Earlier this week, I visited Createasphere 2011 and I spent some time checking out gear that our friends from Assimilate, Litepanels, and Sony had on display.
Litepanels demoed their new Croma dual-color, on-camera light for me, as well as their Sola 4 and Hilio lights. I took a look at Sony’s PMW-TD300 fixed lens 3D camera, which features slow and quick motion recording in 3D, a first for a shoulder mounted camera. Finally, I got a tour of a new, compact DIT Station that offers Scratch 6 and is compatible with RED and ALEXA, as well as Panasonic and Sony cameras.
Watch my video above for details on all these products.
The Phantom 65-Z3D system, which Moe Shore wrote about last week, has been generating a lot of buzz at the show. In this video, I explain some of the benefits of using this innovative system.
Legendary filmmaker and visual effects pioneer Doug Trumbull is the first in North America to shoot with the new Phantom 65-Z3D system. The music video “Golden Eyes,” shot on location in New York and featuring Dana Fuchs, was co-directed by Doug and director & visual effects technologist Mark Anton Read.
The Phantom 65-Z3D is a single camera 3D production system that uses Zepar twin lenses inside a single housing to capture stereo images on a single 65mm sensor. Each of the two images is equivalent in size to a Super-35mm film frame, with associated characteristics like depth of field and field of view. The Phantom 65 is capable of high frame-rate recording, and Doug chose to shoot at 120fps as a ‘real time’ speed and 320fps for slow motion sequences. The complete system is small, lightweight and easy to set up.
“The lens pairs are perfectly matched and aligned, and weigh only a couple of pounds, making the entire package so small, it easily fits on the Steadicam,” said Trumbull. “This first experiment involved extremely dynamic movement of camera and subject, often going 360-degrees multiple times. We shot all day without any problems.”
Phantom 65-Z3D is a joint collaboration of Vision Research, MKBK of Moscow, Dedo Weigert Film of Germany and AbelCine. By utilizing a single sensor, the P65-Z3D is like a pair of parallel cameras, in that there is no toeing-in for convergence. By adding the capability to adjust the lenses horizontally in front of the sensor, thus changing the distance between the lenses, it is possible to affect the zero parallax distance and therefore determine the point where objects appear in front of the screen and behind the screen. The resulting images produced by the system’s parallel capture are clean and free of optical distortion from beamsplitters or image keystoning.
“I feel that the Phantom 65-Z3D offers opportunities for 3D that cannot be achieved with heavier dual camera beamsplitter systems” Trumbull added. “I am extremely impressed with the results, and intend to use this system next as part of my development of a system for shooting virtual sets and locations in 3D with real-time compositing.”
Watch the video for a behind-the-scenes look at “Golden Eyes” narrated by Doug Trumbull. Dailies from the 3D music video will be available for viewing at AbelCine’s NAB booth #C8932.
The Canon XF105 has many of the same features found in its bigger brother the XF305, but in a smaller and lighter form factor. It records in a high quality MPEG2 50 Mbps 4:2:2 video format, in all the standard HD resolutions, and it has a 1/3″ 1920×1080 CMOS sensor. One unique feature of this camera is its ability to be locked to another camera for 3D use. When two cameras are combined with a 3D rig, such as the Hurricane 3D rig (coming soon to Abel), it makes for a very small and lightweight 3D option.
Additionally, the XF105 has the ability to shoot in Infrared. This is a feature often requested for different applications, and with the 50 Mbps recording, this camera is perfect for television shooting that requires night vision. Watch my video above to learn more.
ARRI has released the latest Software Update Packet (SUP) for the ALEXA. This camera firmware fixes a few minor bugs in timecode and ProRes recording, but there are also two major upgrades.
Recording ProRes to the SxS cards can now range from .75fps up to 60fps. This applies to all of the ProRes formats except the data-intensive ProRes 4444, which can record up to 40fps.
The other major upgrade is in the precise synchronization between cameras for 3D stereo shooting. While the ALEXA has already been used to successfully capture 3D (most notably in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Hugo Cabret), a new cable kit and camera master/slave mode now allow for the locking of sensor timing, HD-SDI output phasing, fps, shutter, timecode and camera trigger.
The SUP 2.1 is available to all ALEXA owners from the ARRI website. Camera owners must complete a one-time registration to download the file. The new software can then be loaded into the ALEXA using an SD card.
With Abel becoming an official reseller of the Panasonic AG-3DA1, I’ve had time to get to know the camera. The 3DA1 makes it much easier to produce a good Stereo 3D image, without the large-scale setup usually required. There is definitely a learning curve when it comes to shooting 3D – fortunately Panasonic has done a nice job of making the 3DA1’s controls straightforward and intuitive. Watch my video above for a closer look at the camera.
The Panasonic AG-3DA1 is the first professional, fully-integrated Full HD 3D camcorder that records to SD card media. The camera records separate right eye, left eye capture to the SD cards and monitoring is made easy by using two SDI feeds to the BT-3DL2550. To create natural-looking 3D video, the convergence point (the point at which the left and right cameras’ optical axes converge) needs to be adjusted to match that of a human’s eyes, which varies according to the closeness of the objects being viewed. Panasonic’s new Full HD 3D camcorder adopts a newly-developed twin-lens system that realizes convergence point control with its integrated design.
