Twin Canon Rebel G experience

[P3D Ruben Torrejon <RUBEN10219@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gecko wrote:

>I'm looking to purchase two Canon Rebel G SRL's for use as a twin 3D
>camera.

>Does anyone have comments regarding their use as a twin setup?

I've recently tried my twin camera rig consisting on 2 Canon EOS 500N (the
european version of the Rebel G) mounted on a slide bar purchased to Reel
3-D with very good results, Firing both cameras together was accomplished by
means of two solded remote cables (from Canon). The 500Ns are one of the
lightest SRLs available, they come with a useful zoom (in my case a 28-80mm)
and offer a full array of manual and auto modes. There's even a program
setting called  A-Deep to maximize depth of field: The auto focus detects
the nearest and farthest objects in the scene and tries to keep them both in
focus.
Stereo base is nomally too high for normal photography (around 145mm) but I
found the hyperstereo effect on close photography quite acceptable (more on
this later). Mounted base-to-base the interaxial obtained would be back to
normal for close-ups.
I was able to use the cameras during the filming of  a TV series I work on.
My main concern was wether both cameras would fire reliable in sync and so
they did with consistent results. Only a pair, showing a line of TV monitors
exhibited a difference between the two images of less than 1 TV field. I
also changed focal lenghts from one shot to another and both zoom matched
easily well keeping image sizes exactly the same. Both zooms come with large
numbers that make this operation quite simple.
During my tests I never used flash (both cameras have a nice pop up flash)
and had to rely on same light used on the studio sets. This series (El
Super/Supermarket) is lit using extremely low light levels to get a shallow
depth of field effect so the main problem I encountered was very slow
shutter speeds for hand held photography. Most of the pictures came OK,
while others had some slight blurriness on moving objects (actor's hands,
etc) but this effect didn't distracted me too much... Use of a tripod would
have restricted my movility on the sets so I assumed a small ratio of
failures. As I said before, sync was almost perfect and only once or twice
on each 36 exp. roll 1 of the cameras refused to fire while the other did.
This was problably due to the difficult lighting situations reported before.
When there was nothing to cheat one of the cameras auto exposure systems
both images appeared well exposed.
Regarding the exagerated interaxial, I broke the 1/30 rule many times and in
most cases the stereo effect was expectacular (althought a slight size
distorsion is evident for critical viewers). I've been forced to use smaller
aperture mounts (GePe 24X32mm are OK for me) to mask the full frame format
and adjust the stereo window and so accomodate to the critical needs of
proper stereo projection. This hyperstereo effect is the only problem I
encountered with the twn rig. Other than this, the weight of the cameras is
light enough and sync (using Canon's own remote cables) ranges from very
good to excellent. Until now, my main objection is the weird look my rig has
that has put  me, a shy person, in some difficult situations. Some people
has even thought I was handling a sort of (beautiful) weapon.


Hope this helps Gecko,


Ruben



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