Can A Phone Camera Film A Bullet

The phrase "bullet fourth dimension" outset entered the popular lexicon with the launch of the 1999 movie The Matrix. This showed the hero dodging bullets in a boring motion as the camera angle moved lazily effectually the action. Indeed, in "bullet time" it is possible to freeze the action entirely and still move the camera bending.

This is possible past filming the action using a number of unlike cameras closely spaced around the scene. It is then possible to change the indicate of view by switching from 1 photographic camera angle to the adjacent, even when the action is frozen.

Since then, bullet fourth dimension has become common in big budget films. More recently, hobbyists take begun to experiment with it, albeit at considerable toll because the technique requires a large number of cameras. That makes bullet time an expensive and time consuming luxury for filmmakers.

Today, all that changes thanks to the piece of work of Yan Wang at Columbia University and a couple of pals who have adult a smartphone app call CamSwarm that allows a group of them to record bullet time action. Every bit a consequence, bullet time is fix to become a depression cost characteristic that more than or less anyone can shoot.

The idea is simple in principle. Any array of cameras tin can record bullet time provided they meet certain standards of positioning and synchronization.

First, the cameras must be linked and controlled using a suitable communications protocol. They must be oriented and spaced in a way that provides skillful coverage of the activity with all pointing toward and focused on the same spot. And finally, their shutters must be synchronized when they kickoff capturing footage.

Wang and co's CamSwarm app takes on these tasks using a local Wi-Fi network to coӧrdinate the cameras. Each smartphone in the swarm must run the app, with one designated as a leader. This app generates a QR code that the others photograph to join the grouping. The video from them all is then streamed to a cloud server that stores the information and helps direct the swarm.

The app works by showing each user his or her own footage along with the footage from cameras next to them in space. This allows them to accommodate their spacing and orientation so that each camera has a slightly overlapping field of view and has the target occupying a similar fraction of each photographic camera's screen and and so on. All this ensures a smooth transition from i point of view to another during bullet time.

In particular, the app provides on screen guidance to assist people achieve the right kind of spacing and orientation, which is otherwise difficult to gauge visually. It does this using the smartphone's built in gyroscopes and digital compass to make up one's mind their direction and any changes in orientation.

And when the action begins, the app ensures that the shutters of all cameras are synchronized.

Finally, the app replays all the footage and allows the user to choose which sequences of photographic camera angles to use to create the bullet-fourth dimension effect.

Wang and co say this allows a bullet fourth dimension sequence to exist gear up upwards and ready for shooting in under a minute, significantly less than with any other set upward.

The team goes on to evaluate its app by asking 20 people in five groups to utilise the app to create a bullet-fourth dimension movie and to make full in a questionnaire near their experiences.

These evaluations seem to exist successful (although the team does provide a link to whatsoever bullet fourth dimension examples produced using the app). "Preliminary user report results suggest that the system can help users attain higher quality output than simpler alternatives, and is easy and fun to use," say Wang and co.

That's an interesting approach to collaborative photography. Since it was invented more than 150 years agone, photography has largely been a solitary hobby.

Sure, the photographer will interact with his or her subjects and may fifty-fifty accept assistants to assistance with lighting, make upwards, and so on. Only the act of picture show taking, the holding of the camera or smartphone, the framing of the prototype and the pressing of the shutter release are near always under the sole control of a single individual.

With CamSwarm and a related app called PanoSwarm for taking collaborative panoramas, all this changes. These apps turn photography into a collaborative activity allowing many people to contribute to the creation of an epitome or movie.

That's something that could accept a profound event on the nature of photography and the kind of inventiveness that information technology produces although the team has withal to announce a appointment for the apps' release into the wild.

Ref: http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.01148 : CamSwarm: Instantaneous Smartphone Camera Arrays for Collaborative Photography

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/07/08/167202/collaborative-photography-app-allows-smartphones-to-record-bullet-time/

Posted by: grosefoughurpite.blogspot.com

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