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There oughta be a bullet time video booth

there.oughta.be

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Re: There oughta be a bullet time video booth

#41

Post by dadsquad »

bentcorner wrote: post #36
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #8

That camera had an MSRP of $899 when it was new in 2006 [0]. Amazing that they now sell for only £50, and still take fantastic pictures even by today's standards [1]. Technological progress is nothing short of remarkable. [0] https://kenrockwell.com/canon/rebel-xti.htm [1] https://onfotolife.com/camera_sample_photos?camera_id=30&pag...

For anyone who is interested in older cameras I use a Canon Rebel T3i as a webcam and it works fantastically. In 2020 because of you-know-what Canon released a webcam driver for a bunch of their cameras and the T3i is one of the oldest ones supported (the most recent version of their driver drops support for this camera but older drivers work just fine). Paired with an AC power adapter and a mount for my monitor it's…

how do you use this with an AC power adapter? I have one and I've used it but I run out of battery quickly. is there a way to power the camera with AC??

Re: There oughta be a bullet time video booth

#42

Post by thedougd »

inconceivable wrote: post #17
thedougd wrote: post #14

A similar effect is achieved with a platform and a camera on an arm rapidly rotating around the platform. I've seen it at tech conferences. I think this is it: https://spinpix360.com/

this is interesting but it doesn't have the time freeze or slo mo effect done with a rapid series of photos.

Not a total freeze, but it had slow motion. I thought it was a clever approximation. You can see it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXhlfWOl0_Y&t=50

Not quite as many radians without the subject moving as you would with the real thing.

Re: There oughta be a bullet time video booth

#43

Post by bee_rider »

dwringer wrote: post #25
moffkalast wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would think the cameras all record at the same time and you can just pan around and adjust speed whenever?

In theory the idea also enables a higher frame rate than that of which the cameras are individually capable, thus allowing a finer slow motion effect.

A nice compromise (since a wedding photo booth isn’t going to be super choreographed) could be to group the cameras in to, say, two groups. Trigger them periodically, 180 degrees out of phase with their neighbors, and assuming the virtual camera is moving by one real camera per frame, you’ve got double the frame rate but can still choose a path in post-processing. And of course it could easily be abstracted out to n camera sets.

This is getting pretty complicated though, he “hard-coded” the camera motion into the shape of the frame. Physical things are hard, haha.

Re: There oughta be a bullet time video booth

#44

Post by orev »

dadsquad wrote: post #41
bentcorner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone who is interested in older cameras I use a Canon Rebel T3i as a webcam and it works fantastically. In 2020 because of you-know-what Canon released a webcam driver for a bunch of their cameras and the T3i is one of the oldest ones supported (the most recent version of their driver drops support for this camera but older drivers work just fine). Paired with an AC power adapter and a mount for my monitor it's…

how do you use this with an AC power adapter? I have one and I've used it but I run out of battery quickly. is there a way to power the camera with AC??

Most cameras enable using an AC adapter with a dummy battery insert that provides a barrel power jack. A quick search for that for this camera shows that it seems to be the case for this one.

Re: There oughta be a bullet time video booth

#45

Post by rtkwe »

moffkalast wrote: post #18
ziml77 wrote: post #16

Nice, but aren't the cameras supposed to be triggered in sequence instead of all at once? I thought there was still a little bit of motion in the movies, but in these the subjects all freeze in place.

One would think the cameras all record at the same time and you can just pan around and adjust speed whenever?

Depends on the setup you're using the trouble with doing video is to get the effect to be smooth you need frames at very particular times from each location which is tough to ensure out of video equipment where a bank of cameras you can trigger to take a single frame in sequence. To do the same with video you need to have a system to send a slightly out of phase sync signal to each camera in the array or just wing it and fudge the jittery motion and ramping with some VFX in post production.

Re: There oughta be a bullet time video booth

#46

Post by rrreese »

_yb2s wrote: post #38
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #8

That camera had an MSRP of $899 when it was new in 2006 [0]. Amazing that they now sell for only £50, and still take fantastic pictures even by today's standards [1]. Technological progress is nothing short of remarkable. [0] https://kenrockwell.com/canon/rebel-xti.htm [1] https://onfotolife.com/camera_sample_photos?camera_id=30&pag...

Can these really use all of those old 35mm Canon lenses?

I use several EF lenses on my Canon mirrorless. They tend to focus faster then on the old SLRs (and this is on the EOS-R which has the least sophisticated focusing).

They’re cheaper but you have to carry an adapter.

Re: There oughta be a bullet time video booth

#49

Post by nayuki »

_yb2s wrote: post #38
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #8

That camera had an MSRP of $899 when it was new in 2006 [0]. Amazing that they now sell for only £50, and still take fantastic pictures even by today's standards [1]. Technological progress is nothing short of remarkable. [0] https://kenrockwell.com/canon/rebel-xti.htm [1] https://onfotolife.com/camera_sample_photos?camera_id=30&pag...

Can these really use all of those old 35mm Canon lenses?

Yes, the Canon EOS 400D body accepts all EF and EF-S lenses.

Re: There oughta be a bullet time video booth

#50

Post by tootie »

albroland wrote: post #9

There already is a company that rents out a system like this called the A-1 Array: https://www.array.cam/ I first saw this at an art installation in Brooklyn in 2017.

We leased this one for a few months for a project. It works pretty well. We priced several competitors too. There's not a ton but there's a few.
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