Not surprisingly, I’ve been asked how the videos are made, especially the one for Cirrus ISM. I should have known to take more photos as we set up the video, but I didn’t document it well enough. I’ll know better for next time!
I have a small amount of studio space where I set up a black backcloth, Laserdock laser and RED DSMC2 Gemini camera. I used the Gemini for its fantastic low light abilities which was going to be necessary to capture the effect at 4K @ 120fps. The lens is a Canon 180mm L Macro lens. It’s one of my favourite lenses.
To create the effect I set up the laser to scan vertically in a line and synchronized the scan rate to the shutter of the camera to avoid noise bars. Being ever so careful as the laser is powerful enough to damage eyes and camera sensors (never look directly into a laser, never point a laser at people or reflective surfaces and never have a camera look into the laser beam) I set the camera perpendicular to the laser, shooting some fog from a small fog machine into the air.
And because this is not the kind of thing you do on your own, I had my good friend Rupert visiting from the UK and he was able to help me out.
As the laser scanned, it cut through the fog and we could see the fantastic swirly patterns. And every now and again dust particles in the air were vaporized by the beam creating sparkles.
We shot a lot of footage that day, and even at 120fps I barely had enough really good stuff to make the Cirrus ISM video.