Using slow motion video for diagnostic purposes
 

I've known that the Sony RZ10 IV camera I have had the capability to do slow motion video, but just didn't find much reason to try it till yesterday. I was planning on taking a look at the C5Z to see if I could figure out where that clicking noise I was hearing was coming from, figuring maybe it was the serpentine belt with a nick in it or something. But with normal video, it was spinning around too fast to be able to take a look at it very well.

So time to try out the slow motion video.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOS3Qi4Kd40


Seems to slow things down pretty well, and the quality of the video was still good enough to be able to see fine details as needed. As long as you have sufficient light, anyway. In order to do 960 frames per second, you need to have enough light to be able to muster shutter speeds of 1,000 frames per second or so.

Now although this seems to work pretty well, it didn't work as I had expected. What the camera does is to grab a set amount of time of video, and then the camera goes zombie on you while it is processing the video internally to produce the final result. The video grabbed is rather short, something like just a several seconds, although I didn't really measure it. The processing can be MANY times longer than that when you are trying to use the 960 fps. So I'm not really keen on using it for anything like real time action, since you would likely miss a LOT while the camera is tied up doing the processing. On the bright side, you do set the camera up for the slow motion and then just wait for the right moment to press the video button, but when using it for people, animals, or really anything that might not be repeatable, I can see where you could lose some really good shots while your camera is dead to you.

But I guess this capability is just icing to the cake for an otherwise great camera, so I can't complain too much. For what I needed it for yesterday, it worked just fine.

Oh, I didn't see anything wrong with the serpentine belt or any of the pulleys, but after listening to it again, I believe it is the AC compressor cycling on and off. Probably just needs a shot of freon (or whatever they are using these days). So that will be for another day.

Incredible!
Andy :wavey: