Certainly we could import them as a batch however being able to see each still on a large monitor before it's taken would be a huge plus. Well it's a bit more complicated than that, what you can do with some software is show the previously captured frames superimposed or onion skinned. This is pretty easy to do with a video camera but stepping up to high definition is a big step up in cost. There's plenty of still cameras that will take image at very high res but if we could use those instead of a HD video camera would be great.
I'll have a look at the Canon range, maybe they've been a bit smarter than Sony.

Hey this is cool, I have been thinking about this too. I have done some 16mm stop-motion and want to try to use a good digital still camera (maybe a SLR) to capture HD (and up) images to create a stop-motion. Here is what I learned.

I plan to get the Canon Digital Rebel or equivalant because it has some great macro and wide lenses available. I too wanted to see the image before capturing, on a nice big PC or NTSC screen to assist with composting the shot etc. Come to find out, no digital SLR will do this because the image is exposed to the CCD (or CMOS) only when the mirrored shutter is open. But compared to a 16mm Bolex + a week of developing, printing, telecine, and then viewing, I think we shouldn't complain.

I have done some tests with non-SLR cameras and so far had mixed results. If the camera doesn't allow for complete control over all images settings, forget it. I guess this is obvious.

If what Luxo said is true, then we can snap an image from the camera (in Win XP) and see it afterwards on the PC screen. Not too bad, if it didn't frame or look right - just redo that frame and delete the old one. Also, a simple dry erase marker on the PC/NTSC screen helps tons to keep track of stuff. I know there is a few stop motion programs that do onion skin layers - but I don't think they work with HD+ resolution.

Here is the really cool part, and it works. I plan to take most frames at the largest setting, like 3,000 X 2,000. If the final output is 1024 x 768 (HD'ish) or 720 x 480 (SD'ish) you open yourself up to all sorts of cool options. If your source frame is 3 times larger than your destination, you can re-crop say a wide shot to a close up, or reuse the same walk cycle or what have you - a couple of a times at different sizes. I want to shoot some stuff green screen, then suddenly you have tons of royalty free backgrounds at your disposal. And working at super high files sizes, allows tons of panning, zooming, rotating, perspective changes, and 3d mapping in After Effects. (Maybe in Vegas 5 too) This is driving me nuts thinking about what one can do.

And like you said, you suddenly have a final HD program shot on a camera under $1,000.

Sorry to ramble. Keep us posted.

I've got a Sony DSC-V1 that can playback to a television or monitor with composite input. Not sure if I can view it pre-capture though. I don't know if many cameras would even offer that option.. can't imagine stop-motion support being part of the camera design...

mike

I've done a bit more investigation on using the DSC F828 for HiDef stop frame animation.
Limitations: seems as soon as you connect the camera via USB it ceases to be a camera. Damn.
However: Video output will let you 'see' what the camera is looking at. I can feed that into a DAC to get lo res video into PC and into a neat bit of freeware called smafull. This lets you do onion skinning to judge how much you've moved an object.
Having gotten that out of the way I can use an external switch closure to fire the shutter in the camera. With a large CF card in the camera I can store a few hundred frames before I need to download them and smafull will also keep a lo res proxy.
This has really got me thinking, there's some real possibilities here!

farss,

Look into using other software. Many still photo cameras can be controlled, via USB, using the proper software, and this may also work for the still photo portion of a video camera. Check this link for descriptions of some of this software:

Digital Camera Controls

Farss,
You might want to contact Phil at Artbeats. He does a LOT of this kind of shooting and creating high def work with a Canon E20. (I think that's what it is) He processes the images in Pshop and then imports the sequence into Vegas.

I copied this from the Canon 10D software description. I haven't tried it yet but it looks interesting:

RemoteCapture
This software, along with the supplied interface cable, allows users to remotely operate the camera from a computer. Zooming, flash mode, image quality and shutter release can all be controlled, whether taking single images, using the timer (2 to 30 seconds in 1-second increments) or using the interval timer (5 seconds to 60 minutes in 1-second increments). Recording of images directly to the computer is also possible.

CHeck this thread out---by the way this is an excellent general site for digital photography.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/109910

Thanks guys,
quite a bit more information to digest there, looks like the Sony cameras aren't exactly the best ones for the job!
First task for the camera looks like being a bit simpler, just shoot at 0.5 fps and use that as HiDef movie. Don't know what software client plans to use to edit the sequences, maybe when I show him Vegas we'll have another convert. Still have to workout how to get the final footage out at 1080 to HDCAM VCR.

Bob.