Testing the LadyBug

I was fortunate to be able to loan a Point Grey Research LadyBug v1 360º panoramic video camera system from the iCinema Centre at the University of New South Wales (many thanks to Jeffrey Shaw and Volker Kuchelmeister) - and as today started off very windy it provided the perfect opportunity to sit down and familiarise myself with the system.

My plan is to shoot a few scenes inside Mawson's Hut and, if possible, some outdoor material - but this is contingent upon securing appropriate power sources. We have a generator at the Hut, and I should be able to take that out to the surrounding environment for some landscape shots - I'm talking to Steve our electrical genius about it, but it should be possible. Of course shooting 360º video is an entirely different proposition to conventional video because you, in effect, 'explode the frame' - i.e. there is no 'behind the camera' as everything is in view. This makes for a wonderful sense of immersion and raises interesting possibilities for navigable video for dome-projection systems - but also a whole range of other problematic issues, e.g. does the cameraman become an actor? (or should I hide behind a rock or underneath the camera as it doesn't capture a full sphere downwards...).

Anyway, this should all be fun to experiment with and produce some remarkable footage - I'll try and do some timelapse capture with the system if I can - in the meantime here's a test shot from inside the Sorenson Hut at Jubilee Base during our lunch break today - you might notice some odd artefacts in the image if you look closely - objects too close to the camera get "chopped off" due to parallax issues with the lenses - so everything needs to be further than ~1.5m away in order for images to 'stitch' properly. Nevertheless, in this image you get a fair idea of the inside of our hut - the main (and only) living quarters where we hang out during blizzards! (we were expecting one on Saturday, but everything seems completely fine now!)

Peter Morse