Is it possible to shoot panoramic?

[Svein Rune Skilnand]

Thanks to all you guys for pointing me in the right direction for choosing a zoom lens for my JVC 201. Very appreciated.

My next project is to be shown on a 180 degree screen setup and I need the zoom lens for shooting closeups and it will be mixed with, hopefully, great panoramic images.

Is it possible to achieve this on a videocamera? The film they are screening today has been shot with 3 cameras/ 3 angles and gives a panoramic effect. Can this be achieved with a one camera setup? I do have the wide angle lens adaptor on my camera but it is not panoramic is it?

Svein Rune

[Giroud Francois]

regarding the size of the picture, shooting panoramic with one camera will give bad result (it is like filming 2.35).
You will get few pixels left in height to build a correct picture.
shooting HDV would help a bit. RED camera would be ok at 4k, but even there, you will get a problem to display the final picture.
a simple setup with 3 camera head and mirror would do the trick.
the same mirror setup with three projector to display.

[Svein Rune Skilnand]

Giroud, thanks for your reply.

They are using 3 projectors today to show the film. It was shot with 3 cameras and I guess setup the way you describe it.

I`m afraid I can`t afford such a setup and was wondering if there was a lens wide enough to give the same effect and shoot the film in 720/ 50 p and use the JVC DLA-HD10K projector to show it.

I was thinking of perhaps renting renting a 35 mm film adapter and lenses but do not no where to start.

Any suggestions?

[John C. Chu]

Here's a lo-res option:

http://www.eyesee360.com/videowarp/

I've seen this used for some Hummer commercials.

[Giroud Francois]

you can find fisheye lens giving almost 180 deg view.
but the result is a shperical picture, unless you find a lens that does the 180 only horizontally.
So you will have to flatten it. It is no so simple since if you use 3 projectors to display, you will need to make either an overlap, or make sure the stitch ok on the screen. It is in fact very tricky if you want seamless result.
the setup with 3 camera head and 3 mirror is the simplest you can imagine.
you need 3 camera head with lens pointing up. the 45 deg mirror just over let you shoot what is in front of you.
just get that 3 times and you will get easily 180 deg.
the beauty of this setup is you reuse the same mirror arrangement to project the picture, so you get a very compact installation and no dewarping of a strange shaped picture is needed.
http://www.fullview.com/products.html
http://www-cs.engr.ccny.cuny.edu/~zh...t#451,4,Planar Mirror
http://vision.ai.uiuc.edu/newpubs/singleDPC/summary.htm
Here another setup but this time the camera are at 45 deg , instead mirror, so it is easier to build with rectangular mirror (you would need only 3 mirror/camera for 180 deg.)

or now Xmas is over you can use one of your Xmas tree ball
http://wiki.panotools.org/ChristmasBallPanoTutor

the advantage of getting 3 standard camera head (640x480=1920x480 for example) is when stitched you can build a high resolution avi played on a PC with a matrox 3-head splitter, each output on a video projector. no need for expensive hi-res camera or projector.

[Svein Rune Skilnand]

Thank for all your info and links Giroud. Advanced stuff tough. A bit to advanced for me I think, but it is interesting.

I was thinking, if a lens is not available, that perhaps I could rent and allign 3 JVC201s to a platform of some kind. Problem is how do I edit and stich that in Final Cut Pro?

But I think I see how it could work with your answer below.

"the advantage of getting 3 standard camera head (640x480=1920x480 for example) is when stitched you can build a high resolution avi played on a PC with a matrox 3-head splitter, each output on a video projector. no need for expensive hi-res camera or projector."

[Bob Hart]

There is some interesting stuff going on over here with 180degree background plates being shot at very low frame rates with digital stills cameras and realtime footage being shot 3D with high definition cams.

This is specifically for Imax style exhibition. University people are involved at a research and development level.

Similar techniques might be applicable to extremely wide formats, like shoot a high res background plate with a stills camera wearing a fisheye and shoot live action in realtime within that overall frame with a video camera and scale your video to fit the vertical span of the "crack under door" widescreen format you create with the stills cam.

If you intend to go 180degrees with a 35mm film adaptor like Mini35 or the alternatives like Letus35, Brevis, RedrockM2 or SGPro, you could try a fisheye lens on these. Nikon used to do a 8mm fisheye, the Peleng 8mm f3.5 fisheye is readiliy available on ebay or from overseas and maybe some local vendors. With any 35mm adaptor, you may take a resolution hit.

You might be better off using what the skateboarders call a "death lens" which is a fisheye adaptor which fits to front of many consumer-prosumer camcorders and crop a "crack under door" background motion frame from that. Unfortunately, you will still lose lots of resolution but the barrel distortion might no be so severe with the top and bottom of the image gone.

There will be a lot of post effects work needed, not something I would want to take on.