Famed bullet-time expert Eric Paré decided to challenge himself by building an experimental bullet-time rig using the Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2, a tiny 8-megapixel camera. While he encountered a few problems with the rig, he eventually got the 15 cameras working together without using custom electronic components.
In the 5-minute video above, Paré explains how he turned the set of tiny cameras into a functional bullet-time array. He usually uses a large number of DSLRs to create some incredible bullet-time effects (which you can see in action on his YouTube Channel), and while he notes that the Raspberry Pi experiment here is unlikely to replace that rig, it was a fun challenge for him to tackle.
In short, he was curious how far he could push the small cameras and what kind of image quality he could expect. “My main interest here is the size of them as they can be put super close to each other, giving me my best density ever on a multi-camera structure,” he said.
Initially, he struggled to get a good result because the cameras are mounted on thermal paste and cannot be placed with the precision required for a smooth bullet-time effect. That lack of precision resulted in a very shakey result. “The problem is that these are very wide lenses, and with the distortion, I really need to have all of the cameras to look at the same center spot,” Paré said.
Author: Jaron Schneider
Source: Petapixel
