fulldome blog

We filmcafe fulldome-ers love our digital toys… We love them for they the tools of our trade.  We love them in spite of their quirks, their faults and their failings.  We work around such shortcomings and try to turn them to our advantage.

Sometimes, however, certain shortcomings arise that are so catastrophic that the solution is not immediately apparent, easy or unchallenging. Sometimes, the solution will mean more work than you’d have liked; sometimes more than you originally thought: sometimes it’ll mean more work than you could possibly imagine!

Sometimes though, the best answer to a digital problem comes from a very ‘analogue’ kind of mind and thankfully, we have the privilege of knowing one such ‘analogue genius’.  Unspoiled by the digital age, he thinks in feet and inches, not ones-and-zero’s.  He stands, monolithic, casting his portly shadow over… well… lots of things!

He may have an unhealthy collection of nuts, bolts, screws - large pieces of cars… He may need to be plied with alcohol to even consider listening to you.  And he may have some very strange opinions on extra terrestrial beings, but rest assured, he IS a genius - of the highest order.  If Brunel were here now, he’d probably say something like… 

“Wow! nice idea!  I’d have built a bridge, but your idea’s well better.”

So while our very own Isambard whittles and machines for us, locked away in his ‘workshop’ - working to almost incomprehensible degrees of accuracy and tolerance for someone with glasses so thick - I ask you all to raise a glass to our secret weapon…

To Mr. Jones!

I say ‘landed’ - I think I probably mean ‘was hunted down, backed into a corner and made to cooperate’.

I really have to thank the very lovely Warren Orchard for his help in securing the beast at Walters Photo Video for us filmcafe folk.  Without his help, we’d still be staring into the abyss of Christmas with nothing to look forward to but cracker jokes…

That said, at almost the exact moment that we parted with the cash, we got a call from the lovely Martyn at Jessops in Cardiff offering us the one (and only) one that they’d had delivered.

So, how is it?  Well… It’s great!  Though at this precise moment, it’s raising more questions that it’s answering re: fulldome…

I’ll see if Santa brings me a copy of “Answers to all those fulldome questions you have regarding the 5D mkII” in paperback… but I think it’s fair to say I’ve had my present for this year!… I had no idea I’d been so good!

We were giddy looking at RED’s countdown clock last week - when the curtain rose, I think I blacked out…

28K?! Was it a dream? Who on earth would dare shoot 28000 x9334 pixels? I’ll try anything twice, but 28K? We’re going to need some more storage!

I think that sensor is an exercise in ‘look what we can do’ more than in ‘look what you can do with what we’ve made’. If someone can tell me that it’s what they’ve been waiting for, then I’ll eat my words, but I don’t think anybody’s been waiting for a 261 MegaPixel video camera…

Apart from that chip however, I take my hat off to RED - I want one of (nearly!) everything they make [or plan to make] - with RED cherries on top.

From the new list of prospective products however, It’s the 24mp 6K epic that most tickles my fancy!

We’d been struggling to get the right lens on a stills camera at 4K until very recently, and now every Christmas and Birthday has seemingly come to fruition in one glorious moment! - Soon we’ll be able to shoot in 180 degrees, at 4K square, at 100fps, with our first choice of lens! I really can’t think what could be better than this!

Obviously the RED mantra of “Prices, Specifications and Delivery Dates are subject to drastic changes. Count on it…!” mean that the path to 6K next autumn/winter won’t be a straight road from A to R.E.D.

Take the Canon doldrums that we’re floating in at the moment. We haven’t pre-ordered a 5D mkII because they couldn’t give us a delivery date - and we weren’t going to give them £2300 to sit on while RED were waiting to announce… And what an announcement!

“November” is fading fast, Canon… Get the 5D’s on the shelves soon so that people (like me) have enough time to get their monies worth - otherwise I might not bother and save my pennies for Epic.

Over 2 years ago, RED proclaimed that they were bringing an end to up-resing. And for most people, they have - in fact down converting, or RED-Cine is the most common path for the footage - people want the depth of field, quality of image etc - but 1080 is big enough for most!… Not us however, RED’s 4K (16:9) has still had us up-resing pretty much 100%. We want to shoot 6K to generate and capture true 4K fulldome content. We hope the spec’s don’t shift in the wrong direction and most of all, we really, REALLY hope that we’ll be allowed to know the true, actual, real calendar date that we too will be able to render obsolescence obsolete!

After testing them at the Thinktank Planetarium on Tuesday, we’ve hinted at some of our newest creations in a slightly restyled way.  Perhaps you’ve seen the ‘polaroids’ on our nice new homepage… If you haven’t then perhaps you’d care to checkout fulldome.co.uk to see our new page for yourself.

Our shiny new homepage has a twitter feed on there too, so that we can provide even more immediate news feeds to you while we’re out in the cold, popping our shutter.  Very soon, it’ll also allow you to see our content catalogue in all it’s glory.

If you’ve just come from there, or you don’t want to take a peek just yet - here’s the same (though smaller) sneak preview of some of our latest images.

More info and more images will be available soon - and it won’t be long before we let you get your hands on them.  Send your list to fulldome, c/o filmcafe rather than Santa this year!

Today was our second trip to see Mario at the Thinktank Planetarium with a new bundle of images to try out.

What a perfect day to be inside - the first dry one since who knows how long - but wowzers!  The new images we collected transported us to the great outdoors again quickly enough! We were all really (pleasantly) surprised at how much space there seemed to be with our latest offerings up on the dome.  It never ceases to confuse (and amaze) me how much better the images look when they’re perspective is re-realized, projected on a dome.  And it’s very often the ones that you least expect to look good that take your breath away.  

Again, this is why we’re so lucky to have Mario and his team on our side.  This just wouldn’t be possible without his openness to our new ideas. Dr Martin (pictured, dressed for polar exploration) and I, extend our warmest thanks to them again.

So, I guess you’ll all be interested to see what we’ve come up with… Well, we’ll be showing them off to you soon enough!

Sit tight, fulldome-fans - we’re coming up with the goods!

filmcafe are about to embark on a project to capture and create fulldome content for digital planetariums across the land.

We’ll be keeping a record of what we do on this blog so if you’re interested in any way, please keep checking back, subscribe to our rss or comments feed or whatever. We want to share our experiences.

thanks filmcafe