A home-built rig turns the GoPro Mission 1 Pro ILS into an F-22 chaser

If you want to see just what you can do with a GoPro Mission 1 Pro ILS, then the tracking rig put together by military aviation photographer Simone Marulli is a pretty good start.

Italian military aviation photographer Simone Marulli specializes in taking photographs of things that are moving very, very fast indeed, namely fighter jets. His website is full of frankly jaw-dropping content as a result, and most of it is shot with either his Sony a1 or a7R IV, which is as pleasingly high-end as you would expect.

He's lit up certain parts of Instagram, though, over the past few days with this 50-second video of an F-22 deploying flares at up to 960 fps among other things, and it was shot using a GoPro Mission 1 Pro ILS.

"I built this slightly ridiculous little tracking rig, which somehow ended up being called 'The Capriolo', because I wanted to see how far I could push the camera with fast-moving jets and extreme slow motion," he writes. "And I have to say it: I’m genuinely impressed. This is a little monster Cinema camera, I truly love it!

"Watching an F-22 deploy flares at up to 960 fps, seeing details that happen far too quickly for the human eye to catch, was exactly the kind of experiment I hoped this setup could make possible."

We're not sure what's more impressive, the 960 fps footage itself or Marulli's focusing skills given the speed at which these actions usually happen, though he modestly says that beyond about 300ft it's just a couple of millimeters to adjust. No further details on the rig's components yet, though that looks like a vintage manual-focus telezoom to us, likely a Canon FD.

"A lot of you asked about this little cinema monster," he writes. "Hold on — I’ve got something coming for you." 

Looking forward to that!