Phantom v5 and/or other high speed camera
 

Has anyone ever used a Phantom v5?

My boss saw Nike's "Swing Portrait" with Tiger Woods (http://www.nike.com/nikegolf/swingportrait/) which was shot with one and came to me and said "I want to do that!" In fact she wants to do a series called How Art Works and do that with a ballet dancer, a jazz drummer, Shakespearean actors sword fighting, a violinist, whatever we can think of.

I think it'll be really cool, but now I have to figure out how to do it, preferably on an 'arts education' budget which is more than nothing, but less than the $2k/day that is the only price I've found so far for renting the Phantom.

If the Phantom is out of my price range what other options do I have?
-- Do I find some other camera to rent?
-- Do I crank up the shutter on the camera I've got? The manual says it goes to 1/2000 and we'll be in a studio with plenty of lights to compensate.
-- And if I do that, what do I have to not forget to do when I capture and edit?
-- Is there some completely out of the box solution that I'm just not thinking of?
-- If you've used the phantom, how did it go? Have you got any advice?

Any help brainstorming an approach to this would be great.

Smile,
Kris

1- You might be able to get a good deal on a relevant camera. Rental houses tend to give deals to indie films for example. Is the video non-profit?

Also, sometimes production drops during the Winter and there is less demand for cameras... so you may be able to get a deal there too. It doesn't hurt to ask nicely.

2- The budget on the Nike Gold spot may be very high. They are paying for people who know how to use the equipment, who are very good at what they do, and they may also have needed a lot of light (their key light was also a soft light source, and those tend not to be as efficient / they don't have great throw).

I have no idea what their actual production budget was, but it could easily have been in the ballpark of $100k (excluding Tiger Wood's fee). On some level, there's a lot of waste that goes on with a budget that big. However, it does guarantee a certain level of quality.

3- Another option may be to use a cheaper camera, and combine that with slow motion software such as Shake (or Twixtor, etc.) to slow things down further (i.e. 2X, 4X, 10X). If the motion is predictable, these programs will work pretty well. For weird motion like smoke, noise, and water, these programs will not work well at all.