4 ms·

Can you not get this capability with a RED camera + Canon Fisheye lense? I’m no photographer, but it seems like it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $

Can you not get this capability with a RED camera + Canon Fisheye lense? I’m no photographer, but it seems like it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera - when you could just use an existing high end camera like RED + new lens.

rowanG077 2y ago
Is this a serious question? a RED camera does not have stereovision and has no other way to retain depth information.
- amarshall 2y ago
  Both the V-Raptor & Komodo have an RF mount and thus can accept the Canon Dual Fisheye lens. The resolution is a lot lower, and neither sensor is well-matched to the lens’s image circle. The whole point of the Canon Dual Fisheye lens is to record stereoscopic video on a “standard” single sensor camera.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  "Is this a serious question" is hard to take as anything but an insult. Any actual trolling or the like will naturally sink on HN without the risk of attacking genuinely curious questions. With the example Canon lens approach alberth had linked the device does not need to natively support stereo. The downsides, and why one might still spend 30k on an alternative, is said lens approach effectively halves the sensor area and the optics system won't be quite as well designed as a natively optimized one. Also the device is aimed to match the AVP precisely e.g. 90 FPS at full ~59 MP resolution. I doubt they expect to sell many units but the units they do sell are for top professionals looking for the absolute best stereo quality they could get for the AVP, not for prosumers or average productions which would be fine with the slight quality and workflow bump to save 20k.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > "Is this a serious question" is hard to take as anything but an insult. So is "I, as a non-photographer, openly question the utility of this pro-photographer tool to pro-photographers", though.
    - zamadatix 2y ago
      Hmm, I have no trouble finding "Can you not... I'm no photographer but it seems like it'd be tough" type questions as genuine curiosity about an expert field instead. It's certainly possible to interpret it as an insult if one likes, that's often an easy task, but it definitely feels like it's not the only way to interpret the question.
    - spiderice 2y ago
      Hard disagree. A person who is ignorant in a certain subject is allowed to ask questions about that subject in order to learn. > Can you not get this capability with... Can be interpreted as "this is pointless.. you can do this other thing for way cheaper" OR "help me understand why this exists because I don't understand it". GP is _clearly_ in the latter camp and saying "as a non-photographer" to make that clear. Since we're already quoting HN guidelines > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith
    - rowanG077 2y ago
      Even after they were told it has a ton of value add. It indeed irked me the wrong way and that's why I took that tone.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Lenny Lipton, who developed the RealD system used in theaters today worked on the end-to-end problem of stereo movies in the 1970 used a pair of 8mm cameras hinged together, there were similar rigs used in the 1950s. Today I adjust stereograms so that most objects are close to the paper or screen by sliding them horizontally, but I think Lipton is right that it is better to make the cameras converge though all my stereo cameras are parallel.
dagmx 2y ago
I feel like I already covered the answer to your question in the comment you’re replying to. The canon fisheye lens does not have the same IPD as this lens. Beyond that, you’d still be limited by the sensor. The highest RED sensor is 8k? This is 8k per eye. Thats double (actually slightly higher than double). So, you could make something inferior, yes, but not the same capabilities.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  Moreso than the "this exact Canon lens on this exact sensor" I think the question is more "why not this Canon lens approach on normal high-end camera so you don't have to buy a 30k camera which does one specific thing". You do answer that but maybe not in a way that's directly obvious to general extension for those not versed in professional photography or videography. Blackmagic does have e.g. a 12k non-stereo Ursa Cine but, like you hint at, whatever they can have in the non-stereo can always be better in stereo because a 2x sensor setup has 4x the sensor area as a 1/2 sensor setup. Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines the quality of the recording. When quality is what's important to a professional setting then it doesn't matter (in this market segment) there is a solution which is 20k cheaper if it's always going to be inferior by design. They don't expect to sell many of these to professionals even so it's fine it doesn't make cost sense to the average person. The rest of everything (recording workflows and settings, IPD, framerates, editing software) can all be identical with either approach but the sensor area is sensor area and there is nothing which can be done to fix that.
  - dagmx 2y ago
