Has anyone shot an event using two cameras on a single tripod? Controling one cam for close-ups and letting the other camera stay wide (on infinite settings).

I'm curious to know how the wide camera is performing since all the operator's attention is on one viewfinder and zoom control. I'd hate to go to edit in post and find that the wide camera had unusable/unstable/poorly framed footage.
-Scott

I've heard of this before Scott but have never done it. I did however cram 2 tripods close together once just to play with the idea. I soon discovered that I'm very much "right handed" with the controls and was all thumbs trying to control the left cam. So I left it static and watched the footage.

It just seemed to me that 2 cams sharing the same angle simply made the footage appear to zoom in and out very quickly. Perhaps in an interview environment this is ok but I'm not sure about live action. Maybe I'm old school because I just think having cutaway shots to a second "very different" angle makes things more interesting.

I do this for football games. I made a bracket that allows two cameras to be mounted to my tripod. It's adjustable on the mount for the wide shot. Meaning, you can adjust it up and down depending on the angle you need. I bought a piece of steel and had it bent. I guess you could cut it and bolt it together as well.

This is harder than it sounds to control both cameras. I have since paid someone else to run 3rd camera.

Jon

I've seen it done at football games too, but I've never seen the resulting footage. I would think the orphaned camera would follow the light of the sight of the camera being attended. Is that what happens with your football games? You're getting usable footage of the game- right? And not finding out later that the camera was pointed in the wrong direction or that you had the wrong side of field?

About the angles. I agree. Kind of shoddy having two cameras in the same location (same angle). But at least this way there wouldn't be zooming back and forth going on as you would cut to the wide camera while the other one zooms. That should cut out on people getting dizzy.

I'm wondering because my daughter has always helped me and now I think she doesn't want to do it any more. I have three cameras. I'm just trying to figure out how one person can maximize the use of three cameras.

-Scott

I have been using this double method for football games for 3 years and it works great. I set one camera "wide" and leave it, while I ride the zoom on the other camera to follow the action. The coaching staff gets a copy of the wide version to use as game films and I use the zoom shots to create an end of year highlights DVD shown at the banquet (music, interviews, graphics). Having the wide shot is a nice backup when the zoom shot sometimes misses the action, but I otherwise don't use it for highlights.

I created my bracket from a piece of 1"x1/8" steel stock from Home Depot. It works pretty well, but doesn't have captured mounting studs like a tripod does, so it takes a little time to assemble. This year I upgraded to a Bogen/Manfrotto 3269 Double Camera Support Platform, which looks to be just right for this purpose (note how wide your cameras are as the distance between them is not adjustable).

One funny thing about having two cameras setup this way is some people ask if I'm shooting 3D!

Mike.

Anyone ever tried this with video cameras? I have seen rigs used by still photographers

Not me personally, but I have seen pictures of such a setup. It was related to a side-by-side comparison (posted on the web) of two Sony camcorders, one of their single-chip CMOS vs. the FX1 or Z1. They mounted both cameras on one tripod to make sure any camera movement would be the same.

- Martin

Just curious why you would want or need to do this?

If I were to do it, I'd get someone to make a metal plate long enough to hold both cameras, fasten it to the tripod and fasten the two cameras to it.

I want it for a wide angle on one and CU on the other in limited space. They are manufactured for still cameras, gitzo make one. Just wondered if anyone had experience with one.

Seems like it would be fairly easy to make one.

Just curious why you would want or need to do this?I'd love to do this. Set one wide, the other up close.

I know a sports guy that does this when recording action from the sidelines at football games. Adds a whole new dimension to things.

I once set 2 tripods right next to each other at a dance and tried to operate them with each hand. That was much harder than it sounds (or I'm just a klutz)

i guess it would work out fine if they were both stationary cameras. not needing to pan/tilt at all once they are locked down. if you try and pan/tilt the Close Up cam then your wide angle moves with it.....unless they are on two seperate heads all together and then you could do what you please and you are just using a single set of legs....

Several weeks ago I filmed a talking head for an educational/political dvd I'm making.

I did it in front of a green screen using two cameras about 300mm apart on their own tripods.

One was set to a more wide angle shot and the other more zoom. For the background scenes I used two carefullly composed stills of the same background but with levels of zoom appropriate to the video pic.

Flipping between the two cameras in post gives the production a far more interesting looking than if it was simply done with one camera.

For my next wedding I am going to use my two cameras from one spot for the speeches. One will be on the MC/speaker and the other picking up reaction to the comments made. I don't imagine it will be too hard to operate them both.

its not hard to operate them both in my opinion.
i havent done much of it but it does work well at a wedding.
no more need to include that cringing panning and tilting while under pressure!
it would be vey handy to have a secong cam clamped to the tripod leg maybe?
manfrotto have a huge range of support clamps, bits and bobs,
im sure its possible!

There is this twin head system which HAS intrigued me

http://www.b-hague.co.uk/Mounting%20Brackets.htm

Plus what I'd be wanting would be at east 2 LCDs in front of me to "monitor" the video outputs. Meaning, it isn't necessarily the issue of controlling 2 cameras, it is VIEWING them independently of each other from one point.

Yes, if I could get my head around the viewing system, which ain't cheap, then it would also fill another part of the puzzle.

Grazie

Here's (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=101579) that concept taken to ridiculous lengths...I had to shoot wide and tight with the same eyeline on both cameras.

