iPhone 6 Slow Motion Tests To The Face | PRO EDU

Flour bombs to the head, water balloons bouncing off my face, ribbon dancing, beer pours, back flops, a ginger eating cinnamon, and silly string to the face. These are a few of of the things we tried today in slow mo on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus from Apple. Check out the results here.

240 frames per second in a hand held device is quite impressive. We’ve spent the last 5 hours shooting random ideas, hitting each other in the face with things in the studio, and jumping in ice cold pools. It’s been a great Friday to say the least. We shot this with two iPhone 6's and one iPhone 6+. Please note that this is not a test for the image stabilization built into the iPhone 6 Plus, so we won't cover or distinguish those shots. We also know these shots aren't the best and this won't win any awards.

I will also preface this article by saying our studio PRO EDU has no prior experience whatsoever in slow motion or high frame rate editing. We are just a bunch of goof balls playing with new phones and hitting each other in the face with stuff. All of the footage we edited is SOOC and was slowed down to 15% in Final Cut Pro X. We decided to not use other plugins to enhance slow motion even further. This isn’t a review on the new iPhone camera or anything to do with photos, but here are my initial thoughts on the slo-mo camera on the new iPhone Sixes.

1.) Considerable improvement for subject tracking. The focus locking feature allows the subject in the frame to move considerably and the camera has very little problem keeping the subject in focus. Also does a great job balancing multiple exposures in one shot.

2.) The time-lapse feature is fantastic. I’m a big fan of setting up my phone and taking time-lapses and the technology built into the phone to stabilize a moving timelapse, or hyper lapse, is quite nice. I have been using the new Instagram App “Hyper-Lapse” which works with your current iPhone quite well. Having a time-lapse feature built into the native camera app is just an extreme convenience and nicer than having to update and maintain another app. 

3.) This won’t replace any professional high frame rate camera but will be a great BTS camera for our studio. This will replace our Go Pros for future shoots for time lapses.

4.) For me the iPhone 6 is the right size and the iPhone 6 plus looks downright goofy and barely fits in my pockets. I will be doing some more side by side tests of the image stabilization this weekend to see if there is a considerable difference in standard video shooting from the hand.

5.) We need as many options for Grip Gear for the iPhone as we do for Go Pros. We used Super Clamps and Master Clamps to secure the iPhone 6s but wanted the same options that we have for our Go Pros. 

6.) 240 FPS needs to be shot locked off, or from an incredibly smooth slider. We were using the One Man Crew slider for our beer pour, and the vibrations at the tops speeds created tremendous jittery effects making the shots almost unusable. I will note that the One Man Crew slider was not ideal for this and is really a slider for interviews at low speeds. It was just all we had to work with.

7.) Ability to adjust exposure up and down is a HUGE benefit and will allow for shooters to get more creative in their lighting choices.

8.) Expect to use about 300 MB of data per minute for all slo-mo video at 240 fps. If you are going to be doing a lot of video, get the 64GB or the 128GB model. 

9.) Like all high frame rate camera's, 240 fps needs s signifigant more amount of light to get a good exposure. So don't expect to get good slo mow in a lot of indoor settings unless its lit very well.

The music on this was generously provided by Mvstermind Einstein. Check him out, he's awesome.

Also big thanks to Michael Kraemer and Amy Reis for letting me hit you in the face with stuff and convince you eating cinnamon was a good idea.