    I’m not sure the Ursa Immersive is actually two sensors, though it might be. It’s based on the Ursa Cine 17k (which is shockingly close to the exact resolution needed) so it might be a single sensor as well. Which would help with synchronized sensor readout.
    - zamadatix 2y ago
      It claims dual sensors in the product page https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20241217-01#:~:text=Dual%208160%20x%207200%20(58.7%20Megapixel)%20sensors https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20241217-01#:... Of course it's still possible that's really just one sensor with a logical split, which would be some disappointing marketing.
tobyjsullivan 2y ago
> it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera I don't think hobbyists are the target market. Isn't that price in-line with any studio-quality camera? (I have no idea if this qualifies as a studio-quality camera, but I can imagine at least a few studios would be willing to try it out).
- aeturnum 2y ago
  Also, the most common scenario for this camera (and most pro-level production cameras) is that they are rented per-job. Eventually it would makes sense to buy one if you have enough work for that camera, but most people and productions start with rentals.
- wodenokoto 2y ago
  TV studio cameras can apparently reach nearly 10x this. Pro equipment can reach prices that seem unbelievable to prosumers. https://youtu.be/RkTaMyatsTo https://youtu.be/RkTaMyatsTo
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    I remember a story about the Phantom Flex[0] High-Speed camera. It's an awesome camera, but note the absence of a price, on the Web site. I think it retails for around $80K. [0] https://www.phantomhighspeed.com/products/cameras/4kmedia/flex4k https://www.phantomhighspeed.com/products/cameras/4kmedia/fl...
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    I think how you couldn't really zoom a video in the 1970s short of printing it to film and doing optical tricks. By 1980 you started to see frame buffer effects in commercial TV and you could have zoomed but didn't have enough pixels to do much. In the digital age zooming video is completely routine and if you've got a picture with absurd megapixels you can do it in a big way.
- haldean 2y ago
  There are quite a few cine cameras that are more than 10x this amount, and there are a few that are 100x. For example, there are Panavision cameras that you can only rent direct from Panavision that require that you have half a million dollars of insurance coverage to rent. There are ARRIs that you can buy from B&H that are $100k. $30k is definitely in the range of something that individual DPs/operators could own, although it’s getting into rental territory for lots of people.
kalleboo 2y ago
> it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera These are cameras that productions rent by the day for a specific shoot, not something they buy outright. Similar to high-end cine cameras, slow motion cameras, underwater cameras, etc.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Yeah, I think initially most will be going to "customers" in the San Fernando valley.
harrall 2y ago
A cinema camera is $50 to $100k (Sony Venice or ARRI ALEXA 35). That cinema camera is much better to use for a film crew and puts out a higher quality. WITHOUT the cost of additional lenses. Then you add in sets, lighting, generators, cast, etc. All of this is fractions compared to maybe millions of dollars for marketing. And if you are a small film crew, you rent.
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  By "small" they mean, "Total cost of production for a feature length movie coming in under a few million dollars" Outright purchasing a camera and equipment vs renting them for a shoot is a waste of money unless you're a production company that is going to use the equipment over and over again until it falls apart, and even then if you rent it it is on the rental company to handle maintenance and providing replacements in case of equipment breakdown, so it can still be a good deal for you.
GeekyBear 2y ago
> it seems like it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera For mass market consumers, you can already shoot in Apple's spatial video format with an iPhone.
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  I have the $5000 Canon 8k setup, and I have filmed with the Vision Pro and iPhone 16 Pro. The latter two produce content that is nearly unwatchable. Extremely noisy/filtered and the iPhones IPD basically doesn’t exist.
  - GeekyBear 2y ago
    > nearly unwatchable Reviews in the tech press do not agree. > Apple iPhone Spatial Video Looks Amazing on Vision Pro https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-iphone-spatial-video-arrives-in-beta-and-looks-amazing-on-vision-pro/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-iphone-spatial-video-...
    - Philpax 2y ago
      It's good enough for personal use, but absolutely not good enough for professional use, especially in low-light scenarios. Source: own an AVP and an iPhone 15 Pro
Analemma_ 2y ago
Very few movie shoots actually own the camera they use. It's standard in the industry to rent a camera from a vendor for the duration of filming, which makes the MSRP of the camera, if not totally irrelevant, then a pretty minor detail.

