Getting Digital Pictures Into the Action

John Bauman

The client list at Celefex, an 8-year old computer animation company based in New York City, reads like a Who's Who of advertising agencies: Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, Gray and the like. The company is primarily involved in designing and producing computer animation sequences used in television commercials.

Animated Gillette Ad Mockup

Before purchasing their first digital camera, the company relied on a video camera to capture low resolution, still video images for their animation sequences. But, i t was cumbersome. They would record the images on tape and then transfer them to a RGB format, digitizing the images using a frame grabber board in the computer. John Bauman, creative director for Celefex, says the process took a long time.

He then recommended that the company buy a digital camera to streamline the capture of reference images. He singled out the KODAK DC120 Zoom Camera with its 3x zoom lens because it offered the greatest value.

"At the time we bought this camera, it offered the best resolution at its price point," added Bauman. "We also liked the fact that it could capture uncompressed images because sometimes we have to zoom in so close that the JPEG artifacts become a problem."

Animated Tonka Ad Mockup

Bauman and his creative team are often called upon to capture images that would be used as background or texture graphics, or used as some type of graphic component in their animation. In the past, they used a copystand with a video camera attached to shoot the smaller items, but going on-site was definitely a chore.

"The digital camera is a lot more portable and flexible than video. And, definitely faster," Bauman explained. "Now, we take the digital camera wherever we can find our image. Then, we bring the pictures into ADOBE PHOTOSHOP and convert them to a JPEG file format or whatever we want."

"The company charges $2,000 a day, so every time this camera saves us a day of work, it more than pays for itself," smiles Bauman. "In fact, this camera paid for itself the very first day we used it. Now, that's a good investment."

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