Help needed to built a 3D Bodyscanner

[ougazorht]

Hello,

we plan to do some face/ head/ full body scans in a stationary setup for an academical project and need some help deciding which hardware would suit best.
The main intention is to do some full body scans, focusing on the best quality for head/ face scans while doing the rest of the body with the minimum amount of cameras needed.
We plan to built a closed dome (with a small entrance) to keep the conditions the same and would use 2/3 or even 3/4 of the cameras for the head shots.

The main question is, what would be better: (a) more cameras or (b) better equipement 

With the same budget, we can buy:

(a) 90x Samsung NX 1000 Kitts (20,3 Mix, addon flash SEF8A (guide number 8 @100), lens 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF) around 280 Euro/ Unit

(b) 53x Nikon D3200 + lens 50mm f1.8 (24 MPix, built-in flash (guide number 12 @100), around 480 Euro/ Unit

(c) should we maybe go with a completely different approach and use a mix, like 36x Nikon D3200 for the face/ head part and 28 Samsung NX1000 for the rest of the body?

As mentioned before, this will be a stationary setup, so we can prepare and test a lot in advance, tweak the settings to get the best (picture) quality for each camera, before we are going to start with the capture process.
My point here is, will the better equipement really make a big difference here? Or is it more like, the more cameras, the better? Will there be a significant  difference between using 60 or 75 cameras for the face/ head part?

Do we need additional flash lights, or are the built in/ addon flashes enough?

Thanks in advance
Orkot

[meshmaster]

It all depends what your ultimate objective is.  At the end of the day, the issue with doing full body work is occluded areas.  In order to fully cover ALL areas of the body you need a lot of cameras and coverage... the more cameras the better as overlap is the goal.  Quality is all well and good, however, if you have holes in your mesh because of occluded areas then your output will be inferior regardless.  So, it's really a matter of swings and roundabouts....  You must also consider the nature of the poses you will try and capture.  If you are trying to capture a person standing with arms directly at side you can get away with fewer cameras.  However, if you are trying to do a capture in the T-pose or other "extreme" pose then you are going to require more cameras.  At the end of the day it's all about finding the right balance which will require experimentation... I don't think there is a single "right" answer to this question.

I think all options you have mentioned are quite good for various reasons....    If it were me, I'd opt for trying to obtain as many cameras as possible but again, it all depends on your ultimate needs are requirements.

Cheers

[mala]

I would say that 60/75 cameras for the head alone may be overkill...as Joe has pointed out occlusion is going to be the main problem with the rest of the body and therefore you need more cams to cover this area.

Whilst I've made a lot of noise about the Samsung NX1000 you have 2 problems with them:

- The shutter trigger is via the micro USB and needs a custom cable (see my post on this in the NX1000 thread)

- Because the shutter trigger uses the USB you cannot easily download your images from the camera without removing the SD card... If you can work out a WiFi hack then maybe it's possible but I suspect slow and difficult to manage when dealing with 90 cameras.

On the plus side the cameras are cheap and can shoot 8fps continous and full size for about 11 shots.
The image quality is actually very good and sharp.

The Nikon D3200 can be triggered easily you just need the correct connector to MC-D2
Smart shooter can download the images via the USB.
cons- some people on photo forums have reported that the images from the camera can be quite soft,not ideal when you need clear sharp detail for Photoscan.

In general I would say more cameras is better...but of course these cameras have to be of a reasonable quality and the system has to be easy to operate.

You will need more lights..

Hope that helps a bit

Cheers,
Mala

[ougazorht]

Thanks a lot for the input.

We decided to start smaller (20x Nikon 3200) and try to get this setup running smoothly. Then we will go from there.