Anyone with experience shooting Red One in 3D?

[Glenn Dawes]

Working with a production company as Editor and Cinematographer looking to buy a cine level 3D production package. We already have upcoming shoots with Red One. we are looking into doing cine/high-end HD level 3D digital. Have been looking at Red, CineAlta and Canon DSLR 5D MarkII & 7D. Any experience with these or other cameras shooting and lighting for 3D? (We mostly produce music videos, short docu's and drama's).

[Tom Mitchell]

Working with a production company as Editor and Cinematographer looking to buy a cine level 3D production package. We already have upcoming shoots with Red One. we are looking into doing cine/high-end HD level 3D digital. Have been looking at Red, CineAlta and Canon DSLR 5D MarkII & 7D. Any experience with these or other cameras shooting and lighting for 3D? (We mostly produce music videos, short docu's and drama's).

 

Yes I have been DIT on some 3D stuff on the RED and SI2K worked with a company called paradise FX they are LA based. They came over here (UK) to do a feature I sure they be interested, and more than capable meeting your needs both shooting and post solutions.

 

This is what I picked up whist working with them, should give you a short overview i'm sure others can go in to more details.

 

Shooting wise using the split beam mirror you loose a stop of light in both cameras, so night work tends to need a bit more heavy duty lighting. But the saving grace is the new MX sensor Red has just released that is capable of shoot at much faster ASA's, so if you can get your hands on them, the saving in lights might outway the cost of renting a upgraded rig.

 

The redone rig is big and therefore needs a fairly substantial head and dolly to support it but there are smaller light weigh solutions using the SI2K for stedi cam etc. Scarlet and epic when they finaly come out should change the big and bulky problem.

 

You get about 400K color temperature difference between cameras because of the mirror this tends not to be any issue but worth noting.

 

if your planing 'high end 3D' I don't realy see the 5D as a valid solution as you can't get frame lock as far as i'm aware on both cameras and no way to stop them from drifting. this is very bad for 3D. there great for students and people who don't have budgets to shoot there shorts on, as well as getting the shots you couldn't get with any outer camera but for 3D :( (I know there are, and I have seen mk2 rigs out there but for proper stuff i'm talking about here) Its not a matter of putting two cameras together and calling 3D theres a little more to it than that, it might be 3D but you will go uch when you watch it. you need make sure the 3D will work and not have to constantly adjust your eyes to every cut.

 

a question that some times get asked is dose it take longer to shoot? no in short, but you do need extra crew members, in particular a stereographer who is like a focus puller but for pulls 3D instead.

 

When your shooting in 3D most of the world is still views in 2D so you always got to keep that in mind and shoot it to work with 2D.

 

3D tends to work best on wider lenses, so 100mm is as about as extreme as you want to go.

 

You also tend to want to stop down on the lens more and and try to emulate the human eyes depth of field, too shallow and all you get as alot of blurry 3D. when viewing you tend to want to look around a bit more so more DOF is better, (you still need to tell a story though)

 

thats about all i can think of, off the top of my head right now....

 

I know 3D is relatively new to most people, and there are lots of opinions out there i can only go on what I have learned from what little experience working with it, though i have been interested and been studying it for a while now. I be interested what other people have to add and shall be follow this thread with much eagerness.

[Hal Smith]

a question that some times get asked is dose it take longer to shoot? no in short, but you do need extra crew members, in particular a stereographer who is like a focus puller but for pulls 3D instead.

Because you not only have to pull focus but also pull convergence angle between the two cameras.(Convergence angle equals the aiming angle difference between your left eye and right eye when looking at a specific object in 3D space). If you don't pull convergence, 3D pictures can look like cardboard cutouts, not rounded objects in space.

[John Brawley]

Because you not only have to pull focus but also pull convergence angle between the two cameras.(Convergence angle equals the aiming angle difference between your left eye and right eye when looking at a specific object in 3D space). If you don't pull convergence, 3D pictures can look like cardboard cutouts, not rounded objects in space.

 

On the few 3D shoots I've done the stereographer tended to not want to converge the cameras at all unless it's an extreme situation. What is more often adjusted is the interocular distance, that is, the distance between each camera. My understanding is that convergence can mostly be left to be a post decision with very little compromise. (just some framing issues at the edges of the frame)

 

This way it's not baked in and can be determined in a more controlled environment later.

 

The RED's are pretty big cameras for 3D. Forget hand held or steadicam. I like the Si2K's more and the scarlet's should be great.

 

jb

[Hercules Fu]

I'm a newbie in 3D, :unsure: please don't mind if i had asked a stupid question.

In the past i saw ppl shoting with the ''side by side'' method only(forgive me on this...my hometown got poor development on 3D stuff).

just curious, wt's the difference between shooting in side by side and the split-beam rig?

[John Brawley]

I'm a newbie in 3D, :unsure: please don't mind if i had asked a stupid question.