One of the things I realized very early on when designing that rig was that both cameras needed to be separately operated. In almost all cases framing for one size with the other one "following" will result in the slaved camera having a less-than-desirable composition. Renton's green screen example would be a notable exception as you have the flexibilty of repositioning the talent within the frame in post to "tidy up" the composition.

Consider a situation where you are shooting a play, for example--if an actor was to cross downstage and take a few steps to the right, the tight camera would have to react and pan/tilt with him while the wide may have a much more minimal adjustment, if at all--if one simply operates that tight shot with the wide shot slaved to it, the wide will appear needlessly "active".

My goodness!!!! I'm not in that league!

I've wondered about how it would look if I did the same as I described above, but with one camera through a teleprompter and the other not.

Would it matter if in one shot the talent is looking into the camera, and in the other off camera? I can't remember ever seeing that but may have and not taken any notice - thus showing it works. Does it?

Renton, I thought long and hard about this before setting this rather complicated rig into motion. Given a certain distance from the subject, mounting the two cameras next to each other and having the subject look into the tighter of the two could work. However it leaves a bit up to chance because if you had to move in closer with the cameras, either physically or by zooming, you risk having the eyeline appear noticeably off. In this particular shoot, we only had so many hours with Jerry (Seinfeld) and a lot to do, and the dolly moves were not defined ahead of time so I had to be prepared for anything. We had pre-laid a 12x16 dance floor just to cover our bases, and we ended up doing a variety of moves using the entire floor so it was a good choice. When the heat was on, I was literally calling out the variations to the move to my dolly grip as we were starting the roll the cameras. Luckily he was on the ball!

Anyway, as far as one camera having a direct eyeline and the other not, it's a little fishy looking. If you can make out the orientation of the eyeballs, you can "feel" that something is off a little bit. It's fine if the cameras are quite different perspective but not when they appear to be virtually identical. The "normal" way to shoot this is to do a wide version followed by a tight version, with a single camera. We just didn't have the time.

A much more streamlined version of this concept will very shortly be possible with a high-resolution camera like RED, where the 720p window that we were delivering the program in would fit many times over within the 4K image sensor. You would simply shoot the scene wide, and then later extract the tighter version to taste. It would obviously involve a certain amount of tracking (and for this project, the timeframe was too tight to allow this). It would be interesting to imagine a hardware tracking interface such as a joystick that would allow one to "operate" the frame-within-a-frame and have tracking captured real-time--probably some version of this is available somewhere!

Thanks for the ideas Charles. I'm only very new at this and am a little man with very limited budget, but never the less wanting to do the very best with what I've got. yesterday I scrutinized Peter Jackson's interviews re the making of King Kong to see how they were done - just basic shooting and setup, but well done.

I've just made a teleprompter which works stop on. It could accomodate two cameras with different levels of zoom, but more what I was thinking about is what a two camera shoot like I described above would look like if the off eye line camera was 'obviously' off line and not 'only just' off line. How would it look flipping between a shot speaking to the camera and one speaking obviously off camera?

Renton:

You'll see that sometimes in interviews, where a second camera is set for a profile angle. The prototypical version of that some years ago was for the producer to man a small-format camcorder and grab cutaways from a different angle (often these were desaturated to black and white and/or treated to hide or make the most of the different visual quality to the primary camera).

It's a stylistic choice that can and is done. The trick is to figure out how much to use that shot. If you sit for a long time on a frontal, to-the-lens recitation and then suddenly cut to an off-axis shot, it might be a bit disconcerting.

As I said, it has been done. With the Seinfeld shoot, the segments were too short to justify any kind of "odd" cutaway; we knew the only place to cut to would be a tighter version of the same shot.

There is this twin head system which HAS intrigued me

http://www.b-hague.co.uk/Mounting%20Brackets.htm

Plus what I'd be wanting would be at east 2 LCDs in front of me to "monitor" the video outputs. Meaning, it isn't necessarily the issue of controlling 2 cameras, it is VIEWING them independently of each other from one point.

Yes, if I could get my head around the viewing system, which ain't cheap, then it would also fill another part of the puzzle.

Grazie

and more $$.

I've done a couple shoots where this rig would have been a big help. (I beginning to realize just how demanding shooting w/1 cam is, and how boring the footage can become).

Thanks for the tip.

Double post

There is this twin head system which HAS intrigued me

http://www.b-hague.co.uk/Mounting%20Brackets.htm

Graham you are my hero!! I have looking for creative ways to hang my grizzly pro remote heads, now I have many options!

I will post pictures of my dual camera bracket I made a while ago. It puts the 2nd camera on top of the main camera.

Jon

Anyone ever tried this with video cameras? I have seen rigs used by still photographers

Hi Doug -
since the wide cam doesn't really need to move in a wedding, you can perhaps go with something like those clamps - I've done that, clamping to the main shaft just below the regular tripod head, which can still pan and tilt a bit if you're careful. Main thing is if you bump the pod, BOTH cams jump at the same time... not ideal for later editing - I want my wide safety cam to just sit there, maybe zoom in after the processional and out just before the exit... so while I CAN rig two cams on one pod, I'd rather take an extra or I leave my handheld on steady stick, which is fine for short ceremonies, shooting from the back.

anyone know where you can get one of those two head tripod mounts on the b-hague website in the US? B&H don't have them.