Canon RF 5.2mm f/2.8L Dual Fisheye 3D VR Lens

[BTM_Pix]

This has been out a while now and, whilst its going to be everyone's cup of tea, I think its really interesting.

It only works with the R5/R5c and utilises the 8K sensor to give a little bit under 4K per eye with a 180 degree field of view after stitching.

I think 180 degree and 3D is the sweet spot for me as 360 degree is great for overcapture/re-framing but just for straight up filmmaking 360 degree throws up too many challenges.

Forget about 3D TVs to watch it on, this is all about headsets and for the mass market that is the Oculus Quest 2.

If do you have a Quest 2 etc then I'd certainly suggest firing up its YouTube VR app and go and look at the early content .

In the spirit of camera tests, Canon themselves have done one with cats.

And a wedding !

As I say, this isn't going to float everyone's boat - least of all for narrative - but I definitely think its got legs for documentary/travel/events etc where you are getting a simple workflow to create 3D VR180 at high quality with all the image frills like C-LOG, RAW etc and it has a rear mounted filter holder for ND.

The lens costs €1800 (or €900 per lens if you want to feel less bad about it !) which, even if you do have the R5/R5c already, isn't something you would be wanting to buy just to have a play about with but if you have an interest in the type of content it can be used for then it is something to consider.

 

[webrunner5]

Seems to me you could nearly accomplish the same thing by using say a 21mm lens on a FF camera and disabling the auto corrections on the lens. Might be a bit uglier, been a long time since I have used something like that not in auto, like years and years.

[BTM_Pix]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

Seems to me you could nearly accomplish the same thing by using say a 21mm lens on a FF camera and disabling the auto corrections on the lens. Might be a bit uglier, been a long time since I have used something like that not in auto, like years and years.

How will you achieve the 3D from the single lens ?

[UncleBobsPhotography]

I've got the lens, but just received it last week so haven't had time to edit anything from it yet.

A few notes:

- the lens is much smaller than I first thought it would be. I take this as a plus as it's very easy to bring with me.

- the R5 firmware actually has quite a lot of features specifically for this lens. You get the framing for each eye, and instead of a box, it's rounded, accounting for the fisheyedness. When you zoom in you'll zoom in on a single eye and use the "Info" button to switch between the eyes. The eyes are also labeled "R" and "L" on the screen, with R being to the left and L to the right because of how lenses flips everything.

- the manual focus is smooth and seems quite easy to work with with the manual focus assist. Some zooming in to make sure it hits is of course still useful

- because of the bulging front elements, it feels like it's very easy to scratch the lens. I never use lens caps for my lenses (just permanent lens hoods), but with this lens I am hesitant to let anyone else touch it without the lens cap on as I feel it's a gamble if it will be handed back to me without fingerprints on the lens.

If anyone has any specific questions/things I should test with it, feel free to let me know

[webrunner5]

2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

How will you achieve the 3D from the single lens ?

Well since I will Never ever use those silly ass googles I guess I never will, I will just see things in a different perceptive using a 21mm lens from my normal 45mm ish view from my eyes. 

 Not really into looking like a total MTV Jackass wearing a headset like you will need. But young people do dumb shit.

[BTM_Pix]

35 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Not really into looking like a total MTV Jackass wearing a headset like you will need. But young people do dumb shit.

I wouldn't advocate wearing one out it public obviously but, then again, we've all been wandering round supermarkets and shops wearing surgical masks and nitrile gloves for the past two years looking like we're cosplaying surgeons so I wouldn't rule anything out.

1 hour ago, UncleBobsPhotography said:

If anyone has any specific questions/things I should test with it, feel free to let me know

What is the deal with the rear filter ?

On the Canon site it looks like you cut slivers of ND gel to mount in a frame that slides in, is that right ?

And if so do you get more than one frame.

[Emanuel]

7 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

In the spirit of camera tests, Canon themselves have done one with cats.

As I say, this isn't going to float everyone's boat (...)

 

Nor the absence of composition... WTH is that fail in a promo paid?! OK, we all know fisheyes are not exactly sweet for human faces & bodies but no one told the shooter, the setup i.e. the angle where to place the camera, the height of the whole thing, distance to the subject and so on is actually part of the craft...?

[Robo-T]

Hi,  i recently bought one of these and am enjoying it so far.  I do find i get a lot of motion blur on the 8k likely because of the 30fps maximum?  is there anything else that could be causing that i should look into.  Hugh's videos and others online don't seem to have any motion blur but they may be shot at 4k with a higher frame rate. Any help / tips would be apprecited! (ps: is there another forum out there with Canon EOS VR recording enthusiasts?)  

