If you need something to get your week off to an ‘epic’ start, look no further than DP Dustin Farrell’s incredible storm chasing video he just released yesterday. Captured mostly with a Phantom Flex4K slow-motion camera at 1,000fps, it’s a slow-motion masterpiece with lightning footage that left this writer’s jaw slack.
The video, titled Transient, is a compilation of Farrell’s best storm chasing shots from the 2017 season. Over the course of 30 days he says he drove over 20,000 miles—developing a deeper “respect and admiration for storm chasers” all the while. He also shared some technical details in the video’s description:
Most of the lightning footage was captured in uncompressed raw at 1000 frames per second with our Phantom Flex4K.
[…]
The Phantom Flex4K is a camera that must be post triggered while shooting high speed. This works out well for capturing lightning because the camera is always recording and rewriting to internal ram. As soon as a bolt appears in my view finder I trigger the camera to save what has been stored in the ram. Shooting at high frame rates requires a lot of light. Therefore, I mostly used my Zeiss Otus 28, 55, and 85mm lenses wide open at f1.4. In all, I captured 10TB of data during this production.
But don’t let the plethora of awesome footage fool you, this was an incredibly challenging project:
This is one of the most difficult projects I have ever attempted in my career […] Chasing storms with a Phantom Flex4K is stressful even when things are going well. There were at least 10 days where I returned home with my tail between my legs and nothing to show after a ten hour chase and 500 miles. There were also a couple of days that I drove home with an ear to ear smile that lasted for hours.
Check out the results for yourself above, but don’t forget to do it right: shades drawn, headphones on, volume up, and resolution set to 4K. It is 100% worth it. And if you like what you see, definitely head over to Farrell’s website or give him a follow on Facebook and Instagram.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)