I thought I'd post my brief camera experience here because I found some helpful info searching old tw threads, but there didn't appear to be anything really recent.
I was looking for a camera for capturing tennis swings with some high speed capabilities, looking to spend around $200. Browsing the threads here, the Casio Exilim series seemed to come up a lot as it appeared to have some unique capabilities on the high-speed front at a low price range. In particular Fuzzy Yellow Balls' Will Hamilton spoke highly of the Casio EX-FH20 that apparently had been used for some of the early FYB youtube video high speed captures. I think it is an SLR camera (removable lens). Someone else recommended an EX-FS10.
Checking the casio website under high speed cameras brought up 2 models, the ZR100 and the ZR10. The main difference seems to be a better zoom mode on the ZR100 for $50 bucks more. These models are pocket cameras with built-in lens, and I think they are more recent models of the EX-FS10 recommended above.
Anyway, I found a youtube demonstration of the ZR100 high speed mode capturing a golf swing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N49Gw1ohgeY) and that seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. So I ordered the ZR100, an 8GB memory card, and this gorillapod tripod thingy for a total of about $250 from amazon.
I haven't had a camera in a while, but it was pretty straightforward to set-up. Just charge the battery in the external charger, insert and format mem. stick (if you don't have one, the camera's 52MB internal memory is used) and off you go.
There are different high speed modes. Here is the section in the manual that deals with them:
I messed around with shooting some tennis swings with the HS240 mode (240fps). I just picked the mode and hit record, I don't know if you can fine tune aperture or anything like that for better results. To stop recording you hit record again and a "*.mov" file is created on the memory stick in a handful of seconds. If you plug the camera into a PC with its USB cable, the camera shows up as a removable disk and you can copy the *.mov files do the PC hard drive. I tried this in ubuntu and it worked fine so I assume it would work fine in windows.
Here is a brief video that I edited together afterwards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du5zkgt5mrs
In terms of memory usage I found that recording 7-8 minutes at 240fps gave me a ~2GB file. As it is in slow mo the 7-8 minutes in realtime takes about 1hr to play. Rough numbers, with an 8GB stick you could probably run at 240fps for about 30 minutes continuously.
Overall I'm happy with this camera. I recommend it if you want to capture some slow motion video of your tennis strokes to get an outside perspective on areas that you can improve in and work on. As I said, I am not a camera expert, I don't know what the competition has to offer, but reading the reviews at amazon and some tw threads, it seems like the high speed capabilities of the casio exilim series are quite unique for pocket cameras at that price point.
I was looking for a camera for capturing tennis swings with some high speed capabilities, looking to spend around $200. Browsing the threads here, the Casio Exilim series seemed to come up a lot as it appeared to have some unique capabilities on the high-speed front at a low price range. In particular Fuzzy Yellow Balls' Will Hamilton spoke highly of the Casio EX-FH20 that apparently had been used for some of the early FYB youtube video high speed captures. I think it is an SLR camera (removable lens). Someone else recommended an EX-FS10.
Checking the casio website under high speed cameras brought up 2 models, the ZR100 and the ZR10. The main difference seems to be a better zoom mode on the ZR100 for $50 bucks more. These models are pocket cameras with built-in lens, and I think they are more recent models of the EX-FS10 recommended above.
Anyway, I found a youtube demonstration of the ZR100 high speed mode capturing a golf swing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N49Gw1ohgeY) and that seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. So I ordered the ZR100, an 8GB memory card, and this gorillapod tripod thingy for a total of about $250 from amazon.
I haven't had a camera in a while, but it was pretty straightforward to set-up. Just charge the battery in the external charger, insert and format mem. stick (if you don't have one, the camera's 52MB internal memory is used) and off you go.
There are different high speed modes. Here is the section in the manual that deals with them:
I messed around with shooting some tennis swings with the HS240 mode (240fps). I just picked the mode and hit record, I don't know if you can fine tune aperture or anything like that for better results. To stop recording you hit record again and a "*.mov" file is created on the memory stick in a handful of seconds. If you plug the camera into a PC with its USB cable, the camera shows up as a removable disk and you can copy the *.mov files do the PC hard drive. I tried this in ubuntu and it worked fine so I assume it would work fine in windows.
Here is a brief video that I edited together afterwards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du5zkgt5mrs
In terms of memory usage I found that recording 7-8 minutes at 240fps gave me a ~2GB file. As it is in slow mo the 7-8 minutes in realtime takes about 1hr to play. Rough numbers, with an 8GB stick you could probably run at 240fps for about 30 minutes continuously.
Overall I'm happy with this camera. I recommend it if you want to capture some slow motion video of your tennis strokes to get an outside perspective on areas that you can improve in and work on. As I said, I am not a camera expert, I don't know what the competition has to offer, but reading the reviews at amazon and some tw threads, it seems like the high speed capabilities of the casio exilim series are quite unique for pocket cameras at that price point.
