Day 97: Section 44

Today I was nearly arrested for being a terrorist while filming Buckingham Palace with the prototype Panasonic AG-3DA1 3D camcorder .
Apparently the Queen is not too impressed by having an ominous black twin lensed possibly-a-rocket-launcher-on-a-tripod pointed at her house.
My customary wit and banter deserted me in the face of two armed police and a squad car, so I said "fair cop", and moved on.
More quizzically I was also asked to leave the surroundings of the London Eye. The camera looked 'too professional', I was told. (It does have a little 3D Professional badge on the side!). Professional people have to pay to film the wheel it seems.
I didn't think I looked all that professional in my shorts and star wars T-shirt, but I'd already got most of what I wanted by the time the rent-a-cops arrived, so again, I moved on without too much hassle.

Panasonic took over Trafalgar Square to mark '2 years until olympics' day, and I met up with Nigel and John who gave me the camera to rush off all over London getting stock footage for their promo.

Oscar had another Mummy day. We're having Daddy day soon.

Day 92: But that I am forbid To tell the secrets... 22nd July 2010

Today I was asked if I wanted to visit Panasonic to see a new product they were excited about.

Hmm... would I be at all interested in getting my hands on what I had a big suspicion was going to be a 3D camcorder?

Yep!

As soon as I got there I had to sign an NDA, so for today that story is over.

After playing with the new toy I was asked to pop up to Paul Carrack's studio to shoot an interview about his new album with Peter Van Hook. It was pretty late in the day but PC still delivered a great interview and even bought me dinner!
This time I shot with the AG-3DA1 recording to a pair of P2 card recorders. They capture a 100mb/s data stream, far less compressed than recording to internal SDHC cards.

Oscar had another Mummy day.


*I'm a bit behind (about 10 days) with these entries so my review of the SDT750 has actually already been published here.

Day 91: Silent filming on hallowed ground. 21 July

Today I was shooting the Royal Philharmonic at Abbey Road studios along with singer Paul Carrack. http://www.carrack-uk.com/

It's funny going to work and having to push trough a crowd of people to get in. It feels a bit like running a picket line.

My AG3DA1 (http://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/3d/ag-3da1/index.html) had a few software glitches (the others were fine of course) but that's what you get for playing with prototypes. Any way you slice it, it's an awful lot easier that lugging a twin camera / mirror rig around. So quick to set up you almost forget you're shooting 3D. Almost!

Once again I found standing in the middle of the orchestra in full flow a moving experience. Something about the reality of being right there, especially in that studio, where Star Wars, LOTR etc. were recorded. It's magical.

Oscar had another Mummy day!

Day 90: Meerly filming. Tuesday 20th July

I spent the day out and about with the 3D camera, ending up at Drusilla's zoo where I got to film the meercats courtesy of my sister in law Sue. They tried to eat my shoelaces.

Tasha was going to come along with Oscar, but he decided he was hungry, as we were about to leave, and would rather stay behind for milk. We'll take him on his first zoo trip soon I'm sure!

Day 89: Prototype casting. Monday 19th July.

Today I was invited to Panasonic to see a prototype of their new AG-3DA1 3D camcorder. We'll be using three of the only four in the UK to film the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road studios on Wednesday.

I got to take it home to learn how to use it ahead of the shoot. A real full HD 3D camera. Could I *be* any more excited? I got home as quick as I could and went off to catch the sunset on Eastbourne beach. Unfortunately the sun just sort of fizzled out in that murky grey British way. I got lots of cliche seaside town shots in the half light.

Oscar had a Mummy day as I was away for most of it. Apparently while I was off 'playing', Tasha performed works of Shakespear for him, read books, recited poems, taught him Latin and French, baked, cooked, cleaned, sewed, and did some charity work.

World's first hands on review of Panasonic HDC-SDT750

This is a little rushed, as I have to take Oscar for his jabs today!

Today Panasonic announced their new consumer 3D camcorder.

Sometimes, when the wind is right, I get to try out pre production prototypes before the likes of Philip Bloom or Vincent Laforet get their hands on them. I got to play with one of these last week.

Two things come to mind.

1. It's fantastic
2. I hate it.*

I've been shooting 3D since buying my first Bolex 16mm with stereo lens in 1989. It's a fun and challenging pastime. 3D has always been a fairly complicated affair. It takes a lot of specialist equipment, time to calculate inter axial distances, planning for stereo window violations, convergence, depth budgets, camera sync etc. All this means that simply put, not many people know how to do it properly.

Now along come Panasonic with this point and shoot camera that delivers stunning 3D images with no need for any special 3D knowledge. Suddenly it becomes difficult to persuade clients that there is a dark art to 3D.**

Ok, so this £1300 camcorder is not about to replace a dual Red system or Arri Alexia, but for weddings, babies, parties, holidays and low budget film makers, 3D is now a very viable option.

How it works.

3D is accomplished by a newly designed lens system that attaches to the front of the camera along with some nifty processing within the camera body. There are two locating pins on the lens which tell the camera to switch into 3D mode.
The attachment actually houses two separate auto focus lenses that resolve left and right images side by side onto the sensor as two 16:9 images. This means both 'eyes' are captured at exactly the same moment so it is possible to film fast action without trouble.

It's not technically capturing 1080p in 3D mode as only half the resolution from each side of the sensor is used for each eye. This is not as bad at it might sound - all the 3D broadcasts from Sky etc. use this method to squeeze two images into one for 3D. A 3D capable TV will recognize the image as 3D and stretch each eye back to 1920x1080.

Something I've noticed from digital 3D editing is that when the brain is delivered two images it somehow averages out any noise or picture artefacts. Although the image produced by the HDC-SDT750 has technically been upsampled to give 1080p, the perceived image quality is much better than you might expect and far better than a 2D image would be if upsampled to the same degree.

Up close and personal

The distance between the lenses (Inter axial distance) is around 20mm which means it is possible to film objects as close as 1m, a feat that would otherwise require a hugely complicated and expensive mirror rig. Even the professional $21,000 AG3DA1 3D camcorder cannot shoot as close as this. In my experiments I found you could actually get as close as 40cms as long as your close subject didn't cover the edges of the picture. This results in negative parallax, or the 'things poking out of the screen at you' effect.

Other features

Aside from 3D, the camera body is pretty much state of the art. I won't go into these in detail but I will give you a somewhat lazy list.
Optical image stabilisation, touch screen control, leica lens, time lapse recording, manual control ring for focus/exposure, 1080p@50fps (first of it's kind to offer this), pre rec (camera can be set to always be recording, so if you miss a goal then hit record it will 'backdate' the start by 3 seconds and you get your shot!)

What can you do with the footage?
As it's AVCHD you can burn it straight to bluray and it will playback in 3D on a 3D TV. Panasonic also include software to edit and make standard DVDs.
You can also shoot best in class 2D video by simply removing the 3D lens.

I was allowed to shoot some 3D test footage and I will post a link to this in youtube's 3D format as soon as I have permission.

Disclaimer. I get to play with kit from Panasonic as I know some folks there, they don't pay me to do this or let me keep the gear :(
Also the camera I used was a one off hand built prototype, so things may change (read get better) by the time it hits production.
I regularly use Lumix cameras, but I also use Canon and Sony.

EDIT 31/07/10: A friend of mine (Ian from Superteam films http://www.houseofhellmovie.com/#vid) pointed out that I didn't mention that this new camcorder does not use the anaglyph red/green system that my images on the blog are created with. What you get is full colour 3D like you see at the cinema.

* Not really.
** There is! There is! It's really hard to do.