Pirate own and operate several specialist high speed 16mm and S16mm film cameras as well as three different high speed video cameras, covering a wide range of budgets, qualities and speed ranges.
The video camera range comprises:
Phantom HD GOLD Hire - True Hi-Definition footage (1080i or 1080p) at up to 1000fps and 2k footage (2048 x 2048 pixels) at up to 550fps.
Photron Fastcam BC2 Rental - a superb HD colour camera giving film-like images at 2,000 fps at 1920 x 1080 and 5,000fps at SD 16:9.
Photron Fastcam SA1.1 Rental - a Standard Definition camera working at a staggering 9,700 fps at 16:9 Standard Definition TV (1024 x 576 pixels).
NAC C3 - an analogue colour analysis camera also shooting at 125, 250 or 500fps onto S-VHS tape.
Motion Scope 500 - a digital black & white analysis shooting at 125, 250 or 500fps giving NTSC composite output.
The film camera range comprises:
Photec S16mm camera - a rotating-prism super 16mm film camera shooting from 100 - 3,000 fps.
Photo-Sonics Actionmaster-500 - a pin-registered standard 16mm film camera shooting at 10 - 500 fps.
Photo-Sonics Actionmaster-200 - an ultra compact pin-registered standard 16mm film camera shooting at 24 - 200 fps.
If you're thinking of ideas for shots, a great resource on the web belongs to David G. Alciatore. And if you'd like a technical discussion about the pros and cons of film vs digital, read this.
Some high quality examples of high speed shots can be found on the Vision Research site.
