Good/Bad digital cameras 4 grscrn & tracking?

[TomConnole]

I need a low cost digital camera for greenscreen and motion tracking. From the info I have found so far, Canon 5D is not a workable option. RED has better reviews, but that will skew the budget away from my artists, and I DO think people should be able to feed their kids.

Does anyone have good or bad experiences to relate? I will be working in a very controlled environment (and this ain’t my first clambake) so the shooting conditions will be optimal.

Further, we have to buy some software… ???

Thanks, Tom

[Noriaki]

Hello,

I don’t think there are any cheap camera that can sample color nicely for keying.
Meaning that color sampling should be at least 4:2:2 to produce decent image to key.
Cheap camera are 4:2:0 or even lower so you’ll end up with nasty edge problem.
So instead of keying you’ll have to roto which takes 4-5 times longer.

Now, I’d love to be wrong on that, so if anybody knows different, go ahead.

As for software, try Nuke X ( for high-end compositing and 3D tracking )—it’s costy though— and Rolling shutter plugin ( from The Foundry, same company that dev Nuke ) to help with your camera tracking, it would solve skewing issues due to CMOS sensor.

Once again and I’m sure this will help you since the price range of those tools are relatively high.

Another option could be to rent a good camera for few days and Key / Track ( 2D tracking only ) with Shake or After Effects.

Cheers,

Alfafa

[claudio antonelli]

Red footage is fine for keying and the like. Even the blue channel tends to be livable.

Sometimes you can rent older digi-film cameras (Viper, f900) for near Red prices. There may be hidden costs though…

The Canon 5d’s not terrible for tracking, though it does have the rolling shutter issue.

Haven’t tried the 5d for keying. I’m sure it’s not ideal, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to afford than Red, and if you’ve got lock-offs and clean plates, Nuke’s IBK keyer should be very handy.

For 3d tracking get Syntheyes. It’s $400 us and better than any compositing software’s internal 3d tracker (faster too). Way better than paying the extra grand or whatever it is for NukeX just for 3d tracking.

[Isaac]

shooting on lowcost equipment may be a false economy if you aren’t careful. if you shoot on something low cost you will have to deal with all the problems that come with rolling shutter ( could be a nightmare for tracking) and compression ( causes lots of problems with getting good keys) so what you save up front you pay in man hours / more artists on the backend. They only thing you may get lucky with is if the project you are working on is highly stylized or treated so bad mattes are easy to hide and the shots have minimal movement. additionally, not sure if it’s even an issue for your project, but i don’t think 5D has proper audio recording abilities. (could be wrong about that tho…)

if not and you need to do photoreal compositing, you may be better of shooting greenscreen stuff on something higher end like the red camera. if you light properly, you can get really good keys, and with proper measurements and tracking markers, match moving will be a breeze. for software if you are really on a shoestring budget, download the mac smoke demo for free for a month and do all your work. you can download it once per machine so you could have several people working on it that way. it has all the tools you need to cut mattes, tracking CC, conform and finish. what’s better than that?

best of luck!!!!

tim

[Anonymous]

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