I’ve always been curious if anyone had ever shot video of a pro-level or top flight military shooter using a high speed camera.
It might be of great value to teaching folks the fundamentals if one could see things like trigger control, sight alignment, target transitions, reloads and such from people executing the basics with perfection in slow motion.
I’m not talking about running standard video at a slow speed - that doesn’t show much. I’m talking 1000fps video. These things show us a lot about how firearms work, but seeing how shooters work might be very valuable for instruction.
If this has never been done before, I know how such gear can be rented. It might be cool to put something like this together!
No one would ever confuse me with a top-flight shooter, but I did use a Samsung digital video camera running at 120fps to record my drawstroke and reloads. I found it useful when I did it, mostly for identifying wasted and inefficient movements. I’d like to try it again with multiple camera angles.
Exact sort of stuff I am speaking of. Unfortunately, the high speed features of consumer cameras won’t do it - you need something like a Phantom (cost to you: $120,000). It is great to see trigger control, eye focus, recoil control, target acquisition performed the way they are supposed to happen.
Actually, I don’t think you need super-high-speed video to capture meaningful information about your technique. 30fps is going to show you everything you need, especially if you videotape yourself performing the same action a few times to catch inconsistencies.
A 1,000fps video is going to show you ten frames per hundredth of a second. Since no one is doing reloads or draws consistently enough to get the same speed within a hundredth each run, that seems unrealistically detailed to me. Nor are human beings capable of making conscious changes to their movements in timeframes that tiny.
Just to be clear, I am not saying that 1000fps is necessary or probably even useful compared to 30fps. We’ve done quite a bit of analysis using 8.5fps from a still camera and that’s been more than adequate in most circumstances.
Training on camera has to be one of the best things to help me get better, I can say that for sure. I have a small digital that’ll take 60fps in 60 second clips, and that’s plenty for my applications. Easy to see recoil management, sight tracking, trigger control, and to analyze reloads.
The only unfortunate part is when uploading them, I haven’t found a way to maintain the ability to slow them down. (That and when you do upload something people give you shit for showing off, even when it’s a learning moment… oh well). I’m sure there’s software out there that will maintain it, but I’d rather shell out those dollars for more ammo right now.