Hurlbut is shooting a project based on Navy SEALs, and the trailer (of sorts; it’s mostly an awful lot of bikini’d ladies) is shot with a mix of digital and film photography, using the digital Canon 5D MKII and Sony 950 as well as the Arri 235 film camera. He created kind of a contest to see who could pick out the digital shots from the film in the trailer (most is digital, shot with the 5D MKII) — it’s way harder than you’d think, not least because the dude is clearly an expert. His wide-angle shots of a yacht and close-ups of bikini-clad ladies may look like the intro to a Puff Daddy music video (sing it with me: BEEN AROUND THE WORLD AND AYAYAY), but it is shockingly gorgeous and I’m hard-pressed to be able to tell the difference between digital and film. Check out the video here, and enter his contest here. [Shane Hurlbut via Vincent LaForet]

The number describes the size of the negative, in centimetres. So a 645 camera has a negative size of 6cmx4.5cms. A 67 (such as Tuesday’s Mamiya RZ67) has a negative size of 6cmx7cm.

645s from Mamiya and Bronica were popular with wedding photographers, as the negative size provided the detail and image quality that set their images a step above 35mm shooters, while providing a more economical yield per roll of 120 film. That is, you would yield more pictures from a single roll of film using a 645 camera than a 67. If I recall correctly, a 645 gets you 15 images per 120 roll. A 67 gets you 12. The 220 film roll was simply twice as long as 120. Twice the exposures.

And speaking of exposures… If you decide to get into shooting film with medium format cameras, the hardware is the cheap part. Buying and processing film is a different matter. Expect to pay up to $20 per 120 roll, purchased and processed. Back in the olden days, ‘togs would use Polaroids to test their exposures and save time and money on film. These days, you can just use a digital camera to test the exposure before firing a 645 shutter.

Also making the 645s popular was their handling. They were pretty nimble, quick to set up, fast to focus, easy to pull down and move on to the next shot. They handled more like a 35mm camera.

Just last week I almost sprung for a Mamiya 645 with AE finder and 50mm lens. $450. I remember shopping for the same kit in 1988. The price tag was closer to $2200.

If you’re in Melbourne and looking to hunt down a medium format film camera for a bargain price, head into The Camera Exchange in Lonsdale St. From there, you can walk the block and see what’s on offer at Michael’s, Camera Lane, and Camera House. It’s as good as it gets for camera shopping in Australia. Of course, if you Sydney mob think you’ve got better, let us know.

We tend to forget about film here at Giz, as we’re so taken with the newest and most advanced gadgetry, but there’s something so cool about these mechanical wonders. Some of them are decades old, some are brand new, but we’re sure they’re all a breath of fresh air in the monument to tech that is Tokyo. [Tokyo Camera Style via Crunchgear]

The final product looks like a term project for wood shop class, requiring mostly traditional materials as the Snorricam mount is primarily made of plywood. Not an incredibly difficult construction, for sure, but one that could be really useful for aspiring filmmakers without friends, or those who want to get that crazy angle used in so many movies (Requiem for a Dream comes to mind). [Instructables via MAKE]

Gizmodo ‘79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analogue age gave way to the digital, and most of our favourite toys were just being born.

Adobe and University of Wisconsin scientists have created software that can correct shaky camerawork, but it’s way cooler than anything on the market now. Using 3D modelling, it guesses the intended look, then warps the original video to adjust.

Basically, the software examines each frame and warps it to form a steady line of shots based on a 3D projection of the cameras path (courtesy of off-the-shelf Adobe software), giving a buttery-smooth look almost as good as if the camera was on rails. It’s got a few downsides, namely that it can only be applied after the entire film is shot, and the resulting product will need a little bit of cropping. But it still looks like a pretty great tool for amateur filmmakers, and should be available in about two years. [New Scientist]

There’s definitely other software that’ll do this kind of thing, but AnalogColor lets you create faux-Polaroids by degrading your current photos in several different ways, including those fun streaks that resulted from light leaks. It’s available for $US10 on OS X and Windows. [Pentacom via Wired]

Digital Domain was already working on some secondary characters for Transformers 2 while George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic building the main robots like Optimus Prime. Yes, Transformers 2 had such a big budget that DD was hired just to ride shotgun.

