Pencil Test Systems at Town Center

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Using the Sony camera stands

Power

Turn on the camera stand’s power switch.

When finished working – please turn the power off. This will help extend the life of the camera and lights.

The Camera

The camera can be rotated towards or away from you, but does not move left or right. The peg bars do not move. By default, the camera should point at the center of a 12 field sheet of animation paper.

Controls

The camera has electronic controls for lighting, zoom, exposure, focus, etc.

Lighting

Press this button to cycle through the different lighting options:

Top lights > Back lights > Lights off

Zoom

Press W to zoom out (wide) or T to zoom in (telephoto).



Iris

Press Close to make the image darker, press Open to make it brighter. Pressing Auto adjusts exposure automatically.


Focus

Pressing Near or Far will adjust the focus manually. Pressing Auto adjusts focus automatically.



Other controls

  • Pressing B&W will remove all color from the image.
  • Pressing Nega will produce a negative image.
  • Pressing W. Balance will cycle through white balance options.

Capturing with Dragonframe

Launch Dragonframe from your applications folder.

Create a new Dragonframe project by clicking the New Scene button.

Name your project in the Production field and set the frame rate to 24.

You’ll be prompted to choose a location to save your project (and captured images) to. Select a location on your external hard drive or on the computer’s scratch drive.

Dragonframe should automatically recognize the Sony camera and show a live feed. Dragonframe will capture images at the camera’s native resolution.

Make sure you are in the Animation tab.

To capture frames, go to Window > Show Keypad to reveal the Keypad window.

Press the enter button on the Keypad window to capture a frame.

Captured frames will appear in the timeline at the bottom of the Dragonframe interface.

To extend the duration of a frame, click and drag on the right edge of the frame to extend it.

You can also reorder frames by dragging a frame to the desired location in the timeline. To delete a frame from the timeline, click on the frame and delete it. You can set an in point using the i key and an out point using the o key.

To playback your frames, press the Play (0) button on the Keypad. To loop playback, press the Loop (8) button.

To export your shot as a Quicktime movie go to File > Export Movie and select the desired options in the pop-up window. Then click the Export button.

To export your frames as an image sequence, go to File > Export Image Sequence and select the desired options in the pop-up window. Choose a Destination and click the Export button.

If you want to take your Dragonframe project file and source media (the original captured frames), be sure to copy your entire Dragonframe project folder (.dgn folder) to your own external hard drive.

You can learn more about using Dragonframe by watching this short video:

Additional information about Dragonframe can be found in the user guide here:

https://www.dragonframe.com/download/Using%20Dragonframe%205.pdf

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