Testing The Kessler CineDrive With A High Speed Camera For Slow Mo Awesomeness

Tom Guilmette and Jon Connor got together at Kessler HQ to have some fun with a FasTec High Speed Camera mounted to a Kessler CineDrive. The CineDrive is able to perform programmable camera moves at high speed, and in this behind the scenes video Tom shows us their setups for various shots, which revolve around food.

As Tom points out, shooting at a high frame rate means you need lots of light. Even with a full light kit at their disposal, they still needed to shoot with their lens aperture set to f/2.8. This of course meant that focusing would be critical with a shallow depth of field. Part of what made using the CineDrive really shine though, was that they could program keyframed focus pulls for each shot. By recording a few test clips, they could accurately gauge focus along the programmed path and fine tune it.

The Kessler CineDrive is a motion control system that is integrated with several other Kessler components. This enables the user to program and repeat precision pans, tilts, focus pulls, exposure changes, dolly moves, and eventually completely controlled jib moves. I'm foaming at the mouth.

If you're curious about the FasTec camera, it was a TS4-100 that can shoot varied high speed frame rates, inversely proportionate to resolution. Here's a chart form the FasTec website:

If you've never heard of Tom Guilmette before, he's a Boston-based cinematographer who has worked on some cool projects over the years, and he shares a ton of great info about them on his website. To see more behind the scenes content from this shoot, including how they set off the fire alarm and drank wine from Walmart, head over to Tom's blog.