Neophyte seeking to Soar

GlassGun

Good Day:

I am 76 years of age and have been freezing reality in still photography since about my 10th birthday in 1957.
I am highly competent at still photography and not bad using Canon EOS series cameras to do interviews etc. in 4K.

Being involved in some exciting places (political campaigns and some research groups) it is clear to me that taking light, motion and sound to the obvious next level AR and 3D etc. is the way to go.

I am working with some respected professional videographers who want to learn more about what you (and now we) are up to.

I want to get competent soon in AR and need help to get there.
I am looking at the Canon EOS R5C with the twin fisheye lens
Also looking to get a new Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch loaded with speed and memory.
As to other gear, I am unsure.

I own Two Vuze XR cameras and have not used them much yet.

Pardon this stumbling ramble of enthusiasm mixed with ignorance. I throw myself at your
expert feet and ask for some steps to take and some recommendations as to equipment and pricing, so I
may best assess where to go and how fast to go there.

Thank you for your consideration
Peter Hymans "The Glass Gun"

One time when I was reloading .308 Winchester ammo I looked at the copper jacketed slug and said to myself;
"I was not put on this earth to cause harm, pain or death." It was then that it came clear to me that I hunt, stalk, wait for a good shot, shoot and then reap the rewards of it all.....My CAMERA is my "weapon" it is a Glass Gun and I cause no harm.

Please help me expand my hunting to include creative, powerful and teaching media, which will help others and expand the joy in my romance with light, color, sound and the emotions they can stimulate.

KatDEO

GlassGun Nice to e-meet you GlassGun! Would be great to hop on a call and chat about your ideas and projects! I am based in Miami and our editors are in the same timezone. Drop us an email at creator@deovr.com and we can tell you everything about the best camera and the laptop for you. Canon Fisheye is great, but editing might be tricky. VuzeXR is a very good camera for the price and doesn't require complex editing. Love your passion for photography 🙂 You will love VR, it's a great way to revisit places and relive the moments from the past! Katya

philpw99

My friend. Your piece is written with passion and beauty. It reflects your enthusiasm in photography. Quite commendable.
And it gives me some inspiration too.

Well, at the same time I do want to give out some warnings, because the VR180, 3D tech...etc are still in high risk area.

Around 2012 everyone was so sure that 3D TV was the future, then it flops so bad that today only few movies are made into 3D Blurays. 3D TV shows are like extincted.

3D VR180 so far is doing good, but only in niche market. It will take some time to, or if it can, go mainstream. Apple's VR gives us some hope, but the price tag is too high. Few people can afford it.

I am currently doing 3D VR180 as a hobby, using 2 cheap Kodak SP360, because I don't want to spend too much in it. Many people got burnt by 3D before. I don't want to invest too much in it yet. Or maybe I am just cheap like that.

For you, if you are determined, Canon R5C is a good choice, but you need to know how to mod it into 65mm IPD. Or wait for Canon to release the proper twin fisheye lens.

MacBook pro of course a good choice for 3D video editing, but so does PCs with good NVIDIA video cards. It depends on your skill and effort, not just the machine.

Shooting VR video requires the platform to be very still. You need to look for good tripod or stable gimbal stabilizer. Small fisheye cameras have advantages here, because they are easier to stabilized. For this subject I think you know much more than me.

Vuze XR is quite a decent VR camera to start with your journey of VR. It's small, easy to use and resolution is good enough. Maybe use them to do all the practices of shooting, editing, and posting?

In all, I wish you have a great journey in your pursue of VR video. It will be fun for sure. The immersion feeling of VR videos is unique and engaging. This field should be explored a lot more.

GlassGun

philpw99
Thank you so much.
So many things to consider.

I think I will get the Canon EOS R5C anyway for normal videos in 8K
and I can use my two Vuze cameras until the lens is perfected by Canon.

Do you know if the Vuze can have alternative power source? I hate to depend on the battery inside the little camera body.
Thanks/Cheers
Peter "The Glass Gun"

GlassGun

philpw99

Hello Again.

I have only used my Vuze XR a little bit.
Once I had a memory card issue. The card did not take the information in.
How many minutes will a card accept of 180º shooting?
I am also concerned about how many minutes of recording the battery will allow.
Thank you for your help.
I have my EOS R5 C now and am about to get the twin fisheye from Canon.

Next will be a headset. I do not like META/FB because of their snooping and censorship.
AND I do not know the alternative headsets. I have been an Apple aficionado since I bought my first Apple II
about 3-months after Apple hit the market. AND the price for the first Apple headset is prohibitive, unless I get a big bonus.

Cheers and Happy Holidays!
Peter

Jacques3D

Pour répondre à votre question concernant l'appareil VUZE, vous pouvez l'alimenter par la prise USB

GlassGun

Jacques3D
¡Merci Jacques!

Hillbilly_Hobbyist

Self taught with Youtube tutorials here, so my advice and opinions are not professional.

First off, do you own a VR headset? I have seen these questions asked in the past and the people asking did not own or plan on getting a VR headset to view the VR footage. If you can't see the footage in it's intended format then how could you expect to produce quality content. I have viewed countless videos with my Oculus Quest 2 and the knowledge obtained allowed me to form my own opinions on which formats and equipment work best. With that said, here is my opinions.

