Thanks to the upturn in my circumstances, I am now in possession of a Canon Powershot SX270 HS. The HS stands for "high speed" capable of 240 FPS at QCIF size. Or 120 FPS at SD/VGA resolutions. There are limitations, it can only take 30 seconds at any one time, the shutter lag is... inconvenient. And the film speed is so fast that I capture the fluctuations in fluorescent lighting ... I've handed this camera to people and said "it only records 30 seconds at a time. Reset at each exchange" It's not a complicated instruction to follow, but they still get it wrong.
TL;DR I've been watching a lot of videos of slow motion sparring. Those 30 seconds take 2 minutes to play back.
What can I tell you from all those videos I've gone through?
- My hanwei is really floppy, but the Danellis have their moments as well.
- Any good fight has an awful lot of waiting and faffing about before a hit is attempted. Then it's just a flurry of....stuff.
- The only time anyone can expect to know the difference between a flat and edge hit is if you're using sharps.
- The really cool exchanges will be missed because people are human.
- If you think you can do this reliably without technological help, you're an idiot.
Under £200 for this functionality? It's a no-brainer.