The $249 lens is currently being sold with a $200 rebate offer, so your cost is $49.99. I just ordered one.
Officially, the little lens does not support video in 3D, but that is supposed to be easy to work around – just put tape over the electrical contacts on the 3D lens and use the feature in the camera (see menus) to use the camera without a lens. The effect of all this is to recorded side by side (left-right) video for the left-right eyes.
The lens is wide at 12.5mm (25mm full frame equivalent) and slow (f/12) but all that is fine for deep depth of field 3D. The main issue is that the lenses are very close together, which is only going to be useful for relatively close in subjects. However, since I currently used paired cameras with a roughly 3″ and 6″ interaxial distance, I figure the narrow interaxial on the 3D lens will be useful for very close in subjects. Looking forward to trying this for 3D video!
This is a ten minute teaser – perhaps a lot more to come! – of the Washington Civil War Association’s Civil War era history, camp and battles at Deep Creek Farms, Medical Lake/Spokane, WA. This video includes scenes from two battles combined into one, plus some camp scenes. I have about an hour and a half (times 2!) of 3D video to use in eventually putting more short videos together from this event.
Need to click on the link since the embedded Youtube video player does not yet handle 3D.
I shoot 3D video using two separate cameras with greater flexibility in lenses and audio. However there are many times that shooting 3D with a single camera would be quite nice – in my looking around, I still have not found the right set of features in a consumer priced 3D camera. This one is getting closer but to shoot good 3D video still seems likely to require at least a low end professional camera, or separate cameras.
The main problem with separate cameras is there is – usually – no easy way to get the lens interaxial distance close enough for many types of shots, while most integrated 3D cameras have close lens spacing.
It is hard to believe, in this YouTube age, that taking video of people in public could be a crime. But the police are serious about not wanting to be recorded — and they have been making arrests to prove it.
I am setting up gear to record an event this weekend in 3D, and to record audio in stereo
Group of XLR connectors (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
with two long shot gun directional mics.
I use two Lumix GH-2s for the video recording but there is no way to monitor the recorded audio on the GH-2. Plus, I am using XLR mics. While I have a separate XLR mic mixer, I was not successful in feeding stereo signals into the GH-2 and could not find a solution to that problem.
I decided to just record the soundtrack separately. Since I do not have a digital audio recorder, but I do have an older SD camera with XLR inputs (a Panasonic DG-AVC30), I am planning to record the audio on the AVC30, while recording the video on the two Lumix cameras. My first attempt at a setup looks like this (sorry for the lousy smart phone photo – something better in the future) with the AVC30 bolted upside down on my homemade mounting rail.
The 18-inch long shot guns are mounted on top of the GH-2s, and crossed over. The one on the left records the right audio channel and the one on the right records the left audio channel. These feed into the XLR inputs on the AVC30, which enables me to monitor the audio as a I record it, plus I can adjust the audio levels in real time.
The three cameras need to be synchronized – the only way to do that is by recording an audio pulse (hand clap, snap of the fingers, other sharp sounds) on all cameras simultaneously. The audio tracks will then be lined up in the editor. I’m sure there are easier ways to do this but I am working with what I have and my zero billion $ budget!
The plastic bag on the tripod handle covers up a remote for another camera (not shown) and was put on there since I was out recently in the rain and wanted to protect it from the rain. I suppose I could get rid of that now!
What’s with all the rubber bands? That’ll be for another day.
Update: Found the problem with the mixer and ended up using the 2 XLR mics into the mixer and into one of the cameras. Didn’t need to use the video camera as an audio recorder. Whew!
Guide to 3D and Drones
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