Sony Xperia ZX Premium (960FPS / 720p / 5 seconds)

[Mads Barnkob]

From Techradar review, the part about the slow motion filming: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/sony-xperia-xz-premium-review/3

There are three different slow motion modes to choose from. The entry-level Slow Motion option records at just 120fps, but gives you the added benefit of applying the slow motion effect after recording your video.

This means you can pinpoint the exact moment you want to slow down after filming, without having get the timing just right when shooting live.

The other two modes, Super Slow (one-shot) and Super Slow Motion, require you to capture your snippet of 960fps footage while recording – you can’t edit the slow motion section of your video afterwards.

Super Slow (one-shot) makes things easy, as all you do is tap the shutter key once and the XZ Premium will capture a five-second clip at 960fps. This does mean you don’t get any normal-speed video either side of your clip, but you’re likely to get a better slow motion result.

The Super Slow Motion mode is the full package. Select it and hit record and you’ll be filming at 720p, but an extra button is included on-screen – tap this at any point while you're recording and the XZ Premium will grab a quick super-slow-motion clip before immediately resuming normal-speed recording.

It can be difficult to time the right moment when in Super Slow Motion mode, so we’d recommend sticking to the one-shot option.

The slow-motion footage is recorded at 720p, so clarity can suffer – especially in low light and indoors, where results are generally grainy. Head outside though, and in good light the Sony Xperia XZ Premium produces the best slow-motion footage of any smartphone on the market.

Demonstration

Also another video of slow motion test:

/>
It seems that the last couple of years stand-alone high speed cameras like FPS1000 and Chronos 1.4 are getting a price worthy competitor, this phone comes at 40-50% of the price, has lower recording resolution, has much reduced recording time (who needs more then 5s for slow motion?), lacks the excellent interfaces for experiments that are found on the Chronos and there is of course also a issue with no threaded stand option, no other lenses etc.

But if you were looking for a new phone anyway, but also wanted a high speed camera, this is really a hard deal to beat. I can only hope that this will make FPS1000/Chronos 1.4 developers step up their game and achieve higher frame rates at 1080p than 1000fps.

[Mads Barnkob]

So I needed a new smartphone anyway and thought why not try this one out.

The first reviews I found of this phone's slow motion abilities was a little misleading, because it can not recoard 960 fps for 5 seconds, but it can record at 960 fps and the result is a 5 second long clip played back at 30 fps, which corresponds to a short burst of ~200 ms.

Here is my first test video, I had just gotten the phone hours earlier but was heading out on a business travel, so that is the kind of footage available, as passenger in a taxi and from the airport.

[Mads Barnkob]

I have now had some more time to play around with the phone and overall I am at the same impression as from the start, this is only for fun and giggles.

The 180 ms is simply too short to capture a full event of almost anything I tried it on, and if it is something that happens faster than this, its close to impossible to time the start of the burst at the right moment.

There is no manual control of shutter speed or ISO, there is in-fact no settings to adjust at all, only a record button that can be pushed.

This sequence of 5 clips is recorded in broad daylight, but due to the extreme amount of UV light from a 35 meter tall gas flame, the camera adjusted itself to this result, which is actually impressive enough that it will do that and you can see the details in a flame like that.

/>
I hope to find time to capture some capacitor bank explosions this weekend, but I do not have high hopes in terms of operating the bank and then also time the phone correctly

[Mads Barnkob]

I gave up completely on trying to capture a capacitor discharge into a copper wire, since the intense light of the explosion completely blinds the camera as it has no time to adjust ISO and shutter speed in time, so what you get is a lot of frames that are completely white, useless

It is only a toy for recording different every day happenings and enjoy the little things in slow motion, as the next two videos show. Jumping kids in slow motion is however also a good way to spend time with them

/>