[KnightsFan]

Strangely enough I've never tried YouTube VR. I searched for some videos (couldn't find that one in particular) but was pretty underwhelmed. I don't know if it was YouTube compression or the video quality itself, but it looked like mush. Switching YouTube's resolution in the app didn't visually change anything, so I'm not convinced it was playing back in full res--maybe the app is just broken and the video is fine.

The bigger problem with this style of lens is that without head tracking, it's not very enjoyable at all to watch. I prefer the "fake 3D cinema" experience for VR movies where you feel like you're looking at a big 3D screen, but with proper head tracking.

24 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

Nor the absence of composition... WTH is that fail in a promo paid?! OK, we all know fisheyes are not exactly sweet for human faces & bodies but no one told the shooter, the setup i.e. the angle where to place the camera, the height of the whole thing, distance to the subject and so on is actually part of the craft...?

Did you watch in VR? It doesn't have the fisheye effect when it matches your own vision. What would you have done differently considering the medium?

[Django]

VR is actually pretty tricky to shoot (especially 360). Because of the crazy wide FoV it brings up mad challenges for any type of controlled scene.

There is also an immersive goal so you really gotta carefully plan what you’re set on achieving. You can’t really cut or change lenses, it’s usually real-time segments.

I see way more potential in VR for video games than actual video production but there is a real market for it I know, as content is still rather limited.

i haven’t really followed latest-gen cams or headsets but overall the tech wasn’t there yet for me. Especially resolution. Not to mention it gave me horrible motion sickness after 10-15mn.

Now with 8K this could be game changing, and I have no idea what 3D+VR results in (that’s the real innovation of this Canon lens I believe, the double lens stereoscopic aspect) so I am kinda curious about the tech. More so the 3D aspect than 180/360 VR. 
 

For those that have tried it, how next-gen immersive does it feel? And for the guy who bought the lens: what are you planning on shooting with it? 

[Emanuel]

2 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

Did you watch in VR? It doesn't have the fisheye effect when it matches your own vision. What would you have done differently considering the medium?

20 minutes ago, Django said:

VR is actually pretty tricky to shoot (especially 360). Because of the crazy wide FoV it brings up mad challenges for any type of controlled scene.

Fisheyes are tricky indeed, we all know that ; )

I didn't watch it in VR but...

At same time, it's no hard to check whether the camera angle or its movement both actually result in anything you want but just not there as the best example of the most talented découpage and finest directing approach IMO OFC :- )

Tricky or not we all understand the low angle shot and the way the camera goes forward... That would just need a more inventive solution under the perspective of the directing, to my book at least : P

[KnightsFan]

1 hour ago, Django said:

I see way more potential in VR for video games than actual video production but there is a real market for it I know, as content is still rather limited.

Exactly. The lack of head tracking in static content like this makes it really tedious to watch. I could definitely see the appeal of animated films, where you can kind of move around and see under and around things. But I haven't watched any yet so that's speculation. Games and simulations are definitely the appeal for VR. Nothing more fun than goofing off with a couple friends in a VR game.

The dual 4k eyes are probably fine resolution wise. I think YouTube's VR app is bugged, because there's no difference between 8k and 144p when I switch settings, so I think I'm viewing it in 480p or thereabouts.

1 hour ago, Django said:

For those that have tried it, how next-gen immersive does it feel? And for the guy who bought the lens: what are you planning on shooting with it? 

These static videos are about a 1/10 on immersion scale. High quality games like Half Life Alyx are more like 7/10.

 

1 hour ago, Emanuel said:

At same time, it's no hard to check whether the camera angle or its movement both actually result in anything you want but just not there as the best example of the most talented découpage and finest directing approach IMO OFC :- )

Tricky or not we all understand the low angle shot and the way the camera goes forward... That would just need a more inventive solution under the perspective of the directing, to my book at least : P

Well like Django said, there's only so much you can do with a 180VR shot. Unless you want to make everyone vomit, you can't:

- Change focal length

- Tilt or cant the angle

- Pan or change height mid shot

- Move quickly in any direction

- Have objects close to the lens

- Have anything out of focus, and especially don't rack focus

- Arguably can't have quick cuts, though I think tolerance on that is higher

I'm not saying it's a perfect shot, but within the medium there's no a whole lot of options and obviously it won't even have the novelty factor if you watch it on a screen. Personally I think static 180VR content like this is a dead end medium creatively.

