Nikomate & Aussie School Photo’s Zoros
Nikomate includes complete support for Aussie School Photo’s Zoros and our Pixel White production workflow. The support is deeply integrated to the capture workflow and helps your photographers capture the job correctly.
There are several cameras suitable for capturing Pixel White jobs with the Zoros controller. Currently, they are the Samsung NX1, Panasonic Lumix GH4 and Canon EOS 7D Mk II. At 15fps, the Samsung NX1 offers the best speed when capturing the image pairs, making mask mis-match less likely. The process is enhanced by our custom controller software, Samsung Capture.
Samsung Capture lets you define the camera settings so you can be sure all the settings are right. It also controls the camera firing so the NX1 can be tethered to the Nikomate Laptop and use a remote trigger at the same time.
Background Replacement without the headaches
Background replacement has established itself as a mainstream product around the world for mass school photography. But it’s not without it’s headaches. The popular Green Screen systems have a number of technical hurdles that mean extra cost and time when processing the jobs. Shooting a background replacement job with Aussie School Photo’s Zoros controller relieves many of these hurdles saving you time, money and stress.
Setting up and monitoring the job
White Screen capture - like every other job you photograph - benefits from being setup and exposed as you designed it. Quality mass portraiture depends on repeatable setup for every job captured. The lights need to be at a certain distance, and set to a certain power. The camera should be set to the right ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Deviating from the designed settings can cause havoc in production.
Nikomate helps ensure your photographers adhere to your design with a setup Wizard. The Wizard steps the photographers through each critical setup step, including the Zoros backlight flashes. As the shoot progresses, Nikomate can check each image captured for exposure, camera settings - even that the Mask image is good. If a problem is detected, the photographer is alerted so they can fix it straight away.
Capturing a job for Pixel White
Once the studio has been set up and verified, a Zoros job proceeds as normal. The biggest differences your photographer will notice is that the backlight flash fires for each shot they take, and that they may need to enter a background choice as well as the pack. Other aspects of handling the job are unchanged so your photographers will quickly become accustomed to the new process. Another change is that you capture two images per shot instead of one. To minimize this, mask images are handled in the background so as not to affect the shoot.
Shooting with Zoros requires using a remote trigger which actually frees your photographers up to focus on the subject better. Welcome the subject, pose them while standing next to the camera, and shoot the shot without breaking eye contact. Quickly preview the image on the back of the camera and refer back to the laptop for closer inspection if needed. The whole process is more satisfying for both the subject and photographer.
When the job is completed, the pose and mask image are bundled up automatically with the job for importing back in your production facility.