I cannot afford the R5C at the moment, but plan on getting one soon along with the dual fisheye lens. As I said I have watched many hours of footage and I consider the R5/R5C with dual fisheye lens the creme de la creme of VR cameras. There are some very expensive pro gear cameras that probably have better specs, but to my eye, they look no better than the R5C in quality when viewed through my current headset. Disregard what Phil said about modding the Canon as they already have a dual fisheye lens available and the quality is fine. You will need to 3D calibrate the footage, but that should be done out of any cameras we use anyways for the best quality, While the video footage is as good as anything else on the market, the 8k VR180 photos out of the R5's are unmatched in my opinion.

As Phil said, if you plan on moving at all then you will definitely need a gimbal. I have a DJI Ronin.

Visual is only half of the VR experience for the dedicated. Sound can take it to another level and Ambisonic audio is the way to go there. The Zoom H3VR is acceptable here, but be aware that Ambisonics opens another can of worms as each platform has their own procedures for adding it. I ended up giving up getting it to work on DEOVR and just upload the AMBIX videos to Oculus TV and a stereo version here on DEOVR..

I use Windows equipment so I cannot comment on Apple but here is what I know for windows. I use Davinci Resolve, Mistika and Photoshop/Lightroom for photo and video editing and since you will be editing 8k footage you will need a fast cpu and a lot of ram is you said, but most importantly you will need a quality video card with at least 16gb of ram. I have an Nvidia RTX3090 with 24gb of ram and it powers through editing.

Search for Hugh Hou on Youtube. He is very knowledgeable and you can learn a lot from his videos. He also has several videos on the R5C's.

GlassGun

Hillbilly_Hobbyist

Thank you so much.
I do not own an Oculus of any kind and have not gotten one because META is doing too much spying on people and I have been waiting. I just ordered an EOS R5 C which will come soon and so there will be a cavalcade of new add-on gear needed. A headset will follow the purchase of the twin Fisheye Lens.

That said I understand some aficionados have stated that the Canon Twin Fisheye has an engineering defect and I am not competent to know whether that is s deal-breaker or what. Maybe the fix can be done after-purchase.
I need to get some $ together anyway to afford the lens. In the meantime I will use my L-series Canon Glass from my pre R-series by means of an adapter and become competent with the EOS R5C--which I now see is really complicated.

For 180º shooting I will use my Vuze XR to get my bearings and when I get the Twin Fisheye I should be ready to move forward.

All of the references you give, I take as a generosity from you and I THANK YOU.

The camera had a temporary $900 factory discount so I couldn't wait to buy it. I missed a deep discount on the lens and though I had bought one at a great price on EBay but the $--t head who advertised it said he would not ship it unless I proved I was a professional. EBay was not help with this guy who was only backing out because the lens bit I won with was $950.00 and the dude said it was unused!

Thanks again---Sorry to be long winded. Words are all I have till the flow of gear and knowledge aggregate.

Cheers for the Holidays,
Peter H. "The Glass Gun"!

philpw99

GlassGun
Sorry that I was away from home for two weeks. Only see the post now.

For VR videos, you do need to use the fastest SD cards available. A2 V30 is the minimum requirement.
However, you don't need to buy the big size cards like 512GB or 1TB, because when you record VR video, 2 minutes are already too long. I recorded mostly in 30 seconds to 1 minute length, then cut them into 10 second clips. 2x128GB or 2x256GB are good enough for a casual 7-day trip.

Like @Hillbilly_Hobbyist said, many videos are shot with Canon's current twin fisheye lens, and they look just fine.
Because when you have a 65 IPD and watch a clip with 60 IPD, you will see the world being a little larger than usual.
The effect is quite subtle, not many people can see it, or maybe it's even a good effect for sight-seeing.
Yet, when shooting people it might not be desirable, because the model will appear to be a little larger in real life.

quidnunc

I don't have any knowledge to know if the R5 C needs an IPD mod but you can just look yourself at captured footage from the R5 C to determine if you think it's good or not. In the description of videos on deovr.com I have seen camera listed but the only creator I know of who uses it off the top of my head is Baz Travels

GlassGun

Thanks for the reply.

GlassGun

philpw99
Thank you so much.
The CF cards vary in price so much. What is true and what is bogus about the less expensive or more expensive ones? Typically I buy the "Best Tools" and sometimes it is not necessarily a better investment.

Also, what kind of VR filming do you do where 10-second clips are convenient?
Thanks again.
P

Hillbilly_Hobbyist

philpw99 I have my rig set to 70mm as 65mm produces enlarged results in my opinion. The quality and editing ease of the Canon would override that deficiency for me. I mostly notice the problem with peoples heads and is less noticeable if the subject is filmed at a slightly larger distance.

philpw99

Now this is getting a little crazy: Canon R5C can records 8K Raw HQ video up to 1.7Gbps.
https://en.canon-cna.com/cameras/eos-r5c/specifications/

The regular SD card cannot handle that at all. The max is 650Mbps.

So if you are going for 8k recording, you need to buy CFexpress 2.0 cards Type B that can handle over 1700mb/s.
This means my previous comment was wrong. You cannot use those regular SD card for 8k recording. The minimum is CF cards that supports 1070mb/s, which means you do need those huge capacity cards. 1GB space can only record 7 seconds of video, so 1TB CF card can only record around 2 minutes and half of the video. This is really madness !

I am using Adobe Premiere to do primitive editing of the VR videos. It can do the basic jobs well enough. I am better at Vegas, but too bad Vegas doesn't support VR180.

Yeah, I stick with my twin Kodak SP360 4K. Canon R5C is really a very steep hill to climb.

GlassGun

I knew you meant CF Express The B.
There are so many brands and claims.
Thanks again.
P