Camera
Video: Recording bouncy bugs with a Phantom camera at 73,000 fps to see how they move
| The correct maneuver to perform when you see someone in public you don’t want to talk to. |
Springtails are small organisms that move so quickly that the human eye can’t perceive their motion. They’re very common and easy to find but challenging to observe and even harder to understand. Cameras, at least typical ones, are unable to keep up with the small, speedy hexapods. Dr. Adrian Smith, head of the Evolutionary Biology and Behavior Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University, recorded springtails at 73,000 frames per second to better understand springtail locomotion, which has previously been shrouded in mystery.
Before digging into how Dr. Smith captured the video, it’s worth discussing springtails as their nature. Springtails are hexapods, meaning they have six legs, but they’re not insects. Springtails are wingless arthropods with internal mouthparts. The organism is in the collembola order, one of three in the class ‘entognatha.’ It’s not clear how closely related springtails are to the other two species in the same order, the Dirplura and Protura. Despite DNA sequencing, there remains some debate on the evolutionary history of springtails and how related the species’ history is to other arthropods.
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| Image courtesy of Dr. Adrian Smith |
To keep things simple, Dr. Smith refers to springtails as ‘bugs.’ That said, there’s not much that’s simple about understanding springtails. Limited research of the organism has turned up little concerning understanding how springtails get around. The organism is so small that it’s hard to see and so incredibly fast that it’s impossible to observe without the aid of very high-speed cameras.
Last year, Dr. Smith attempted to learn more about springtails by recording them at 6,000 frames per second. Even this high speed was too slow to deliver a full picture of the bugs in motion. He upped the frame rate to 10,000 fps, but even this wasn’t quite enough.
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| Image courtesy of Dr. Adrian Smith |
Using a newer Phantom camera, the VEO1310s, Dr. Smith recorded springtails at 73,000 fps. At this speed, the camera records black and white video that is 240 pixels high, but it’s enough to see the organism in a way nobody else ever has.
Smith says ‘I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say no one has seen a springtail like this before […] I feel like it’s not exactly right to say I’m filming these animals in slow motion. I’m not using the camera to exaggerate or prolong what they’re doing: I’m just trying to see it. I’m trying to meet these animals at the timescale at which they’re behaving, and that turns out to be really, really hard.’ As Dr. Smith says in the video below, ‘Pretty much any recording that captures a springtail jump in detail is capturing something new.’
As you can see in the video, springtails propel themselves forward from the surface of the water and perform ‘astonishingly fast’ backflips. In one example, a springtail rotates at a speed approaching 300 backflips per second.
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| This composite image shows a springtail jumping forward at about a 45° angle on the surface of water. Image courtesy of Dr. Adrian Smith. |
The semi-aquatic bug can walk on water and propel themselves forward at roughly a 45° angle using a water-resistant appendage tucked underneath their bodies called the furcula. The tail doesn’t break the surface tension, allowing springtails to use the indentation in the water as a sort of springboard. Springtails have hydrophilic appendages, meaning that their claws stick to the water, which provides traction. On dry land, however, their movement is less regular. Nonetheless, even at 10,000 fps, it’s impossible to get the full picture of the bug.
At 73,000 fps, Dr. Smith captured video of a springtail stuck on its back. What was unfortunate for the creature resulted in what Dr. Smith refers to as possibly the luckiest thing he’s caught on camera. The incident sheds new light on the furcula’s role in the springtail’s locomotion, and you can check it out near the end of the video above.
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| Springtails may be abundant, but there has been little research done to better understand them. A big reason for the lack of research is likely how difficult the organism is to observe. |
We had the chance to speak with Dr. Smith and ask him a bit more about his research and how he captures his amazing videos. He uses a Venus Optics Laowa 60mm f/2.8 Ultra-Macro lens to capture most of his slow-motion video. He also sometimes pairs the lens with extension tubes for even closer shots.
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| Dr. Smith has multiple macro lenses, but his go-to lens is the Laowa 60mm f/2.8 Ultra-Macro |
He tells us that of all the gear he uses, the most important is lighting. The shots in the video above are shot against an illuminated background, which is an LED shot through diffusion material. For the front lighting, an ultra-powerful LED array specially built for high-speed video is required. In this case, Dr. Smith uses lights from Visual Instrumentation Corporation.
There’s a lot of preparation and post-production work that goes into producing his videos. Smith locks down the camera, lights and set, and records as much as possible. The footage is then composited in post. During post-production, he also spends a lot of time removing noise grain from the high-speed footage. He adds, ‘And of course, bug wrangling. Endless hours of bug wrangling. These springtails are so tiny and fragile that the best thing to use is a small fine paintbrush to move them around onto the filming set.’ The set itself is a clear plastic party cup filled to the brim with water.
To see more incredible high-speed videos from Dr. Smith and his team, visit the Ant Lab YouTube channel. You can also follow Dr. Adrian Smith on Twitter and Instagram
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Camera
Pentax K-1 and K-1 II firmware updates include astrophotography features (depending on where you live)
Yesterday, Ricoh quietly released firmware 2.50 for its Pentax K-1 and K-1 II DSLRs. However, the features you can expect to gain from this update may depend on your geography.
