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Canon: Dual Fisheye Lens
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Insta360, GO 3S: New 4K Capable Camera
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Blackmagic RAW for New URSA Camera
360 Seconds. Broadcast News & Commentary is a weekly program on Youtube about the latest equipment for broadcasting and film. Explained by experts – practitioners directly working in the field of cinema and television.
Hosts: Philip Grossman, host and co-producer at Visionaries, and Mark Sindyukov. Production – TKT1957 LLC.
Airing on June 17, 2024
Canon’s Latest Dual Fisheye Lens: RF-S 3.9mm F3.5 STM
Mark: Philip, today, our focus technology that we’re discussing alongside our other trends that I’d want to start off with is the Canon dual fisheye lens. Canon has introduced its latest innovation, the RF-S 3.9mm F3.5 STM DUAL FISHEYE, an APS-C virtual reality lens. I wanted to hear your impressions and thoughts on this technology.
Philip: Certainly. This is a second lens of this type that Canon has released, the first lens being a full-frame version, which I thought was very interesting when it came out. Doing VR in the past was very difficult; it required two cameras that had to be the right ocular distance, an interesting mount, and synchronization. This new lens enables you to have a single camera to create 360 in 3D on a single mirrorless camera. A big part of this is that cameras now have video resolutions that have jumped to roughly 8K, which means 4K per eye is optimal, though 8K per eye would be better.
I think it’s really interesting that they’ve come out with the RF-S mount, which is the crop sensor factor, meaning smaller cameras. This allows you to get these into unique areas to create and capture 360-degree or VR environments. I can see this becoming a favorite of aerialists, such as drone operators, who want to put smaller cameras onto their systems while still being able to capture that VR 3D look. It’s intriguing technology. I’ll be playing with the full-frame version soon, so I’ll let you know what I come up with.
Insta360, GO 3S: New 4K Capable Camera
Mark: Awesome! That’s really cool. Another topic of discussion that I have today is a solution by Insta360, and we’re talking about the GO 3S, a thumb-sized camera that maintains the GO 3’s compact form factor while incorporating significant upgrades, including the capability to shoot in 4K. What are some of the breakthrough qualities that you see in this technology described?
Philip: There are lots and lots of action cams on the market, and what’s unique in this situation is that they’re getting smaller and smaller. Part of storytelling is adding a perspective you may not normally see, setting somebody a little off-balance, and drawing them in. It allows you to get into a perspective that another human being could get into but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to with a human and a camera. The interesting thing about the GO 3S is its compact size and the ability to shoot 4K now. You’ll hear people wanting to go 4K 60, but 4K 24 fits into a film look, and you can stick those cameras anywhere and have a multi-location, multi-view shoot. It’s interesting to see them keep pushing this and making these things smaller and smaller. Pretty soon, they’ll be like spy cameras.
Blackmagic RAW Immersive Format for New URSA Cine Camera
Mark: Wow, that’s really, really crazy. The final technology that I wanted to discuss with you today is something that Blackmagic Design has come out with. They’ve recently teased us with the development of a new camera, the URSA Cine Immersive, designed to capture content for Apple Vision Pro. This is a breakthrough technology and I’d like to know what your opinions are on the URSA camera designed by Blackmagic?
Philip: Yeah, you know, it’s one of those things when you look at Apple. Apple is a driver of industry trends. They’re not always the first; they weren’t first with the smartphone, and they weren’t first with the tablet, but they sort of sit back, and their engineering development UI teams, human interaction teams, really seem to understand the market. They’re the first to really come forward with something I think is going to drive the adoption of VR. We’ve had the Oculus Rift, we’ve had Meta’s offerings, and others making these helmets and systems, but it hasn’t been easy to capture the content.
Just like with the Canon lens, this camera is a 12K camera, so it’s getting much closer to 6K per eye, moving towards that 8K target. It’s going to make it easier to create this kind of content. From what I understand, they worked with Apple in developing this camera to fit into their ecosystem. This means that I now have a product to give to filmmakers to capture content because content is king. You need that to drive your product offering. For Apple, the visual computing portion is very interesting, but the entertainment aspect is what’s really going to be amazing. Having a solution that I can put on a set of sticks and shoot like a regular film but with immersive capability is going to drive a lot of content and hopefully adoption. I can’t wait until we see the next generation of the Apple Studio or headset, not just the pro version, but the regular Vision.
Mark: Beautiful. Just to summarize everything we’ve discussed today, I wanted to ask you one last detail, and that is about the overall trend I’ve noticed this week with virtual reality (VR) technologies. What are your thoughts on everything that’s going on in the market?
Philip: Yeah, so I think we’ve seen starts and stops with VR over the years; the tech hadn’t quite been there. I think even Apple with its Vision Pro understands that it is not fully optimized. They’ve been looking for tech to scale all this down but couldn’t wait any longer. They are a market driver, and I think their Vision Studio is something the competition will look at. We’re going to have more headsets come out, and I think we’ll eventually get to a standardized format for the material. You’ll see the adoption happen.
I don’t know if it will be the same as 3D television, which came and went. There are a lot more opportunities for that immersive field with VR. I can think of concerts and boxing matches; it would be a great market for pay-per-view. When they figure out how to stream that content to a headset, I can sit at home and watch a concert. It’s exciting. I’d say we’re probably 36 months away from seeing it become, if not mainstream, then much more in the mainstream.
Mark: Perfect, and I would agree with you. Anyways, this is our time to wrap up. I would like to say thank you again to our expert Philip Grossman. Don’t forget to comment on the news we’ve discussed, leave us a like, follow, and subscription. We try really hard and would like to see everybody next Monday at the same time!
360 Seconds. Broadcast News & Commentary
The weekly show, focusing on the latest products and solutions in the global TV and film industry, features insights and analysis from top experts. Released every Monday within the TKT1957 network, the program can be found on the YouTube channel, social media groups, and the tkt1957.com website.
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