Building a camera mount

[LanceITP]

I'm thinking about building a camera mount, to be used as a Pencil Tester. Those of you that went to, or are going to, college know what a Pencil Tester is, right;)? How about a "Lunch Box?"

How would you go about building a camera mount *slash* Pencil Tester? Could you build one that costs less than this (http://www.cartoonsupplies.com/product_info.php/cPath/28_48/products_id/96)? I think a web-cam should suffice as the camera. A digital camera is a bit too pricey:(. What materials would you use?

Optionally: What can be used to allow the camera to move up and down, to get more or less of the image, without tilting the camera?

[myshkin]

I think i have an old kodak book on animation with a how to build camera stand stand in it.
It may take a while to go through my book piles.

Sorry, i found the book, and my memory played tricks on me.
There is a small picture of some plans (1.5" high), the real plans were available to order from the Eastman Kodak Company for $5, twenty years ago.

I did this link though http://www.saunalahti.fi/~animato/stand/stand.html

[LanceITP]

Been searching around and found this (http://www.tallgrassradio.com/tgr0014.htm). Now all we need is to make a checklist for all the parts.

1 - camera
1 - flat surface, and add registration pegs
2 - light sources
1 or 2 - metal bars; maybe 3
1 - metal box
1 - mechanically inclined brain, :D, to put it all together
anything else?

And an average cost list for parts.

[JK-TGRS]

I received an e-mail from Kdog telling me about this thread. The pencil test system referenced in this PENCIL TESTER link (http://www.tallgrassradio.com/tgr0014.htm) is ours so Kdog asked if I would be willing to answer questions. So, if you have any questions that I can answer, just ask away. Oh, I also obviously am a new member of these forums, so I'll try to contribute when appropriate. -JK

[kdog]

Bout time you jumped into this forum :P

Good to see you here, & as always thanks for your willingness to help.

-Pat

[JK-TGRS]

Pat, my dear friend, for better or worse you are to blame. So don't give out directions to your home address. I have seen on some other threads here where people have said nice things about my blogs and articles so I'll try not to disappoint anyone. As you well know I'm always open to Q&A either in forums or via my e-mail and I rarely refuse to answer questions or offer opinions. I don't do public critiques as you also know well because critiques are private and very personal in my opinion but if asked I will comment in private via e-mail. I'm always willing to share any knowledge, skills or techniques as time permits. Thanks for the invite. -JK

[Terro]

I for one am happy to see you here, you seem to have a vast knowledge and are willing to share. Kdog did good by inviting you over, welcome to AF.

[kdog]

Pat, my dear friend, for better or worse you are to blame

If I had a dollar every time I heard that...

Actualy I'm glad to take the rap for this one. :)

I don't know much about animation, but 99% of what I know came directly from you. I've actually thought for a while that you could take a few of the more talented people here to the next level. I know I'm taking every piece of info I can get, & I'm sure others here will do the same. While it may get old to read - tough **** - thanks for all your help. :P
I'll buy you a beer one of these days :)

[miketoole]

I just finished building a camera thing today.

If you are a pennyless student as I am, I would try to use round 3 hole punches because we obviously cant afford acme hole punches(from 500 to 2000+ I've heard) and its easy to have unlimited to access to one. Just be careful not to damage the holes and you should be fine. Try to fashion the peg bar itself out of something.

Then what I did for the staging area is set it up with an old computer with a webcam and any program that bills itself as being for stop motion, if you have a Mac. If you are on Windows theres at the very least something called MonkeyJam which is completely free and completely for line testing enables on the fly compositing of layers and all sorts of stuff, extremely simple.

http://vonmandigo.circumstantialevidence.org/WHAT/picturemachine.jpg

as long as you can make your camera stay still over an area with the pegs which must stay still as you take stuff on and off, you can take pictures of the drawings pretty easy. if necessary build it out of spare peices of wood, no reason to pay 1000 dollars for it if you're just a poor student.

when all the drawings are definitately okay, i can just put up a digital camera and take quality non webcam pictures with the same set up, to put into an editing program.

[NOOB!]

nice job,gotta get my self a webcam :banghead

[Zwickel]

I think the webcam method will be my way out, as I will have something like a fixed place to shoot my animations.
Comlock uses his scanner I think, but Framethief is faster!