[kye]

11 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

This has been out a while now and, whilst its going to be everyone's cup of tea, I think its really interesting.

It only works with the R5/R5c and utilises the 8K sensor to give a little bit under 4K per eye with a 180 degree field of view after stitching.

I think 180 degree and 3D is the sweet spot for me as 360 degree is great for overcapture/re-framing but just for straight up filmmaking 360 degree throws up too many challenges.

Forget about 3D TVs to watch it on, this is all about headsets and for the mass market that is the Oculus Quest 2.

If do you have a Quest 2 etc then I'd certainly suggest firing up its YouTube VR app and go and look at the early content .

In the spirit of camera tests, Canon themselves have done one with cats.

And a wedding !

As I say, this isn't going to float everyone's boat - least of all for narrative - but I definitely think its got legs for documentary/travel/events etc where you are getting a simple workflow to create 3D VR180 at high quality with all the image frills like C-LOG, RAW etc and it has a rear mounted filter holder for ND.

The lens costs €1800 (or €900 per lens if you want to feel less bad about it !) which, even if you do have the R5/R5c already, isn't something you would be wanting to buy just to have a play about with but if you have an interest in the type of content it can be used for then it is something to consider.

Interesting lens.  Panasonic released one for MFT but I've never heard anyone talk about it.  In theory you could use the 5K 4:3 mode to get some reasonable resolution too.

1 hour ago, Django said:

VR is actually pretty tricky to shoot (especially 360). Because of the crazy wide FoV it brings up mad challenges for any type of controlled scene.

There is also an immersive goal so you really gotta carefully plan what you’re set on achieving. You can’t really cut or change lenses, it’s usually real-time segments.

I see way more potential in VR for video games than actual video production but there is a real market for it I know, as content is still rather limited.

i haven’t really followed latest-gen cams or headsets but overall the tech wasn’t there yet for me. Especially resolution. Not to mention it gave me horrible motion sickness after 10-15mn.

Now with 8K this could be game changing, and I have no idea what 3D+VR results in (that’s the real innovation of this Canon lens I believe, the double lens stereoscopic aspect) so I am kinda curious about the tech. More so the 3D aspect than 180/360 VR. 
 

For those that have tried it, how next-gen immersive does it feel? And for the guy who bought the lens: what are you planning on shooting with it? 

I suspect that a significant application of this could be virtual presence at events like concerts or weddings etc.

In years past I have been into high-end hifi and making and recording music and the common approach to record an acoustic concert (basically anything in a concert hall) is to put a pair of microphones directly above the second row, and a pair high in the ceiling nearer the back and to mix them together so that when you listen with a high-end stereo setup it replicates the experience of attending the concert.  

Obviously audio is a little different to video, so for video you'd want to put the 3D camera front dead-centre for the best view.  I can imagine wedding videographers offering a VR package where they put one or two of these in the good spot so that the whole event can be re-lived.
Concerts might end up having a lot of them placed in various places and maybe you can swap between them as you like, or even provide an experience where every-so-often you move to a different vantage point to keep it interesting.

One thing that's fascinating and we haven't really worked out yet is how you can "edit" VR footage.  ie, I've seen people talk about how to transition from one place to another (basically you do it slowly through a dissolve or fade down/up so that people don't get disoriented - we're not that used to teleporting!) but we haven't really worked out more than that.  It's an interesting space.

[kye]

13 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

Well like Django said, there's only so much you can do with a 180VR shot. Unless you want to make everyone vomit, you can't:

- Change focal length

- Tilt or cant the angle

- Pan or change height mid shot

- Move quickly in any direction

- Have objects close to the lens

- Have anything out of focus, and especially don't rack focus

- Arguably can't have quick cuts, though I think tolerance on that is higher

You can do some of these, probably more than you think, but you have to do them slowly.

Like all things in video - the adult entertainment industry is leading the way.  There's good information around on what works and what doesn't seem to work, so the understanding of the medium is building.

[webrunner5]

Oh that is all we need is 3D porn lol. 😬 Oh the price of progress.

[KnightsFan]

1 minute ago, kye said:

You can do some of these, probably more than you think, but you have to do them slowly.

I'm talking from my experience regarding what VR users typically complain about. Some people have higher tolerances but for the general public with current tech, discrepancy between your perception of motion and the visual interpretation of that motion see is a great way to get a lot of complaints--especially with rotation. Translation is tolerated slightly more.

[KnightsFan]

7 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Oh that is all we need is 3D porn lol. 😬 Oh the price of progress.