rowanG077 2y ago

Is this a serious question? a RED camera does not have stereovision and has no other way to retain depth information.

amarshall 2y ago
Both the V-Raptor & Komodo have an RF mount and thus can accept the Canon Dual Fisheye lens. The resolution is a lot lower, and neither sensor is well-matched to the lens’s image circle. The whole point of the Canon Dual Fisheye lens is to record stereoscopic video on a “standard” single sensor camera.
zamadatix 2y ago
"Is this a serious question" is hard to take as anything but an insult. Any actual trolling or the like will naturally sink on HN without the risk of attacking genuinely curious questions. With the example Canon lens approach alberth had linked the device does not need to natively support stereo. The downsides, and why one might still spend 30k on an alternative, is said lens approach effectively halves the sensor area and the optics system won't be quite as well designed as a natively optimized one. Also the device is aimed to match the AVP precisely e.g. 90 FPS at full ~59 MP resolution. I doubt they expect to sell many units but the units they do sell are for top professionals looking for the absolute best stereo quality they could get for the AVP, not for prosumers or average productions which would be fine with the slight quality and workflow bump to save 20k.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > "Is this a serious question" is hard to take as anything but an insult. So is "I, as a non-photographer, openly question the utility of this pro-photographer tool to pro-photographers", though.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    Hmm, I have no trouble finding "Can you not... I'm no photographer but it seems like it'd be tough" type questions as genuine curiosity about an expert field instead. It's certainly possible to interpret it as an insult if one likes, that's often an easy task, but it definitely feels like it's not the only way to interpret the question.
  - spiderice 2y ago
    Hard disagree. A person who is ignorant in a certain subject is allowed to ask questions about that subject in order to learn. > Can you not get this capability with... Can be interpreted as "this is pointless.. you can do this other thing for way cheaper" OR "help me understand why this exists because I don't understand it". GP is _clearly_ in the latter camp and saying "as a non-photographer" to make that clear. Since we're already quoting HN guidelines > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    Even after they were told it has a ton of value add. It indeed irked me the wrong way and that's why I took that tone.
PaulHoule 2y ago
Lenny Lipton, who developed the RealD system used in theaters today worked on the end-to-end problem of stereo movies in the 1970 used a pair of 8mm cameras hinged together, there were similar rigs used in the 1950s. Today I adjust stereograms so that most objects are close to the paper or screen by sliding them horizontally, but I think Lipton is right that it is better to make the cameras converge though all my stereo cameras are parallel.

dagmx 2y ago

I feel like I already covered the answer to your question in the comment you’re replying to. The canon fisheye lens does not have the same IPD as this lens. Beyond that, you’d still be limited by the sensor. The highest RED sensor is 8k? This is 8k per eye. Thats double (actually slightly higher than double). So, you could make something inferior, yes, but not the same capabilities.

zamadatix 2y ago
Moreso than the "this exact Canon lens on this exact sensor" I think the question is more "why not this Canon lens approach on normal high-end camera so you don't have to buy a 30k camera which does one specific thing". You do answer that but maybe not in a way that's directly obvious to general extension for those not versed in professional photography or videography. Blackmagic does have e.g. a 12k non-stereo Ursa Cine but, like you hint at, whatever they can have in the non-stereo can always be better in stereo because a 2x sensor setup has 4x the sensor area as a 1/2 sensor setup. Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines the quality of the recording. When quality is what's important to a professional setting then it doesn't matter (in this market segment) there is a solution which is 20k cheaper if it's always going to be inferior by design. They don't expect to sell many of these to professionals even so it's fine it doesn't make cost sense to the average person. The rest of everything (recording workflows and settings, IPD, framerates, editing software) can all be identical with either approach but the sensor area is sensor area and there is nothing which can be done to fix that.
- dagmx 2y ago
  I’m not sure the Ursa Immersive is actually two sensors, though it might be. It’s based on the Ursa Cine 17k (which is shockingly close to the exact resolution needed) so it might be a single sensor as well. Which would help with synchronized sensor readout.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    It claims dual sensors in the product page https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20241217-01#:~:text=Dual%208160%20x%207200%20(58.7%20Megapixel)%20sensors https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20241217-01#:... Of course it's still possible that's really just one sensor with a logical split, which would be some disappointing marketing.

