Cheapest camera to shoot high speed video?

[djmck30]

Quick query, looking for suggestions -

Person at work's son is looking for a camera to shoot high-speed video to record and analyse their golf swing. Someone has suggested to them the Nikon Coolpix P100, but at circa £280 it's a bit expensive

Can anyone suggest a more cost-effective alternative that can shoot at high speed (the Nikon has a 120fps 'sport mode') or would otherwise be suitable for this purpose? It must be able to slow down the swing for analysis.

It would be just for this purpose, they aren't in the least bit interested in doing any actual photography.

Thanks !

[Simpo Two]

The Gadget Show tried a camera with 'high-speed video' in it. However they found that to get the frame rate, the ISO was so high that the images were unusable. Maybe there are better ones, but I find the whole concept a bit too good to be believed.

I'd try a proper camcorder where you can set the shutter speed (think of helicopter blades strobing). To do the job properly of course will cost £££, as ever.

[jonnylarge]

The Gadget Show was right...you need excellent light to get the best out of these cameras (more on light later).

Casio make the best (and I'd say only) affordable ones at the moment, and the have about five in their high speed range (http://www.exilim.co.uk/exilimhighspeed/). I own a Casio EX-F1 and have quite a few movies on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jondla...

There's a few car wheelspins in there, and you will see that those in the snow and sunshine produce excellent results. Those vids indoors (not the car wheelspins!) look a lot darker. Hopefully it'll give you an idea of lighting performance.

The other thing to bear in mind as the resolution. The professional high speed/super slow motion cameras, such as the Phantom (http://www.visionresearch.com/) can shoot big resolutions. I think the latest Phantom recently announced will be able to do 2,800fps at 1080p (http://gizmodo.com/5515993/phantom-flex-camcorder-shoots-1080p-video-at-2800fps).

In contrast the resolutions and speeds that my EX-F1 can do:
1.920 x 1080, Full HD, Stereo
1.280 x 720, HD, Stereo
336 x 96, 1200fps, without sound
432 x 192, 600fps, without sound
512 x 384, 300fps, without sound
512 x 384, 30-300fps, without sound
640 x 480, STD Stereo

...and these are all subject to time, buffer and memory limits.

I do know professionals (golf coaches, personal trainers, etc) who use this camera to view performance and posture.

Just to comment on the lighting - you can buy lights for these recording conditions if you need, but they need to be Direct Current lights (rather than Alternating Current lights, which are the ones that exist in your house). AC runs at 50 Hz - think that it switches on and off 50 times a second. High speed footage in these conditions would exagerate this and you'll find that every few frames of your playback will be dimly lit, whilst the next few will be brightly lit - it will appear as flickering. I haven't researched this type of DC lighting but I thought you should be aware.

Personally, I'm really chuffed having this sort of technology at my disposal. I actually bought it a year or so back, imported via DigitalRev on ebay and I would recommend that supplier just as much.

[djmck30]

thanks for the replies

I will tell him to have a look at the Casio ones as the lower end seems more in his price range, which is the main concern rather than the ability to do thousands of fps! He just wants something relatively cheap that can slow his swing down 2-3 times for some self-analysis