Benjamin Ellis » prophotosolutions

Time-Slice Films – Photography Meets Cinematography

Benjamin Ellis — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:45:00 +0000

Sometimes people call it Bullet-time, but more properly it is called time-slice – freezing a moment in time, but from multiple views – an effect made most famous by the Matrix series of films.

The team behind the effect

I met the Time-Slice Films team at the Canon Pro Solutions Exhibition, and recorded this intverview with Tim Macmillan. The company was established back in 1994 by Tim, who originated the effect in his days at Bath Academy of Art, using film-based cameras and manual compositing. A far cry from today’s rig, here’s the interview:

The set up at the show

Time-slice films are at the leading edge of 2D/3D animation, with an impressive portfolio that includes work for the BBC, ITV, Capital FM and a host of other household names. These are a few stills (taken with a Canon 5D mk II and aloaned 35mm F/1.4L prime lens at the show – nice one Canon!):

The set up at the show consisted of 55 Canon 450D’s, with stock lenses. The set up is modular and can scale to a much larger number of cameras, and the rail tracks can be configured to almost any shape. Keeping it less than a 120′ arc is essential to reduce post processing (more than that and you have to edit the cameras out of the shot). Each camera has to be aligned, zoomed and focussed. A bit of a job! You can check out their gallery of film clips shot at the Canon show here.

Adverts Film and Wildlife

I’ll leave you with this piece from Time-Slice Films, produced for Cat Clothing, which includes both Time-Slice(R) shots and high speed video:

Cat Clothing from Time-Slice® Films on Vimeo.

Canon Pro Solutions Show – 09

Benjamin Ellis — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:53:37 +0000

I spent a good chunk of today in the company of Canon and many of the businesses in what has become a large and successful eco-system around their photography and video products. They took over the business design centre for two days, filling the exhibition space with dozens of exhibitors, as well as their own stands, and a steady stream of seminars in the rooms upstairs.

I’ll blog on some of the specific products over the next week or two, but first a few highlights:

Good news for Canon 5D Mark II users in Europe – it sounds like we can expect a firmware update in the new year to give us 24p & 25p frame rates. If that means something to you, you’re probably dancing in your seat. If it doesn’t, just take it that it is good news and will be something to look forward to early in 2010.

1D Mark IV. The 1D keeps its crown. The body feels a little vintage – surprised not to see more new buttons on it – but the innards have been bought bang up to date. It now has video, catching up and overtaking it’s siblings. Hold down the shutter button for machine gun sound effects (10 frames per second), and it would probably lock focus on a speeding bullet too (45-point AF system). It’s definitely not cheap, but it really is top of the range and top of the technology curve. Should be hitting the shops in December.

Canon 7D. Want one. That’s all. Yes, it’s a crop sensor, but if you are doing both photography and video, as I increasingly am these days, then the simple switch to toggle between the two modes, together with the start/stop buttom and the ability to shoot 720p as well as 1080p, make it a joy to use. The focus functionality felt better than the 5D mark II as well (as it should from the spec sheet – 19-point cross-type sensors). Oh, and 8 frames per second shooting. Nice. It isn’t going to display by 5D Mark II, but would be a really nice back up, given the built in flash and built in speedlight controller.

The surprise of the show for me was the 70-300mm DO IS USM lens on the fellow in the shot of the 7D. It isn’t as big an aperture as I normally like (at f/4.5-5.6), but it is VERY compact for such a long zoom and great quality – I assume this is down to the DO (diffractive optics).

The new Canon Powershot S90 looks like a mighty fine product. Think every thing I said about the SX200is as a pocketable alternative to a DSLR (going without a DSLR), but a good few steps up. F/2 aperture (nice and wide :) ), 28mm wide angle lens with 3.8x zoom. Very compact, very easy to use with it’s function select and rotary dial around the lens, and a worthy pocketable alternative to a DSLR.

Lots of steady-cam type set ups for the EOS DSLRs on show, and a veritable see of LED based lighting that was low heat, low power and VERY bright.

Oh, and this…

But I’ll tell you about that in the next post… In the mean-time, a massive thank you to the Canon team for being wonderfully welcoming and helpful, and to the 1000heads team for being the social media stars that they are!

If you ever wondered how that freeze effect is done in The Matrix, check out this rig of Canon DSLRs.

Benjamin Ellis — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:49:00 +0000

55 Canon 450Ds with stock lenses and a LOT of PCs and software… 55 Photos from different angles, at the same moment, all then composited into a “video” than pans around a frozen object. Tada!

I’m written a full post, complete with a video with Time-slice inventor Tim Macmillan.