[bleupencil]

I'm a bit late to the game with this, but thought I'd post in case someone could use it. If you can have a bit of a handyman streak and can weld, or know someone who can, here is the layout of my stand that I found quite useful.

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l287/bleupencil/junk/webstand.jpg
Hopefully this diagram is simple enough to understand. I don't have any measurements though, you'll have to work that out yourselves. You use a bolt that should fit on the underside of your webcam and stick it through a hole in the fitting on that top pole. There is also another bolt and hole (which I forgot to draw in), that allows for horizontal adjustments of the camera. The same goes for a vertical adjustment.

The L-shaped bar that goes in the middle should be somewhat smaller to fit inside the mast and allow the camera holdy part to slip onto it as well. I didn't draw that bit very well either, sorry!

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l287/bleupencil/junk/webstand2.jpg
This is the result (ignore the clip, it's not holding anything up).

Paid $70 for materials and labour to a friend of a friend who made it for me. It's actually made for an 8mm film camera or small digital handy cam, but I worked out a way of making it work for my logitech webcam too. Hence the giant wrapping of tape around the mast :)

I just use one of those pegbars that you can buy at Cartoon supply places, stuck with blutack to the base.

It's a primitive setup, but effective.
Hope it helps someone.

[Terro]

Hi,

I know this question of mine may come as utterly stupid... but...

what is the advantage of a camera mount versus the use of a scanner?


(i am sort of a computer monkey, so i never get to deal with paper)


A scanner is more time consuming when it comes to initial tests. The camera mount only takes a second to grab a frame. Plus a scanner in a little harder to allign, since it doesn't have little pegs. In the end, you still will most likely use a scanner to import your final frames since it will give you better results. But the end is always faraway, lol thus a camera mount.

[LanceITP]

Finally, a good answer. :D

But now I'm planning to buy an Intuos3 9x12 tablet in early September. But I'd like to build a camera mount, some time in the future, if and when I get around to making a traditional animator set-up.

I'm sure this will help out a lot of animators. Bleupencil's rig setup sounds to be the most affordable. Home Depot or some other hardware store is probably the best place to go, to get the materials for such a rig.

Thanks, Bleu ;)

[Herb Montes]

Sorry I haven't been around lately, been so busy with many other things. But to contribute here, a couple of pictures of a simple camera stand. This was an old Prinz 35mm photo enlarger found at the local thrift store for $50. When I removed the enlarger head I found a 1/4"-20 thread which was perfect for most movie cameras. I have several plexiglass boards with pegs in them. Some with Acme pegs others with a custom two round peg system to fit my punch. They are mounted to the baseboard with screws and brackets. The camera in the pictures is a recently acquired 16mm Pathe.

http://www.hmontes.com/Images/camerastand1.jpg

http://www.hmontes.com/Images/camerastand2.jpg

[ZigOtto]

A scanner is more time consuming when it comes to initial tests. The camera mount only takes a second to grab a frame. Plus a scanner in a little harder to allign, since it doesn't have little pegs. In the end, you still will most likely use a scanner to import your final frames since it will give you better results. ...well, I personally have switched to the animation stand solution since the APNs became cheaper + providing good enough resolution, (my 2 years-old canon powershot A620 goes up to 2.592 x 1.944 pixels).
now, I shoot my drawings 5x to 10x times faster than I did before via my Microtek scanner, I usualy work in 1600x1200 res., and scale down to the output size at the very last moment, when exporting the quicktime file (pencil-test) or the final séquence of frames (tga) for editing.
Beside the time saving, another advantage is that you are not limited by the paper size, I often animate on "12 field" size animation paper, (or 10-1/2" x 13"), and it doesn't fit in a classic scanner, limited to 8.5" x 11.7" max.
the disadvantage is that you need more room to install it than for a scanner,
and you need a good light unit, carefully set to get a flat lighting.
Of course, the best is to go 100% paperless, but it's another story ... :)

... The camera in the pictures is a recently acquired 16mm Pathe.hehe! in the heighties, I used a pathe webo camera too, for my earlier linetests,
using black&white high-contrast films, ... pleasant memory ! ;)