In the past i saw ppl shoting with the ''side by side'' method only(forgive me on this...my hometown got poor development on 3D stuff).

just curious, wt's the difference between shooting in side by side and the split-beam rig?

 

 

Hi Herc.

 

The ideal interocular distance is about 64mm or about 2 1/2 ". That's the average distance between human eyes.

 

It's actually very difficult to achieve this practically though with cameras, especially with a camera like the RED. They are just so big that it's impossible to get the sensor's that close together when they are side by side. Even the lenses themselves can be larger than this.

 

So a beam splitter is used to allow for interocular distances that can be more precisely controlled, and that wouldn't even be possible if the cameras were set up side by side. (The beam splitter is sort of an autoprompter in reverse.)

 

Even with very small cameras like the Iconix HD's, it's still almost impossible to realistically get the right IO when they are setup side by side.

 

jb

[Hercules Fu]

Hi Herc.

 

The ideal interocular distance is about 64mm or about 2 1/2 ". That's the average distance between human eyes.

 

It's actually very difficult to achieve this practically though with cameras, especially with a camera like the RED. They are just so big that it's impossible to get the sensor's that close together when they are side by side. Even the lenses themselves can be larger than this.

 

So a beam splitter is used to allow for interocular distances that can be more precisely controlled, and that wouldn't even be possible if the cameras were set up side by side. (The beam splitter is sort of an autoprompter in reverse.)

 

Even with very small cameras like the Iconix HD's, it's still almost impossible to realistically get the right IO when they are setup side by side.

 

jb

Thankyou jb!I got a better concept on 3D now ;)

[John Sprung]

Side by side rigs are easier to make and use, but they're limited to fairly long distance to the subject, like 40 ft. and up, where you can get away with the large interocular. For closer work with cameras the size of Red, you need the more complex mirror rig.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Jamie Metzger]

Dane Brehm has been doing a lot of work with RED and a new Element Technica rig. He's on the forum, look him up :)

[Hal Smith]

There was a "Making of Avatar" on Reelz Channel that had an interview of Vince Pace standing alongside a Pace Camera's 3d mirror rig using a pair of RED's. It wasn't clear whether it was used on "Avatar" or something he had come up with for a different project.

[Gregory Almond]

Attached is my Convergence Angle chart @ 2.5 Ocular Offset. It should help tell you what angle your converging camera has to be at to make the cameras intersect at the same object.

 

I'm currently using this chart with a rig I built for a friends project to be partially shot in 3d. It looks like the most extreme angles only occur when the object being focused on is less than 4 feet away from the subject, once you bridge that distance, the angle becomes fractions of itself. Also note, it will never reach 90 degrees, so at far enough away, you don't really need to change the camera angle at all.

 

This chart is based off of the inverse Tangent of a Triangle, where the Angle is found by ATAN(Distance From Subject in feet/Ocular Distance in feet) * 57.2957795 (Converts Radians into Degrees.)

[Gus Sacks]

Just DIT/RED Tech'd a commercial with a 3D RED Setup using ET's Quasar rig and Ultra Primes.

 

I've got to say, it was a pretty big pain in the butt to work with, even with techs trained on the rig available. At high speeds the cameras had no hope of staying genlocked, and that, partnered with a few other quirks and kinks, made it a difficult shoot.

 

It was a tad bit difficult for the Stereographer/CG representative to do some calculations involving windowed sensor sizes (especially the fact that when shooting in 4k you're still working with an APS-C sized sensor). But he was prepared and ready for the challenge.

 

I wouldn't recommend it just yet.

[Russell Scott]

Hi Herc.

 

The ideal interocular distance is about 64mm or about 2 1/2 ". That's the average distance between human eyes.

 

jb

 

just to expand on this. The ideal i/o isn't 64mm for the camera - you want an apparent 64mm separation on the projected image. The bigger the screen and closer the audience sits to that screen, the closer your cameras will need to be (also dependent on what your camera is looking at and where that object is in relation to the camera). The i/o of the cameras should be chosen with some reference to the medium its projected in, eg a 64mm camera separation for TV might be fine but not for cinema. This is one of the main reasons people get pain in cinemas - the i/o that is chosen is far too much.

 

and as a separate point I would also argue against trying to mimic perfect depth and go for the less is more approach, though that's is just my opinion...

[Marque DeWinter]

I have. I've done a feature as DIT with the ET Rig, a feature as stereographer, and a commercial (for showing in theatres before 3D Movies. The Pace and ET rigs have both used Red Ones. The Pace has also been set up for other cameras. Really it isn't as much about the camera with 3D as much as it is about the 3D rig itself and the associated support. What is the system like for pulling the I/O, what lenses are you able to use. I've had situation where I've had made up custom filter retaining rings for certain lenses because with the beam splitter system you can't just throw on a matte box. the amount of space is so small we had to have stuff custom made.

 

~Marque