shooting through crosshairs

[Laura Klein]

I have a couple of shots that need to be through the crosshairs of a rifle. We're shooting dv. Most people say do it in post but I want the crosshairs to move all over the frame and, of course, there's the optics - that distortion you get with the long lens of the rifle scope...Does anyone have any advice for me? It would be greatly appreciated.

[Daniel Madsen]

This is an interesting challenge because most riflescope shots are simply done using a long lens- cross hairs either on the lens or added in post.

 

To me it sounds like you want a static shot with a riflescope searching the frame. If I wanted to create that effect I would shoot with two cameras simultaneously (you could do it with one but two is much easier). One camera would shoot wide and remain static while the other would roam the boundries of the wide shot with a long lens. You then composite them in post, after having cropped the long shot and reducing its size.

[Dickson Sorensen]

I have a couple of shots that need to be through the crosshairs of a rifle. We're shooting dv. Most people say do it in post but I want the crosshairs to move all over the frame and, of course, there's the optics - that distortion you get with the long lens of the rifle scope...Does anyone have any advice for me? It would be greatly appreciated.

 

It may be just a question of aligning the lens correctly and choosing a DV camera with a small enough lens to get in close enough. Out of curiosity, I just put my Sony DCR-TRV9 to my Leopold 2.5x scope and I could see a good image. The nodal point of the taking lens should be in a position near where your eye would normally be for the scope image to fill the barrel of the scope. You will want to build some sort of rig to hold the alignment as the slightest movement (millimeters) throws the image completely off.