Is it possible to get rifle scope cross hairs in camera?

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JimS2

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I want to do a shot as if it were a POV shot of a person looking through a rifle telescope. I googled on if there is a way to do this in camera, but every source that comes up so far talks about how to do it in post. But in post, you can tell that it's animated. I am wondering if there is a way to get this in camera, or at least more real looking. I know that if you put the cross hairs on a UV filter for example, it won't work because than they will be out of focus. Does anyone know of any way?

Thank you very much! I really appreciate it.
 
Oh okay, but the problem with doing that is, is that a rifle scope is much smaller in diameter than a lens, so if I try this, won't you see the whole diameter of the scope then in the lens?
 
I can't see any reason you can't simulate it properly. in most cases, it isn't the cross-hairs it's the look of the picture, so you need to remove the perfect optics of your camera and replace them by the large aperture, flat images you see on YouTube. If you Google the actual optics in a gun sight, they're very different to a video lens - I suspect the killer for the giveaway is the optical field of view. Gun sights are very narrow. The cheesy ones on TV show a normal video frame. Sharpness but narrow angle is difficult to get unless you have lots of pixels to keep up the magnification quality.
 
Rifle scope plus a normal-length macro lens (~55-60mm). Your lens is focusing on the scope, not the subject... it's the scope's job to focus on the subject.

Granted, my experience is with filming through microscopes, but the principal is the same.
 
What camera are you using? I think it will be easier to get the right look with a small sensor camera. Maybe a MFT camera and 200mm lens stopped down a ways.

I've seen spotting scope to EF and F-mount adapters, but I don't know of a good way to adapt a rifle scope to a camera.

I was going to suggest a hanging miniature but that was covered in ahalpert's link.

In reality, good scopes manifest very little optical distortion, but adding some distortion and chromatic aberration might help sell the effect of looking through a scope, at least to the majority of the population who are uninformed. Likewise some dirt and smudges might help sell the effect if the scene takes place in a war zone, but in reality, snipers have caps on their scopes and cleaning kits, so the optics aren't generally dirty.

If you wanted a less cliche look, you could simulate a red dot scope look.
 
Oh okay. I am using the black magic pocket cinema camera, and am using a Canon 70-300 mounted on for tests, trying to use the telephoto lens to simulate the rifle scope. But if that's not the best choice, I can use something else. I could use the red dot look, I just thought that black cross hairs would be easier to see, but maybe the red dot is better.

paulears said:
I can't see any reason you can't simulate it properly. in most cases, it isn't the cross-hairs it's the look of the picture, so you need to remove the perfect optics of your camera and replace them by the large aperture, flat images you see on YouTube. If you Google the actual optics in a gun sight, they're very different to a video lens - I suspect the killer for the giveaway is the optical field of view. Gun sights are very narrow. The cheesy ones on TV show a normal video frame. Sharpness but narrow angle is difficult to get unless you have lots of pixels to keep up the magnification quality.
Click to expand...

Oh okay. When you say narrrow, do you mean long focal length, or what do you mean by 'narrow' in this context?
 
Red dot and rifle scope are two very different sighting tools for very different purposes. You need to first determine what rifle's intended purpose was and how it is set up for that purpose. Is it a hunting rifle (scope, low-medium power magnification) or a sniper rifle (medium -high power magnification) or an assault rifle (red dot - no magnification)? A red dot on an 4/3rds sensor would be a 24mm focal length. A 3x magnification would be a 75mm focal length for 4/3rds. Add the cross hairs or red dot in post.
 
Oh okay. Well it's a scene where a police sharpshooter is going to try to take down a dangerous perpetrator. So what type of scope would that be? I was just thinking I would zoom in from far away to the lenses fullest zoom, if it goes up to 300mm, if I were to use that lens.
 
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Oh okay thanks. Well I thought it would look more real to use a real red dot on glass, or real cross hairs on glass, rather than a post production overlay effect. I thought a post production overlay might look fake or not realistic enough. Plus the motion tracking is hard to make look real too, compared to actually moving real cross hairs on glass I figure. However, I tried a test with an overlay, all post production effects. Does this look real enough or no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEuj8hxdzOo&feature=youtu.be
 
No, that is not realistic. You don't put your eye directly up to the scope as you do with binoculars. Your demo is more along the lines of what filmmakers do and what audiences expect. But if you want to go for realism that a person familiar with scopes would expect, you might want to copy what is seen in this video. People may not like it because they are more used to your example. Look at 1:06. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fr_xq4zJ2o. To be totally realistic, the field of view outside the scope would be at 24mm focal length while the shot inside the scope would be at perhaps 75mm. Ok, maybe too much to do.

I'd stay with your demo version. My proposal is over the top complicated.
 
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Oh okay. Well if I don't have to blacken out around the edges of the scope then, should I just put the camera right up to real rifle telescope then, and shoot it that way then, and not worry about it being black around the scope view? Is that how they shot it in that video?
 
This is silly! If you are making a training video for real users, then you make it realistic, if you are making a movie, you make the shot look like people are accustomed to seeing. In movies they are all designed to fit the scene. Nobody needs the exact lines a particular manufacturer sees, but the thing to consider is the circle within the frame. Do you actually need that, because that is NOT what you see when you look through the things. For years, whenever a pirate put a telescope to their eye, we cut to a circle. Real telescopes have never done this - it's semiotics really, the sign or the symbol to make you think the right thing. Night shots for years were just blue filter on the lens. We accepted it, even though we all know night time is not remotely blue. We go in a darkroom and it's bright red, even though that is not remotely how it is in real dark rooms. In the movie, you could simply cut from your normal view to a real telephoto shot that is hand held, with a superimposed cross, maybe a vignette to the extreme edges, but not a circle with hard edge. That's enough. With or without red dot. Make what the viewer expects. Realism is often worse than pretend.
 
It looks like hunters and other gun owners are recording their shooting with iPhones strapped to their scope. Nothing about the footage would look any different if you took a telephoto lens and closed the aperture way down to give it some diffraction and then overlaid the crosshairs and circular vignette on top. The distinct look of the footage is the shakiness and rifle movements.

Screenshot_20200716-031010_YouTube.jpg
Screenshot_20200716-031030_YouTube.jpg
https://youtu.be/5GQjpVJCyqQ
 
Oh okay, but why would I want diffraction though, since I've always thought of diffraction as bad, if it can be avoided. Isn't a sharper image still better, even if a real rifle telescope may have diffraction?

This is silly! If you are making a training video for real users, then you make it realistic, if you are making a movie, you make the shot look like people are accustomed to seeing. In movies they are all designed to fit the scene. Nobody needs the exact lines a particular manufacturer sees, but the thing to consider is the circle within the frame. Do you actually need that, because that is NOT what you see when you look through the things. For years, whenever a pirate put a telescope to their eye, we cut to a circle. Real telescopes have never done this - it's semiotics really, the sign or the symbol to make you think the right thing. Night shots for years were just blue filter on the lens. We accepted it, even though we all know night time is not remotely blue. We go in a darkroom and it's bright red, even though that is not remotely how it is in real dark rooms. In the movie, you could simply cut from your normal view to a real telephoto shot that is hand held, with a superimposed cross, maybe a vignette to the extreme edges, but not a circle with hard edge. That's enough. With or without red dot. Make what the viewer expects. Realism is often worse than pretend.
Click to expand...

Oh okay, but even if people are acustom to seeing vignette more, shouldn't I still get the real telescope, since it's better to do it on camera, rather than try to do more work and fix it in post?
 
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