Filmmaking for VR means using a lot of lenses. With our EYE™ VR Camera System for example you could be using up to 42 lenses at once, which makes calibrating and matching lenses very important.

Lenses and lens adapters are typically variable in terms of quality control, even from the best manufacturers. This is perhaps unsurprising considering these are complex mechanical and optical parts. It’s not usually a problem when using a single camera system, but for VR it’s very different.

Calibrating a lens for VR using a microscope-like custom tool

The problem is made worse with VR, since the lenses are typically ultra-wide angle lenses. While ultra-wide angle lenses are very forgiving in terms of focus and depth-of-field, they are completely the opposite when it comes to calibrating for focus from the factory. This can manifest itself in a couple of ways – it might not be possible to get focus at all (in combination with an adapter), or the focus distance may be inaccurate compared to what it says on the barrel. Some are simply soft at one end of the range. Metabones Speedboosters, and similar adapters, which are a practical necessity currently if using the Blackmagic Micro Cameras in a small VR rig (due to the sensor size and crop factor), are a frequent cause of problems.

Testing a wide-angle lens on the Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera with a Metabones Speedbooster

Explains Matt Duclos of Hollywood lens technicians Duclos Lenses… “It’s not a problem at the long end… a few hundred millimeter lens for example… you could be out a wide margin and it wouldn’t matter, but it becomes infinitely more critical when you get to the very wide end of the scale”.

Specifically, the flange focal distance (the distance from the lens element to the sensor) becomes extremely critical the wider you go, and tiny errors, measured in tenths of thousands of an inch, can throw a perfectly good lens soft.

At 360 Designs we test a wide range of lenses constantly and have experienced this issue from almost every manufacturer. Some combinations of lenses and adapters work out of the box, but rarely. Approximately 90% of lens adapters and 35% of lenses we’ve tested are unusable for VR without professional calibration.

At 360 Designs we test and calibrate each and every lens we supply. We use an advanced process to match every lens and its adapter. Once calibrated, these lenses become maintenance free.

If you are thinking of using the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Cameras (or Blackmagic Micro Studio Cameras) for VR, contact us to find out the services we offer, which extend well beyond what we currently offer on the site. We are currently working on a bespoke basis with many leading cinematographers, directors, filmmakers and broadcasters.

(Update: December 21st 2015 – The Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera is now shipping and we’re hearing that the Micro Cinema Cameras are very close to being released)

Like many, we’re anxiously waiting news on when the new Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera and Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera will be released. Our EYE™ VR Camera is built around the Blackmagic cameras, which offer external sync, global shutter, and a range of expansion options which GoPro’s can’t match. In many ways, the Blackmagic Micro cameras are ‘Pro’ GoPro’s – and this is the reason we’ve decided to build our VR camera around them.

Originally scheduled for a July 2015 release, the release date was pushed back first to mid-September, then October, November, etc.

It’s not unusual for Blackmagic to delay the release of their cameras, although their track record has been better in recent years.

The latest (Mid Nov 2015) is that an extremely small number of Micro Studio Cameras are in the wild but no news on the Micro Cinema cameras.

We’ll keep you posted here, and as soon as we have cameras in hand, and following testing, we’ll begin taking orders for our rig. Sign up for updates by email and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s available. If you have questions about our camera or would like to book a place in our production queue, please get in touch.

Perhaps you are as excited as we are about the options opened up by the DB-HD15 (aka expansion port), on the new Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera.

One of the things Blackmagic have said, is that they will supply a breakout cable with the camera, but it’s not clear at this point whether this is a breakout cable, or a variety of single cables for single function controls, as photos on their site suggest. (We believe now it’s a breakout cable i.e. rather messy).

UPDATE: We now offer our J-Box product which is a professional breakout box for Blackmagic micro cameras!

We expect most people wanting to do any kind of creative stuff, will want to solder their own connections, either to reduce weight, or to use multiple expansion port functions simultaneously, and indeed Blackmagic have talked about how easy it is to solder connections on the DB-HD15 connector, on their site. It’s harder and more fiddly than they suggest, particularly if you are soldering multiple connections, but is within the realms of any hobbyist to do.

So this means buying a DB-HD15 connector, and getting busy with a soldering iron.

The challenge in buying a DB-HD15 connector, is not a lack of options, actually there’s a plethora of them, but for some reason, including an unfortunate naming issue, which we’ll talk more about, these connectors are devilishly tricky to track down in Google searches, without ending up buying the wrong thing by mistake.

We found the task so painful in fact, it took us a day of research… we decided to write up a guide for others. Hopefully you can save yourself the best part of a day, by reading on…

Continue Reading