Shooting for Immersive Video

Does anyone have any top-level recommendations for the best cameras to be using to shoot in 3D Immersive Video Format?

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Even though it is out my price range, the best looking really immersive VR180 experience I have seen is from the Canon R5c & RF5.2mm F2.8 L Dual Fisheye lens system. It is about $6500, but compare that to the Insta360 Titan that does full stereo 360 but only with micro 4/3 sensors and cost more than $15K. It should be noted you can capture 11K @ 360 degrees versus 4K @ 190 degrees with Canon solution. Considering the Apple Vision Pro is capable of 3800 pixels in horizontal resolution @ 110-120 degrees, you will need 6.2K horizontal resolution 180 to capture for each eye to fully take advantage of the Vision Pro. This might be why Apple is rumored to have their own custom immersive camera, which means probably $20K-$30K if using something larger than a 1” image sensor. However, it could be feasible to create a 6K x 6K 1” Sony sensor, stereo paired based camera with computational photography, but you would be limited in what you capture, but amazing things could be captured. Also, you could pair two iPhone 14Pros with a fisheye attachment, but this will diminish the computational features you have with the builtin lenses

In my own experience trying to combine two MFT for stereo 180 @4K, you must keep in mind that a 4K image sensors are in reality 3840 by 2160 (16:9) or 3840x2880 (4:3), but it is the lower number you need to be aware of if want truly spherical 180 capture, which means your effective cropped sensor will be 2160x2160 or 2880x2880 (which is why Canon made the stereo paired fisheye lens and paired it to the R5).

It will be interesting what the Vision Pro uses for camera sensors to allow passthrough. They need to be at least 4K - 4:3 to match the current sensors, probably a little more to allow for 10-20 degree overlap between cameras. This will not be 180, but might acceptable if the experience by those who tried the Vision Pro of the “Birthday Party” scene is any indication of what can be captured internally. Apple (or 3rd party developers) could use tricks by capturing a stereo 180 panoramic ‘still’ by rotating your head, then coming back to the center for video and then blending the two together to create the illusion of a full 180 since most of your attention (and movement) will be in the center anyway.

  • Fascinating & informative. Thanks for this info.

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Boom! Right below mate. I'm going to attempt to reach out to Chris Flick at Apple to get his opinion on what the best setup will be for the Vision Pro and also ask him a couple of other questions. 1. Can we play back 3D video in a "Volume" that users can actually walk around? and I guess that would be it....ha. Cheers

https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/vr-content-creator-kit?color=Black&type=Kit

  • Any update on reaching out to Chris? Or did you find anything else on this front?

  • you got any tips for the issue bro?

  • Immersive videos are basically a projection onto the inside of a sphere which surrounds you. You cannot walk around inside of them in the format that they are in natively. Just as you can't walk around inside Mt Hood. You could potentially convert video into "Gaussian Splats" and walk around it, but there's a lot of math and guesswork by AI involved and I don't think there exists a standard format to present those scenes in, so you only have 3 degrees of freedom for a video.

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