Freefly Ember S5K High-Speed Camera Now Shipping – In-Depth Look with Sample Footage

by Francesco AndreolaJune 8^th, 2023

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During Cine Gear 2023, we sat down with Ansel Luchau from Freefly Systems to take a closer look at their newly-released Ember S5K high-speed cinema camera. The company is now starting to ship the first units to customers worldwide. The camera brain retails for $17,995.

Introduced in December last year, Ember is a tiny box-style camera that is specifically engineered for slow-motion capture. Inheriting the legacy of Wave – the company’s first high-speed camera that was launched back in 2020 – Ember’s soul seems to be even more cinematic.

At Cine Gear 2023, my colleague Graham had the chance to stop by Freefly Systems’ booth to learn more about this fast, compact camera platform, which can potentially become very popular for sport, wildlife, and even FPV drone applications. So let’s see what he found out!

Freefly Systems Ember S5K – overview

At the core of Ember is a 5K (5120 x 4096) Super 35 (23.04 x 18.43mm) imaging sensor with a global shutter design. In 16:9 mode, the camera can capture motion continuously at up to 616fps in 5K and 809fps in 4K. These frame rates can be boosted to 809fps and 1011fps respectively when shooting with a 2.37:1 aspect ratio.

For now, Apple ProRes is the only codec available and files are saved directly onto a built-in 4TB NVMe SSD drive, which can store approximately 40 minutes of footage shot at the maximum frame rate. However, according to Ansel, the company will come up with an additional module to support removable media in the future. This would be great since, at the current state, you need to stop shooting to offload files anytime you fill-up the internal drive.

Files can be transferred using a dedicated USB-C 3.0 Gen1x1 port. Additionally, the camera offers an HDMI output for monitoring, a 6-pin GPIO port for triggering, a 4-pin Microfit power input, and an Ethernet port, whose capabilities for live broadcasting will be expanded in the future, according to Freefly.

In my opinion, the biggest drawback of Ember’s design is the lack of a built-in screen. The camera has four main physical controls, namely an on/off power switch, an encoder knob, a selection button, and a recording button. These can be used to navigate menus and adjust camera settings when Ember is connected to an external HDMI monitor. Alternatively, you can control the camera using a dedicated iOS app.

The camera brain is extremely compact and lightweight, measuring 10×10.4×8.6 cm and weighing only 820g. It integrates a native Sony E lens mount system, whose short flange focal distance provides a great amount of flexibility for adapting EF and PL glass, for example.

Freefly Systems Ember – accessory ecosystem

Along with the camera brain, the company also introduced a whole set of add-ons for Ember. These include mechanical accessories such a cheese plate, an accessory mount, 2.4” and 3.5” NATO rails, a NATO Monitor Phone Combo Bracket, a NATO Rail Clamp, a Dual Monitor Height Booster, a NATO Side Handle, a Phone Clamp Mount, a Tablet Clamp Mount and a Multi Threaded Mount for MagSafe.

Moreover, they released XT90 and D-Tap power cables as well as the SL Power Hub, which allows you to power the camera using the company’s new SL4 batteries for MōVI Pro.

Price and availability

The Freefly Ember S5K high-speed camera is now shipping with a lead time of 2-4 weeks. The camera brain retails for $17,995, a price point that makes it quite affordable compared to other existing cinema cameras offering similar frame rates.

The first 200 Ember units feature a matte green finish. However, these are almost sold out and should soon be followed by space-gray variants.

For more information, please visit Freefly Systems’ website here.

Have you shot on the Freefly Ember S5K camera yet? What do you think about its high-speed recording options? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!