Locked in a Vegas Hotel Room with a Phantom Flex

The summer before last I had the opportunity to attend a few lectures at an equipment rental and sales facility near my home in Boston, MA. The company, called Rule Camera, hosts lectures every summer called, "pub night" where they serve pizza and beverages and invite a guest speaker to discuss some aspect of the entertainment or media industries, offer advice, and take questions. My favorite lecture, and by far the most memorable, was one given by a sports television camera operator and DP named Tom Guilmette.

Tom talked a lot about his job, which admittedly, is really cool. He works at Fenway Park in Boston, as a  camera operator. It's his job to film all the fly balls over left field. Now, I might be a little biased- I'm from Boston and I'm a Red Sox fan, but it seemed like his job would be really awesome. And a lot harder then you might think. He has to track the ball across the sky (which is really tiny from a distance and moving so fast) while maintaining his focus, all while precariously perched on the scaffolding of Fenway Park. DAMN.

In addition to making us marvel at his cool job, Tom talked a lot about social media and its impact on the film industry. While Tom works as a DP, he also rents equipment out to people and uses social media to help out people with questions about how things work. 

SO. That's a lot of stuff right? That's not even the part I wanted to talk about. Since Tom is a DP and has been in the industry for a while, he often gets to test out awesome and expensive equipment- such as the Phantom Flex camera. I don't know how many of you are familiar with extremely high definition cameras, but this one pretty much takes the cake. Shooting at 2,564 fps, it can capture images at ridiculously crazy speeds. This video, shot on his first day experimenting with the camera, was made in Vegas at a television conference. He decided to test out the capabilities of the camera, and the results are both amazing and hilarious. Be sure to check it out, and if you like it, his website has a lot more really cool videos shot with a Phantom Flex...

If you ever have camera questions, you can tweet them to @tomguilmette 

he really knows his stuff and he'll always respond if he can/if he can help!