tobyjsullivan 2y ago

> it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera I don't think hobbyists are the target market. Isn't that price in-line with any studio-quality camera? (I have no idea if this qualifies as a studio-quality camera, but I can imagine at least a few studios would be willing to try it out).

aeturnum 2y ago
Also, the most common scenario for this camera (and most pro-level production cameras) is that they are rented per-job. Eventually it would makes sense to buy one if you have enough work for that camera, but most people and productions start with rentals.
wodenokoto 2y ago
TV studio cameras can apparently reach nearly 10x this. Pro equipment can reach prices that seem unbelievable to prosumers. https://youtu.be/RkTaMyatsTo https://youtu.be/RkTaMyatsTo
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I remember a story about the Phantom Flex[0] High-Speed camera. It's an awesome camera, but note the absence of a price, on the Web site. I think it retails for around $80K. [0] https://www.phantomhighspeed.com/products/cameras/4kmedia/flex4k https://www.phantomhighspeed.com/products/cameras/4kmedia/fl...
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  I think how you couldn't really zoom a video in the 1970s short of printing it to film and doing optical tricks. By 1980 you started to see frame buffer effects in commercial TV and you could have zoomed but didn't have enough pixels to do much. In the digital age zooming video is completely routine and if you've got a picture with absurd megapixels you can do it in a big way.
haldean 2y ago
There are quite a few cine cameras that are more than 10x this amount, and there are a few that are 100x. For example, there are Panavision cameras that you can only rent direct from Panavision that require that you have half a million dollars of insurance coverage to rent. There are ARRIs that you can buy from B&H that are $100k. $30k is definitely in the range of something that individual DPs/operators could own, although it’s getting into rental territory for lots of people.

kalleboo 2y ago

> it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera These are cameras that productions rent by the day for a specific shoot, not something they buy outright. Similar to high-end cine cameras, slow motion cameras, underwater cameras, etc.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Yeah, I think initially most will be going to "customers" in the San Fernando valley.

harrall 2y ago

A cinema camera is $50 to $100k (Sony Venice or ARRI ALEXA 35). That cinema camera is much better to use for a film crew and puts out a higher quality. WITHOUT the cost of additional lenses. Then you add in sets, lighting, generators, cast, etc. All of this is fractions compared to maybe millions of dollars for marketing. And if you are a small film crew, you rent.

BizarroLand 2y ago
By "small" they mean, "Total cost of production for a feature length movie coming in under a few million dollars" Outright purchasing a camera and equipment vs renting them for a shoot is a waste of money unless you're a production company that is going to use the equipment over and over again until it falls apart, and even then if you rent it it is on the rental company to handle maintenance and providing replacements in case of equipment breakdown, so it can still be a good deal for you.

GeekyBear 2y ago

> it seems like it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera For mass market consumers, you can already shoot in Apple's spatial video format with an iPhone.

kridsdale1 2y ago
I have the $5000 Canon 8k setup, and I have filmed with the Vision Pro and iPhone 16 Pro. The latter two produce content that is nearly unwatchable. Extremely noisy/filtered and the iPhones IPD basically doesn’t exist.
- GeekyBear 2y ago
  > nearly unwatchable Reviews in the tech press do not agree. > Apple iPhone Spatial Video Looks Amazing on Vision Pro https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-iphone-spatial-video-arrives-in-beta-and-looks-amazing-on-vision-pro/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-iphone-spatial-video-...
  - Philpax 2y ago
    It's good enough for personal use, but absolutely not good enough for professional use, especially in low-light scenarios. Source: own an AVP and an iPhone 15 Pro

Analemma_ 2y ago

Very few movie shoots actually own the camera they use. It's standard in the industry to rent a camera from a vendor for the duration of filming, which makes the MSRP of the camera, if not totally irrelevant, then a pretty minor detail.