Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

360 Degree Shooting with RED

A

adoh

New member
Joined
Jul 2, 2009
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Hi there, does anyone have any experience of shooting 360 degree landscapes, cityscapes etc.. on RED? Any rigs pre-built that can be hired?
Thanks
Adam
 
I've shot three 360º dome projects, I have a few different rigs as well.

This site is still under construction but it should give you an idea...
http://www.360dop.com

PM or e-mail me evin@4kninjas.net
 
Last edited:
While the systems pictured give you a very nice and interesting view, they are not very accurate in perspective, because of the used fish eye lens.
Also the resolution is not optimal and a large part of the screen in used for what is really not always that interesting: the sky.

The star configuration (Surround view on the website) is a much better way of getting a higher resolution, the wide angle used here (probably a Ultraprime 12 or 14 mm or such?) will cover the 360 and keeping a reasonable part available for the real environment. It does have some distortion which can be corrected with software.
the downside of this construction is that the image planes of the cameras (the chips) are not in the same spot. This gives you a certain area between every camera where objects are not seen, depending on the distance from the camera.

With the use of wide angles this is less of an issue, as long as you have good software to correct the perspective differences.
When you use more moderate (standard) lenses, you would have less distortion but need more camera's to cover the 360 degrees. Then the star-configuration does not work well and another rig, like the one that has been used by Disney and contains 8 cameras that look up, into a surface mirror at 45 degrees. This places, if build well, all chips in a virtual center point, with almost no missing parts of the image.

In 1998 I have build such a rig for Sony DigiBeta cameras for a 270 degrees shot on 6 cameras for the 2000 World Fair in Hannover.

I doubt that a stereo 360 would work, besides of the needed double cameras. The immersion of the 360 view is enough, the stereo effect is only working for objects that are reasonably close to you, say from 50 cm to 5 meters, and that is just the most difficult part for these rigs.
 
If I can get permission from bosses on monday, I will post pictures and info on our 360 rig we just finished 1st project with it here at stereoscope. I'm not sure if we can publicize just yet.
 
Well.....Sorry no pictures, but I can talk a little bit about what we did,

We used it on a large un-named project I cannot talk about, but now we are looking to do some more main stream projects with it. It is currently ready to go for any projects/clients (contact us if for more info). It is a 2k 360 camera rig. Vertical mirror rig with a virtual center point that is extremely small giving us almost no gaps even when subjects are fairly close to the camera. We spent alot of time finding just the right lens that gave us the correct overlap, with proper field of view and with minimal distortion. That was no small challenge. Actually every step of this project was challenging.

The rig worked great on it's first job. The biggest challenge was data management and recording the streams, in sync, TC ...etc.... and we had to make it very "mobile". There were endless challenges and "firsts". Needless to say it was a huge team effort.

...Then the post production of the material is also mammoth in terms of data management and other issues. We even developed a way to to seamless edit different takes together.

I can't release specifics on the projection but it is also quite special process.

The final images are pretty amazing. Maybe in time I can release further info and images.

......I'm proud to be part of the team that made this incredible project a success.

If you have any further inquiries you can contact me or call our office.

Next we are working on a 3D version.:thumbup1:



regarding a "star" RED one configuration, the first issues I see are size and the already discussed large "center" point. It would probably work fine for landscapes and what not.

But size is an issue not to be under estimated......6 red ones plus rig/support probably more than 130lbs.......not what I would consider very mobile.

Trust me, these 360 rigs create alot of data real fast too....but that's a whole other can of worms....
 
Yes the Star configurations are primarily for helicopter use where most objects are at infinity. Weight is a consideration but I was able to create a 6 camera rig under 100lbs.
The new mirror rig is about the same weight. I would be intersted to see any of your footage once it's availble. Sounds very cool.
 
360 rig

360 rig

Just as an idea,what a 360 degrees, single image plane rig could look like, here are a few images of the project I mentioned.

This rig was a one-off, a 6 camera 270 degrees construction, allowing us to put it on dollies and cranes without seeing them or the operator.

This construction also allowed action to happen close to the rig, we kept a minimum of approx. 1.5 meter/5 ft. That improves the feeling of depth in the picture.

Fun project, technically. Lousy producer at that time.....
 

Attachments

  • 360-combi.jpg
    360-combi.jpg
    92.4 KB · Views: 0
Very cool rob.....

Ours looks similar just about the size of a basketball.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top