That camera had an MSRP of $899 when it was new in 2006 [0]. Amazing that they now sell for only £50, and still take fantastic pictures even by today's standards [1].

Technological progress is nothing short of amazing.

[0] https://kenrockwell.com/canon/rebel-xti.htm

[1] https://onfotolife.com/camera_sample_photos?camera_id=30&pag...

He's using digital single-lens reflex cameras with moving mirrors in an application where you don't need that, but do need a good camera. What do you use today when you need a good camera with no user interface?

There already is a company that rents out a system like this called the A-1 Array: https://www.array.cam/

I first saw this at an art installation in Brooklyn in 2017.

Seems a good place to ask: anyone know a good tutorial for building your own diy photo booth?

this is the "bullet time" effect (in the Matrix, when Trinity karate-jump-kicks and rotates in air) https://www.factinate.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/trinity...

This camera setup for personal social events is a great idea, I wonder if it could be done with some sort of phone app so among a group of friends or at a party you could use everybody's cell phone.

in watching the video though, I found it a little disappointing. I think people need help with choreography, what actions and timing are going to make for good shifts in perspective. For example, you want grandma to rotate in mid air, not something she throws up. Another example, I think you want the action to start from the periphery, and then bring the characters in the shot "into the spotlight" so the clip delivers a climax or "keeps getting better". (although, he did use the "move away from the action" technique to good effect to create transition places to stitch together a series of clips into a sequence https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-05-26/demo-blog.m... )

And could it be done using video instead of still shots? seems like turning raw footage into something interesting would be easier? Or is that how it works anyway?

You could probably set this up at county fairs and charge 20 bucks a pop. really cool setup.

Pinnacle Effects in Spokane, WA did this for an ABC Sports Baseball promo in the late 80s using 60 point-and-shoot film cameras arranged in a 360° ring. Gerry Cook was the director and the guy who came up with the idea and physically created the “ring cam” as he called it. It was used to create a 2 second, 60 frame, scene of a pitch being thrown.

The resulting shot was a little choppy but novel.

NeRF + a few cameras in an array could probably get you there

My poor man version of this (using web tech) https://jt.io/posts/bullet-time/

A similar effect is achieved with a platform and a camera on an arm rapidly rotating around the platform. I've seen it at tech conferences.

I think this is it:

https://spinpix360.com/

Nice, but aren't the cameras supposed to be triggered in sequence instead of all at once? I thought there was still a little bit of motion in the movies, but in these the subjects all freeze in place.

I'm usually a big critic of AI, and I remember seeing people complaining years ago about increasing framerates with AI[0], but maybe this could be a good usecase. You do, say, half the cameras, and then some crafty solution to interpolate (filling in the edges with AI, some sort of angle adjust)

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KRb_qV9P4g

This is a bonkers idea! I fucking love it, man! I bet I could do this with a single device on a rail and use NeRFs to actually make the effect. Could even do more complex camera flight. Love the idea.

Here's a cutting edge modern take using GoPros and NeRF techniques.

https://twitter.com/Arata_Fukoe/status/1660980297352224769

The Insta360 can do bullet time video with minimal effort. Ok, it's no exactly the same as known from Matrix, but considering the simplicity it is pretty cool.

Related topic, wiggle stereoscopy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiggle_stereoscopy

And there was a lens for this kind of effect, it allowed capturing three images at once [1] [2].

> So, how’s it work? Using three lenses, the lens renders a slightly different perspective on to the camera sensor. When you combine them in post (Photoshop, Resolve, any software you can animate in) you can inject a feeling of depth and dimensionality to your images.

[1]: https://www.dpreview.com/news/1238704821/this-3d-printed-len...

[2]: https://www.georgemoua.com/store/d9000-fe-3d-stereoscopic-wi...

I went to the Monza F1 GP in 2019 and they had a bullet-time video tent sort of thing, with a trampoline in the middle if I remember correctly, it was free to use in the fan zone.

The challenge here is cost. You need 20-40 perspectives at ~$1000 bucks each including the camera body, lens, trigger system, remote download, and output pipeline. So a hand built cost optimized system will cost $20k - $40k in hardware. Operating is also kinda painful: calibration of each camera is required every time the rig is moved or exposure is adjusted and all shots must be designed ahead of time. It's just kinda a limited market due to the complexity and cost.

Neural Holography should arrive to market within the the next 6 months, which will allow for any frame to be seen at any angle with as few as 20 cameras for 360° x 180° coverage, allowing for bullet time shots to be designed after the fact with the added bonus of having cinematic quality 3D live action content for use in VR and other 3D environments.

This exists. https://bigfreeze.com/projects - They have one at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle: https://podcam.net/pacsci/

This already exists and people rent them out for weddings and parties and stuff like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTlpwIhcSHQ

You can often find a camera attached to a motion controlled robot arm on the red carpet these days, going back a few years now: https://petapixel.com/2019/02/28/this-robot-shoots-stunning-...

The entertainment new channel E! Is well established in this space. I have to wonder at what point a low cost arm is cheaper than an array of cameras.

Make the equivalent of an an LED strip light that is just a bunch of cell phone cameras at regular intervals and a controller that can trigger and capture from each treating them all like a single camera independent frames.

Strip light can then be put into any flexible pattern you want and strung pretty much wherever, or taped to pretty much any location. Whole thing could probably have almost the same electronics size as one of those common color changing LED strips.

Here is a similar idea using 15 iPhones + NeRF rendering to make a bullet time video https://labs.laan.com/blogs/slow-motion-bullet-time-with-ner...

There was a similar installation at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne in 2015. Not sure if it’s still there, at least when I was there last it emailed your video in FLV so I gather the setup was pretty dated.

These actually exist. My kids’ local grammar school rented one out for a sort of field-day event where parents could come too. A staff person from the rental outfit operated it. It was a single camera that rapidly spun around a small central platform, and at the end you entered your cell # and received a text message to view & download the result.