Producers from EMS FILMS in Amsterdam used CCTV cameras for shooting the documentary “Holland – Natuur in de Delta” which appeared in Dutch cinemas in September 2015. Local conditions were not suitable for regular recording cameras. Therefore, Bosch Security Systems was contacted to provide an alternative solution.
“Holland: Natuur in de Delta” is the second documentary of the producers of “De Nieuwe Wildernis”. A cinema turnout of 700.000 people in 2013 led to winning the “golden calf” award in 2014, a Dutch film price in the category “Public’s Choice Award”. The movie shows nature reserves of the country and their inhabitants such as the beaver. The beaver finds himself in many areas ranging from its lodge in the national park “Biesbosch” which is in the south through the delta to the North Sea. The species and their “stories” were documented by the filming crew. Sometimes they had to spend months at one location to get proper footage.
In case of the beavers, a huge filming crew being present was too intrusive. Producer Ignas van Schaick from EMS says: “The shooting with the beavers was quite difficult because they are very timid and nocturnal. That is why we chose to use night sensing equipment by Bosch. The employees helped us to find a solution: together we developed sort of a mobile studio consisting of three DINION IP Starlight 8000 MP cameras and several Intelligent-IR illuminators from Bosch which were placed in the woods. It is amazing how Bosch showed us again what is possible with their cameras. The outcome was out-standing. Even though we could not move the cameras – otherwise we would have scared the animals away – it was possible to record the whole of the scene. Details were carved out afterwards using the zoom. Even on a 20-by-8-meters-screen, the image is still very high-quality.”
A compact camera was used which is provided with a motion detection, so it only starts recording when a beaver appears, not so when grass or water is moving. This required Intelligent Video Analytics where it is possible to set which parameters trigger the motion detection.
The Bosch cameras have a very high resolution of up to five megapixels. The footage is 2992 x 1680 pixel at a ratio of 16:9 and has a frame rate of 30 frames per second. A sensor and solutions for image noise provide a film speed of 0.0121 lux at five megapixel in color and 0.00825 lux at a resolution of 1080p. This enables the DINION IP Starlight 8000 MP cameras to depict images in color where other cameras only depict greyscale and greyscale where other cameras cannot depict anything, according to the product company. Difficult lighting such as varying front and back lighting can be filtered by intelligent Auto Exposure. Intelligent Auto Exposure enables the camera to adapt to varying lighting, to catch the object in the best setting as possible.
As the devices were placed in the middle of the woods, it was important to use batteries and to keep the power consumption as low as possible. Bosch cameras only require nine watts. Saving the footage also only spends little energy as it happens on a local SD-card. As the cameras provide noise-free images at only 0.0121 lux due to the starlight-technology, the IR-illuminators from Bosch also spend very little energy, so the system could work all night with just one charge.
EMS FILMS are working with Bosch cameras on the next project of the series: „De Wilde Stad“ shows animals living in big cities like Amsterdam.
