• Hardware

  • Camera module recommendations for simultaneous wide-angle and zoom recording

I am trying to create a camera hardware configuration that simultaneously records two interacting people. The two people will be facing each other, about 8 feet apart, with the camera(s) on a table or mic stand in between them. Ideally I would get one recording of each person's whole body, and another that is zoomed in closely on each person's face (so, two cameras per person). It looks like the OAK-FFC 4P will do the job of recording four cameras at the same time. But there are a lot of camera module options via the luxonis website and arduocam. I'm having a hard time figuring out what the best choice would be for this configuration, and for the OAK-FFC 4P. Could someone recommend a camera module that is wide angle and can ideally get most or all of a person's body at ~4 feet, and a separate camera module that could provide some zoom to get a good recording of a person's face (or upper half of the body)? Thank you!

    Hi jherringt
    You could probably get away with using one wide angle camera per person, since I don't think we currently support any lenses that are able to zoom. So my idea would be to use a W FOV camera on a person, whilst also using a cropped version of the same feed for the face recording.
    Here's a calculator to check whether the FOV is wide enough for your usecase. Ideally, you would also need an autofocus camera (none of W cameras are autofocus, but there are workarounds).

    Thoughts?
    Jaka

      Hi Jaka, thanks so much for your reply. This is very helpful. I am afraid my knowledge about how cameras and lenses work is limited. My overall goals are to 1) get a recording of the whole body, and 2) simultaneously record the face (or upper body) as densely and accurately as possible. My thinking has been that the best way to achieve that would be with two separate cameras. I imagine the face-specific camera would/should be autofocus. if it makes sense to you to have a separate camera dedicate to highest-possible-resolution face recording, is there a particular camera you would recommend?

      Also, thanks for the info about the wide-angle lenses not being auto-focus. What kind of workarounds would you recommend for that?

      Thanks very much again - john