Ricoh’s English-language firmware pages for the K-1 and K-1 II state that firmware 2.50 delivers “Improved stability for general performance.”
However, astute Pentax users noted that Ricoh’s Japanese-language firmware pages (translation) indicate that the update also includes a limited feature called “Astronomical Photo Assist,” a collection of three new features designed for astrophotography: Star AF, remote control focus fine adjustment, and astronomical image processing.
Star AF is intended to automate focusing on stars when using autofocus lenses. Rather than manually focusing on a bright star and changing your composition, it promises to let you compose your shot and let the camera focus.
Remote control fine adjustment allows users to adjust focus without touching the lens and requires Pentax’s optional O-RC1 remote. Astronomical image processing will enable users to make in-camera adjustments to astrophotography images, including shading correction, fogging correction, background darkness, star brightness, celestial clarity, and fringe correction.
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| Astronomical image processing on the K-1 and K-1 II will enable users to make in-camera adjustments to astrophotography images, including shading correction, fogging correction, background darkness, star brightness, celestial clarity, and fringe correction. |
According to Ricoh, Astronomical Photo Assist is a premium feature that must be purchased and costs ￥11,000 for an activation key (about $70 at current exchange rates).
Although these astrophotography features appear to be Japan-only for now, a Ricoh representative tells us, “Ricoh Imaging Americas confirmed that the premium firmware features for the PENTAX K-1 and PENTAX K-1 Mark II will eventually be available to US customers.”
Firmware update 2.50 for both the K-1 and K-1 II is available for download from Ricoh’s website.
As part of our twenty fifth anniversary, we’re looking back at some of the most significant cameras launched and reviewed during that period. Today’s pick was launched seven years ago today* and yet we’re only quite recently stepping out of its shadow.
The Nikon D850 is likely to be remembered as the high watermark of DSLR technology. We may yet still see impressive developments from Ricoh in the future (we’d love to see a significantly upgraded Pentax K-1 III), but the D850 was perhaps the green flash as the sun set on the DSLR as the dominant technology in the market.
Click here to read our Nikon D850 review
Why do we think it was such a big deal? Because it got just about everything right. Its 45MP sensor brought dual conversion gain to high pixel count sensors, meaning excellent dynamic range at base ISO and lower noise at high ISOs. Its autofocus system was one of the best we’ve ever seen on a DSLR: easy to use and highly dependable, with a good level of coverage. And then there was a body and user interface honed by years of iterative refinement, that made it easy to get the most out of the camera.
None of this is meant as a slight towards the other late-period DSLRs but the likes of Canon’s EOS 5DS and 5DSR didn’t present quite such a complete package of AF tracking, daylight DR and low-light quality as the Nikon did. With its ability to shoot at up to 9fps (if you used the optional battery grip), the D850 started to chip away at the idea that high megapixel cameras were specialized landscape and studio tools that would struggle with movement or less-than-perfect lighting. And that’s without even considering its 4K video capabilities.
In the seven years since the D850 was launched, mirrorless cameras have eclipsed most areas in which DSLRs once held the advantage. For example, the Z8 can shoot faster, autofocus more with more accuracy and precision, across a wider area of the frame and do so while shooting at much faster rates.
But, even though it outshines the D850 in most regards, the Z8 is still based around what we believe is a (significant) evolution of the same sensor, and its reputation still looms large enough for Nikon to explicitly market the Z8 as its “true successor.”
Nikon D850 sample gallery
*Actually seven years ago yesterday: we had to delay this article for a day to focus on the publishing the Z6III studio scene: the latest cameras taking precedence over our anniversary content.
| Photo: Richard Butler |
We’ve just received a production Nikon Z6III and took it into our studio immediately to get a sense for how the sensor really performs.
Dynamic range tests have already been conducted, but these only give a limited insight into the image quality as a whole. As expected, our Exposure Latitude test – which mimics the effect of reducing exposure to capture a bright sunrise or sunset, then making use of the deep shadows – shows a difference if you use the very deepest shadows, just as the numerical DR tests imply.
Likewise, our ISO Invariance test shows there’s more of a benefit to be had from applying more amplification by raising the ISO setting to overcome the read noise, than there was in the Z6 II. This means there’s a bigger improvement when you move up to the higher gain step of the dual conversion gain sensor but, as with the Z6 II, little more to be gained beyond that.
These are pushing at the extreme of the sensor’s performance though. For most everyday photography, you don’t use the deepest shadows of the Raw files, so differences in read noise between sensors don’t play much of a role. In most of the tones of an image, sensor size plays a huge role, along with any (pretty rare) differences in light capturing efficiency.
As expected, the standard exposures look identical to those of the Z6 II. There are similar (or better) levels of detail at low ISO, in both JPEG and Raw. At higher ISO, the Z6III still looks essentially the same as the Z6II. Its fractionally higher level of read noise finally comes back to have an impact at very, very high ISO settings.
Overall, then, there is a read noise price to be paid for the camera’s faster sensor, in a way that slightly blunts the ultimate flexibility of the Raw files at low ISO and that results in fractionally more noise at ultra-high ISOs. But we suspect most people will more than happily pay this small price in return for a big boost in performance.
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