During Cine Gear 2023, we sat down with Ansel Luchau from Freefly Systems to take a closer look at their newly-released Ember S5K high-speed cinema camera. The company is now starting to ship the first units to customers worldwide. The camera brain retails for $17,995. Introduced in December last year, Ember is a tiny box-style camera that is specifically engineered for slow-motion capture. Inheriting the legacy of Wave – the company’s first high-speed camera that was launched back in 2020 – Ember’s soul seems to be even more cinematic. At Cine Gear 2023, my colleague Graham had the chance to stop by Freefly Systems’ booth to learn more about this fast, compact camera platform, which can potentially become very popular for sport, wildlife, and even FPV drone applications. So let’s see what he found out! Freefly Systems Ember S5K high-speed camera. Image credit: CineD Freefly Systems Ember S5K – overview At the core of Ember is a 5K (5120 x 4096) Super 35 (23.04 x 18.43mm) imaging sensor with a global shutter design. In 16:9 mode, the camera can capture motion continuously at up to 616fps in 5K and 765fps in 4K. These frame rates can be boosted to 809fps and 1011fps respectively when shooting with a 2.37:1 aspect ratio. Freefly Systems Ember S5K high-speed camera. Image credit: CineD For now, Apple ProRes is the only codec available and files are saved directly onto a built-in 4TB NVMe SSD drive, which can store approximately 40 minutes of footage shot at...
Published By: CineD - Thursday, 8 June, 2023