Video by Delinquent Digital
Still photography by Shortyphotos

The Phantom Flex is the kind of camera that has sports photographers salivating, and customs officials worried. Capable of shooting up to 2,500 frames per second in HD, and several hundred thousand frames per second at its lowest resolution, the super-high speed digital cinema camera was originally developed for ballistics testing but it wasn’t long before photographers realized its potential to capture freeze-frame motion from the most frantic of sports.

Having recently got his hands on one, Andrew Buckley from Delinquent Digital headed down to skate bowl at the Australian Open of Surfing comp site last weekend to put his new toy through its paces.

Check out this footage of Renton Millar, shot at a leisurely 1000 frames per second, and you’ll get an idea of what the new wave of action sports videography has in store…

Having clocked up a few hundred gigabytes of footage, he then swapped back to his old still camera - which maxes out at a rather more pedestrian 10 frames per second - to snap some action of Renton and his fellow competitors warming up for Wednesday's event.