Camera tracking Q's and which camera to get?

Support Basics & Interface
1

I’m wanting to delve into camera tracking and also motion capture.

I notice that Blender 2.63a has certain camera “presets”; those being

Blender
Canon 1100D
Canon 1D
Canon 1DS
Canon 500D
Canon 550D
Canon 5D
Canon 600D
Canon 60D
Canon 7D
Nikon D300S
Nikon D3100
Nikon D35
Nikon D5000
Nikon D5100
Nikon D7000
Nikon D90
Red Epic
Red One 2K
Red One 3K
Red One 4K
Sony A55

I’m considering purchasing a camera mainly for utilising the features Blender offers. The cameras I have at the moment aren’t very good quality being Standard Definition and I’m not sure if there’s even an option to disable interlacing which may well impact on the tracking accuracy.

Question 1:
At the moment I’m thinking I might go for purchasing a Canon 1100D. Is this the same as “Canon EOS 1100D” as shown on http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=394837 ?

Question 2:
Also of these cameras, is there a guide as to which ones are the best ones quality-wise?

Question 3:
From my reading of tutorials / playing around with the movie editor / tracker, it seems that camera tracking is really made for turntable type shots where the scene stays in the camera viewfinder; but not so much for if I wanted to have the camera follow through the hallways of a house? I used to use Voodoo tracking software ( http://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/docs/manual.html ) which could handle such a situation; I would walk-through a house holding a handheld camera and the software would create a cloud of empties as it solved the camera movement. Can Blender track to “walk through hallways” situations?

2

If you can afford it buy a Red One 4k and assorted lenses. But if $50,000 is out of your budget I have owned a Canon t21 (same asthe 550d I believe) and a canon 7d for years and could not be happier. I also own various zoom and primes.

Bang for the buck I would recommend either of those.

3

If you haven’t visited cameralab.com check it out. Lots of reviews, example images and videos from the author of the site.

I just purchased the Sony Hx200V. Pixel for pixel it is as good, if not better, than any DSLR at making movies but is half the price. Use that extra money to buy a fluid head tripod or a glidecam.

4

Thanks guys. Those other cameras don’t seem to be available from my stores. I’m settling for a Canon 1100D and hope it suits well. Should do given that Blender have it listed right there in their menus.

5

dont worry about wether the camera is listed in the menu… Its just a pre-set… you can set the settings to your specific camera. Based on the sensor size and format use wikipedia “sensor size” to figure it out you could even go in to the pre-set of the cameras and add your own so that you can select it every time its like one line of python… You will need to figure out the lens distortion and for that you can use a camera calibration chart. But I have done quite well without that just knowing what camera they used. ex hoolywoodeffects greenscreen footage. Just google you’ll figure it out.