Here is the lighting diagram and photo of a recent phantom shoot.

The job called for 1000 frames per second with an area large enough to allow a very tall basketball player to run, jump and slam dunk the ball.

For high speed cinematography, it seems there is never enough light.

Rather than use tungsten, I designed a setup with HMI’s using Power Gems 300HZ ballasts, which are flicker free, even at 1000fps. HMI’s have approximately five times the light output of tungsten and run considerably cooler. They also consume far less energy. Lighting scenes like this are usually accomplished with massive quantities of tungsten units, namely 20K’s and T12’s, but this is a poor choice given the labor, time, and rigging involved in hanging 5 times the number of lights to achieve the same stop. Additionally, tungsten is not the best color for digital sensors, which are largely balanced for daylight. In short, it’s a huge struggle with tungsten for a poor color performance in the end.

I used a Phantom Flex in RAW mode, ISO 800, and shot a T4 with Arri Master Primes.

I was very happy with the results- I look forward to using the Phantom Flex 4K which will provide a larger image and more dynamic range, as this model has little forgiveness in highlight over exposure (tricky with white cyc!).