My Custom VR180 Camera Helmet Rig for ‘Close-Ups’

I’ve been working on a project for a client that requires our actor / performer to wear a VR180 camera, so that we can record a first-person perspective designed to be played back in a VR headset (like Oculus Quest). Since all the action is performed within arm’s reach, the normal interocular spacing (distance between the lenses) of off-the-shelf VR180 cameras is just too wide, resulting in some discomfort when viewing. So I need to get the lenses closer together, but how to do that? The answer: mount two cameras next to each other, and use the two inner-most lens’ images! In this case, I used 2 Insta360 EVOs, seen in the “NEW” photo (the “OLD” image shows my previous version, a single Kandao Qoocam). Of course, then I had to figure out how to ‘fool’ the software into thinking that both signals actually came from the same camera, and some alignment has to be done in Adobe Premiere, but this will allow us to shoot close-up 3D 180 video that is actually comfortable to view in Virtual Reality!


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