One key moment of DD’s handiwork depicts the transformation of a girl named Alice—played by actress Isabel Lucas—into a lethal robot. The main shot, seen above, uses digital techniques like advanced particle simulation (physics) to tear 10,000 pieces of skin away from a girl’s body—the kind of high-concept graphics that require lots of software know-how, and computers to do incredible amounts of heavy lifting. It was the sort of shot that showcased everything DD could do.

When Michael Bay saw it, he found it lacking.

After watching an early edit of the movie, Bay had decided that although the wide shot of Alice was nice, the film was missing a close-up—he wanted 40 frames of the girl’s face as she began transforming.

The close-up wouldn’t take as much as the full-body master shot. Instead of 10,000 pieces of skin, only about 50 had to move. But because of time, budget and manpower constraints, this animation had to be done the old-fashioned way—working by hand. It meant that five guys would spend the next three months of their lives on less than two seconds of the finished film.

Computer graphics supervisor Paul George Palop walked me through their process of crafting the “very, very painful” 40 frames.

The goal sounded simple: Transform this closeup of a human into a closeup of a robot. Alice’s face would begin to shatter away, revealing a gruesome creature underneath. But to model in 3D over digital film takes some prep work. To make the effect look real, the guys would need to map the 2D film original shot into digital 3D space. Then they could add all the neat robot stuff.

First, the DD team cut out all of the background and extraneous objects (including Shia LaBeouf’s head), isolating the female figure. It’s the first step of a classic technique known as rotoscoping, a trick that predates Disney, in which animators overlay cartoon characters and other animation on top of live action backgrounds. (Now that CG has blended humans and cartoons, it’s probably safe to say that there isn’t a movie made now that doesn’t involve some kind of rotoscoping.)

With the basic 2D work done, DD used a laser scan of Lucas’ figure to create a perfect 3D map. The rotoscope plate was then laid over this map, allowing the animators to work with real image depth and geometry. We don’t have that exact shot, so we stole a still from the later wide shot to make the point. On the right, you have the 3D body scan model. On the left, you can see the 3D applied to the 2D figure.

One artist worked solely on the little skin plates that cracked away around Alice’s mouth. Each of these 50 or so pieces was hand-animated, frame by frame, to create the short effect. But to enhance the illusion of movement, artists applied extra texture to the tiles along with some displacement mapping to each tile’s edge, which essentially complicates the square shape into an array of small triangles. (See how they look all jagged in the version on the right?) Once the 3D-animated shapes were laid out, they had to be naturally lit, lest the girl’s skin look unnatural before she transformed completely into a metal monster.

In the meantime, the exact movements of the human Alice head needed to be applied to the newly animated robot Alice head, so that any movement from the former could be copied instantly in the latter.

Finally, all of the pieces were composited, rendered and placed on a newly drawn background. You’ll notice that beyond the obvious visual effects, artists beefed up Alice’s figure a bit. They rebuilt the end of her left arm and, while they were at it, added a bit more lift in the back of her hair. Even with a blockbuster megamovie deadline, there’s always time for last-minute styling.

After all of this meticulous work—three months of effort from digital effects masters—audiences everywhere got a bonus 40 frames of remarkable robotic transformation. Ironically, one of the movie’s chief complaints would be its length.

20 UK Vue cinemas will offer audiences the opportunity to steer a spaceship through an asteroid belt. Two IR cameras will track the audience (the left half raises their hands to veer left, the right half raises their hands to veer right). None of the experience is prerendered—it’s all an interactive video game.

As films go 3D, it’ll be interesting to see if theatres (and movie makers) take the opportunity to integrate more interactive elements to the experience. Raising my hand in the air, however, is not how I see myself defeating the Decepticons to rule the Universe. [Register Hardware]