40,000 Frames per Second for Just $3,500? Check Out the Chronos 1.4

Not too long ago, shooting at a thousand frames per second meant a huge rig and a massive bill. Now you can buy a camera that shoots 1,057 fps at around 720p, going up to an insane 38,565 fps albeit at a resolution of 335 x 96. All of this now arrives in a package that costs a mere $3,500.

The Chronos 1.4 from Canadian manufacturer Kron Technologies has suddenly made high-speed, super-slow motion filmmaking significantly more accessible. Potato Jet (a.k.a. Gene Nagata) met up with science enthusiast and filmmaker Chris Rollins to see how it performs, testing a few of the different frame rates, marveling at the technology, and generally finding daft things to smash and blow up in the name of research.

Whether you would buy a slow motion camera even at this price really depends on whether you can find a use for it, but you can’t argue that it looks like a lot of fun. Recording time on the entry level model is a mere four seconds, but once you scale that up to 1,000 fps, that’s probably more than enough for most situations. The end trigger seems to make it very simple to use, with the camera constantly writing to the buffer and saving the last four seconds of footage to the memory card as soon as you release the record button. 

You can find the full specifications at the Kron Technology website and this data sheet offers a handy overview.

If you have ideas for how you would use this tiny beast and have thoughts on whether the price makes it seem like a viable investment, be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Andy Day's picture

Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

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5 Comments

Wow, that is amazing. Tho I think unless you had a particular need, the novelty would soon wear off.
You prolly need a high speed camera to keep up with our hyper presenter.

I think the newer FHD camera with either 16GB or 32GB of memory for 5 or 11 seconds of recording would be the more popular option, even at close to double the price. Just the fact that it has a higher, more standard resolution that better fits normal workflows for a higher quality result makes it the better choice.

I've played a bit with high-speed filming, and find that I run out of subjects that really need to be shot beyond 1000 fps, which the Sony RX100 mkIV can do at amazing quality for ~ $500. Here are some bees taken with the RX100 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNEuTfuze8k

This looks lots of fun, if either you have disposable income for such a toy, or if it should become readily available in the rental market.

96p... I don’t see much use for that. Post a 240p nowadays on YouTube and you get cursed beyond redemption.