2015 Camera Shootout

All third year Motion Picture Science (MPS) students partake in the camera shootout in the second semester of their third year at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). This is a very intensive project that takes an entire semester to plan, produce, and analyze. The final outcome produces a research paper, along with a video analysis of the chosen cameras, and of course, a lot of sleepless nights.

One of the challenges on this project is to produce an entertaining video, shown during screenings at the end of the semester in front of the School of Film and Animation (SOFA). Over the years, various MPS groups choose a theme, and the videos get better each year, with more topics and cameras to explore.

The class was split into three groups (determined by the number of student) in which each group chose their own theme and cameras. The Survivor group contacted Vision Research to borrow one of their Phantom Flex cameras, to compare with the Sony FS700 at the cage. The Star Wars group compared the raw workflow of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (2.5K) with the Canon 5D Mark III. My group, the superhero themed group, pinned the Arri D-21 against the Arriflex BL-III, using Vision 3 500T film, to answer the age old question. Film or Digital?

“Technical analysis between the Arri D-21 and the Arriflex BL-III using Vision 3 500T film to explore critical image quality. ”

This project was originally written in IEEE format and has been modified for this website. This was a group project and was not entirely written by me. I have gone through and made slight edits on the overall piece to fit with my style. We worked together as a group for portions of this paper, and we each had a specific writing role, mine was the visual effects section.

A lot of the pictures in these posts will have the original Figure number attached with it. This is more for me, than the reader so I could reference the original paper, and for anyone who has the original paper. Some new pictures and figures have been added and I kept with a similar notation for most images.

We have received feedback on the paper, and I have done my best to go through and improve on some of those sections. Not everything can be fixed, as we did this as a group and some of the information and data is with those team members or lost over time.

We worked in raw and the files are massive. I have been able to hold onto some of the raw VFX work (roughly 1TB of data) and that section is a little more in depth than some of the other sections, only because I have copies of everything. This is something I am okay with, as the purpose of this technical blog is to display my passion and technical abilities for visual effects.

My group, KAMAK consisted of a five person team.

Kourtney, Adrian, Michael, Andrew (me), Kayla

My group partners listed below:

To get more of a sense of what I did on this project skip to these featured sections below! The writing, the imagery, and ideas for the VFX comparison is what I really wanted to push our group to do. This pretty much led right into my thesis project.

Featured