Stacking 2 Cameras for 1000 lines

[Jed Williamson]

After watching Pieces of April & seeing the loss of quality with the 35mm film transfer in comparison to Once upon a time in Mexico, I looked at the camera's specs & the most glaring difference seems to be the lines of resolution.

A possible solution to this & to stay short of the $100K pricetag on the HD cameras would be to stack 2 dv cameras with 16x9 converters on top of one another. My initial test for a 10 foot shot is that the 1 camera would have to be about 3 feet above the other to not duplicate coverage.

Assuming the footage could be synced & combined perfectly in a NLE. Would this solve the loss of resolution problems normally associated with minidv when converted to film? I guess an example package would be 2 Dvx100's & 2 anamorphic converters + a device to hold them & balance them. Maybe $7,500 total.

This might be a dumb idea, I'm just curious what anyone thinks :)

[Barry Green]

When Scott Billups first heard about the DVX100, he tongue-in-cheek suggested the same thing: arrange 4 of 'em in a grid and you've got high-definition...

... seriously though, someone shot a film sort of like this. They put two DVX's side-by-side and stitched together the shots in post.

It was one of those three films on the Japanese website where they were showing shorts done with the DVX. I can't for the life of me remember what the site was, maybe someone here will remember? Looked pretty good, but I imagine it was a nightmare to calibrate them together.

[Arthur To]

no, because as much as they are close together

there is sitll depth and perspective

(this is how they make 3d films)

[Charles Papert]

Most 3D setups use a mirror or beam splitter so that the light path to the two cameras are a specific and controllable distance, usually comparable to the distance between the human eyes. This distance is one of the parameters that is adjusted as part of the 3D effect (controls perceived depth).

However for an stitched effect it would be desirable for the cameras to be sharing the same "space", i.e. again using a beam splitter or half-mirror to be essentially photographing the identical light path. Otherwise, parallax may cause problems. In the case of stacking the cameras on top of each other, imagine an object moving horizontally close to camera--it would occupy a different location vertically in the two resulting frames.

[Arthur To]

.... resulting in a cataclysmic nausiation of the entire audience, killing thousands.--- just kidding

[Charles Papert]

...just as I have inflicted with my Steadicam shots for years....also just kidding!