3D porn is last decade, we're way beyond that haha

[UncleBobsPhotography]

8 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

What is the deal with the rear filter ?

On the Canon site it looks like you cut slivers of ND gel to mount in a frame that slides in, is that right ?

And if so do you get more than one frame.

I don't think there is any removable frame. You simply cut out a piece of ND gel and slide it in. There is a small track to stop it from falling out, and since the exit pupils are rather small, the gel will cover them even if your cutting is not very accurate. The solution is a bit crude, but I don't see why it wouldn't work as long as you've got high quality gels.

1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

3D porn is last decade, we're way beyond that haha

That was definitely one of the first adopters, but VR has grown quite a lot in the real estate industry. I've got clients using it for visualizing unbuilt homes and for visualizing outdoor city-scapes. Admittedly, most of this is based on renderings. VR videos are mostly used for placing new objects into the scene as a substitute for AR.

One of my clients has even got a large 3D 180 CAVE so that you can use cinema style 3D glasses instead of VR glasses. I haven't figured out how to run VR videos on it yet though. So far it's only for renders.

[KnightsFan]

16 minutes ago, UncleBobsPhotography said:

I've got clients using it for visualizing unbuilt homes and for visualizing outdoor city-scapes. Admittedly, most of this is based on renderings. VR videos are mostly used for placing new objects into the scene as a substitute for AR.

I've seen cameras that scan rooms into 3D for real estate walkthroughs. Product demos especially real estate are a great practical use case for VR, since photography distorts space so much easier than a full, congruent 3D model. One surprising aspect to VR content creation that I've run into both at work and in hobbies is that you can have a 3D environment that looks totally normal in screen space, and then as soon as you step into that world in VR you immediately notice mismatches in scale between props. By "surprising," I mean it's surprising how invisible scale mismatches are on a computer screen even when you move freely in 3D.

But yes, renderings for VR make a lot more sense to me than a fixed-location image or video, I'd really rather just have a normal 3D screen for that, rather than have it "glued" to my head.

[kye]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

Oh that is all we need is 3D porn lol. 😬 Oh the price of progress.

If you're not familiar with the history then it's worth some googling - they're always first with every tech and they basically control the large technology choices.  When it was VHS vs Beta they chose VHS and so VHS became the standard for consumers, when it was Bluray vs HDDVD they chose Bluray so that's what became the standard for consumers too.

Essentially, whenever you get two groups of manufacturers that are about equally sized promoting different standards then the adult entertainment industry gets together and picks one and then announces their decision, and considering how much money they represent they become the deciding vote.

They also have tonnes of money to spare for tech and R&D.  The consensus is that they'll be the ones leading the development of humanoid robots too.

Gaming is starting to become its own significant force in the market, so VR will likely get shaped by both markets.

1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

I'm talking from my experience regarding what VR users typically complain about. Some people have higher tolerances but for the general public with current tech, discrepancy between your perception of motion and the visual interpretation of that motion see is a great way to get a lot of complaints--especially with rotation. Translation is tolerated slightly more.

Interesting about rotation being an issue.  I've experienced a number of videos where the camera moved, and even went from being stationary to moving and back to stationary and those were mostly ok, although I have gotten the sensation of losing my balance on a few of those transitions.  Maybe the rotation has been implemented too jarringly?

I recal Walter Murch talking about how in the early days of cinema there was a debate about if you could edit film, because people don't teleport in real-life so perhaps couldn't handle a hard cut.  Similar questions were debated around the time that cars started going faster than a horse (and thus faster than any human had ever gone before) about what the limits of human capability are.
It turns out that cutting film is fine, and the mechanism Walter cited was that we teleport in dreams all the time, so it's not a foreign cognitive experience.

As someone who gets motion sick quite easily, I understand the source is a discrepancy between the motion perceived by the visual system and that perceived by the body (inner ear, and some other senses in the body too I think?) which is a sign that you've been poisoned and are now hallucinating, so the response is to reject whatever you ate/drank that is poisoning you.
Another "things don't agree" problem in VR is when you switch from looking at something close to something further away and the angle of your eyes changes (your eyes get less crossed) but the focal distance doesn't change (you're still looking at the VR screens in your goggles).  Apparently the solution is to have multiple displays (clear ones on top of others) so your eyes can change focus from one to another in the "stack".  The early research I read suggested that not many layers were required, and perhaps only two were required, just so that your eyes change focus at all.  I have experienced ending a VR experience and having trouble focusing afterwards as my eyes had kind-of forgotten they needed to change focus, so your brain does adapt even in a 10-20 minute experience.