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.
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.
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.
Which would help with synchronized sensor readout.
Of course it's still possible that's really just one sensor with a logical split, which would be some disappointing marketing.
But very impressive that they have such tight synchronization between sensor readouts to feel comfortable splitting it.
But that’s still not 16k of pixels. You don’t even need two 8k sensors to make this work. Just aim the stereo lenses at different parts of a 16k sensor. The Canon solution is simply lacking IPD and pixels.
> Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines the quality of the recording.
This is false. Going to get up on my soapbox again here:
Larger sensors actually have more noise (noise is proportional the square root of the area).
It’s easy to understand the confusion, though: Putting a larger sensor behind the same lens is the opposite of cropping… you get a larger field of view and less image detail. Thus, keeping field of view the same, a larger sensor forces you to use a lens with a longer focal length.
Now, if you re-grind the original lens to have a longer focal length, you encounter another problem: The same physical aperture divided by the new longer focal length means that you have a smaller focal ratio (the number in F/<number> gets bigger). You have a dimmer lens!
So, to keep the same focal ratio (“F-stop”), you need a lens with a larger physical aperture… That larger physical aperture is collecting more light onto your sensor!
That’s why everyone seems to think larger sensors are better. It’s the lens you are forced to use, not the sensor itself.
Since light collected is directly proportional to the area of the lens (and lens area will be proportional to sensor area, see above) and sensor noise is only proportional to sqrt(area), the signal to noise ratio goes as area/sqrt(area) = sqrt(area).
But that’s not the same thing as saying a larger sensor is better… you could have just used a lens with a larger physical aperture in the first place. You don’t need a larger sensor to do that.
Most optical aberrations increase with high powers of the f-number so it's highly undesirable to make ultra-fast lenses, so it quite quickly becomes cheaper to use a larger sensor with a slower f-number. Try matching a jellybean 85/2 lens on a full-frame sensor on e.g. MFT. It's going to be rather expensive. Then try matching a 85/1.4 or 85/1.2 (nowadays not uncommon) lens and you find yourself at "that's not physically possible".
Coincidentally, full-frame sensors can be made from just two stitched exposures on a regular chip stepper, so they're sort of the largest sensor size before cost explodes. Meanwhile S35/APS-C offers some real cost savings (single exposure).
You're of course correct that the better lens helps. But a bigger sensor can also be better by itself.
In stereo you really do have more visual information. It's not unusual for 10% of the pixels in a stereogram (say a close up of a person) to be unique to one channel. On top of that you have left and right eye pixels that are shared which must be equivalent to more than one mono pixel even if they aren't equivalent to two.
Although I get MPO's with two JPEGs in one file from my New 3DS, stereo content is frequently delivered in side-by-side format as one big JPEG. Stereo movies and TV frequently use side-by-side with half horizontal resolution on the assumption that stereo is feeding your eyes and brains more data although it probably doesn't match the original perceived resolution.
Here’s the RED body list https://www.red.com/productcategory/Camera-BRAINs
There’s no brain for an 8k sensor where you could have more than one for the cost of this. So you’d have to at the very least compromise on resolution.
You’d also have to construct a multi camera rig which adds to both cost and size/weight/difficulty. So you’d compromise on the ergonomics of it.
Then you’d have to add the lenses. These have them integrated. Finding comparable lenses would set you over your comparable budget.
Okay, then let’s talk storage. This has 8TB on board. Getting an equivalent for the RED would also set you over the budget.
Finally, connectivity. The only REDs that you could maybe bring under budget need additions to add connectivity. So you’re compromising there.
And at the end of the day, 30K for a camera of this caliber is insanely cheap. I think everyone getting caught up on the cost has only dealt with prosumer stuff at best. Anyone at the professional level has been awed by black magic’s ability to bring this and the Ursa Cine 17k at the price point that they have.
Besides, the cost for everything else will far outpace the camera. The camera is the one thing you don’t want to skimp on. You have a bad camera day, you ruin everything else and waste more money than you’d have saved.
I’ll reiterate: 30k is an absolute bargain for this or the 17k.
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.
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).
Pro equipment can reach prices that seem unbelievable to prosumers.
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/fl...
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.
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.
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.
For mass market consumers, you can already shoot in Apple's spatial video format with an iPhone.
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-...
Source: own an AVP and an iPhone 15 Pro
The whole point of the Canon Dual Fisheye lens is to record stereoscopic video on a “standard” single sensor camera.
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.
So is "I, as a non-photographer, openly question the utility of this pro-photographer tool to pro-photographers", though.
> 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
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.