’ve all seen the nuclear test footage of bombs exploding in slow motion. But how did they manage this? Especially given the technology of the day? Turns out, it’s all down to mirrors.

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This is the world’s fastest slider doing slow motion

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We all remember The Matrix and Neo dodging bullets. It inspired many enthusiasts to create the bullet time effect on the budget, and there have been some pretty creative solutions. Photographer and filmmaker Daniel DeArco has made the world’s fastest camera slider, which alone is pretty impressive. But he also paired it with slow-motion shooting, in order to get the effect similar to the bullet time. The result is awesome, and he shares some sample shots and the BTS video.

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4 ways to get silky smooth stable video footage

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Getting clean stable footage is often one of the more difficult challenges with video. Especially while you’re still figuring everything out. Recently, we showed you several tips for getting stable handheld footage. Even relatively smooth handheld footage, though can benefit from a little extra assistance.

As technology advances, there are many ways to make your footage more stable. Using both software and hardware solutions. This video from YouTuber eevnxx goes through four of those methods to help get your footage as smooth as possible.

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A Slow Mo Guy talks about the challenges of shooting high speed slow motion video

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High speed photography for stills presents a whole lot of challenges, just for a single image. When you’re trying to capture a thousand, ten thousand or a hundred thousand of them every second, those challenges quickly compound.

Whether stills or video, the key ingredient is light, and lots of it. This is why The Slow Mo Guys often spend their time shooting outdoors. It also explains why they seem to spend most of their time in states like Texas and Nevada. But Gavin Free, one of the Slow Mo Guys, has posted up a video on their second channel going through some of the other technical challenges they face when filming.

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Combine regular, fast, and slow motion footage for mind bending video effects

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Fundamentally, for me, photography’s about playing with time. Either you’re freezing a moment of it, or you’re capturing a lot of it into a single image. There’s a lot we can do with those two principles, but ultimately you’re creating a still image. This image only shows one of those two things. A moment frozen, or lots of moments mashed together.

With video, we get other options. Obviously, we can shoot in realtime. But, we can also speed it up with timelapse, or grind our scene to a near halt with slow motion. Video also has the advantage of not being just a single image, but many images played back in sequence. In this video, Justin Odisho explores mixing different speeds of footage together to create some rather interesting effects. He even reverses one clip for a very odd result.

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25 airbags making a super slow motion rainbow explosion is the best thing you’ll see today

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We’re used to seeing The Slow Mo Guys impress us with some pretty amazing things. They make even the mundane look amazing, and show us things in completely new ways. This, though, has to be one of their most beautiful videos ever.

Back in 2014, they exploded a car airbag at 2500fps and it looked very cool. Recently, though, they decided to up the ante with 25 of the things. Not only that, they turned each one into an incredible powder paint cannon. With each going off in sequence, it produces the most spectacular rainbow cloud flying through the air.

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10 shooting tips to make amazing slow motion sequences

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Shooting slow motion is now easier than ever. Many cameras being released now will shoot 60fps. They may only do it at 1080p, but they can do it. If your final project is 24fps, that means you can slow down 2.5x without losing a single frame. If you’ve got a camera that shoots 120fps or 240fps, then you can slow things down even further. With 1,000fps cameras for our phones on the way, we can go even more slow-mo crazy.

But how can you use slow motion effectively? This video from Simon Cade at DSLRguide goes a long way toward answering that question. Some of the tips are technical, and some are purely creative. The why is just as important as the how when it comes to using slow motion, if not more so. Because if you don’t have a good reason why you want to use it, then the how doesn’t matter.

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