toke lahti
12-19-2005, 09:41 AM
Hello everybody and endless thanks to Jim Jannard for both starting this project and asking these forums what we would like. It's about time to get some competition to this old camera cartel.
So, if we are now past the "WHOAA"-stage, let's get the design work started.
I'd suggest the title for basic principal for the whole design of the camera.
That way everybody gets what they want or can afford and updating and upgrading will be as easy as possible. This "lego"-idea will lead to challenging design work, but I think people behind this would actually like this to be a challenge.
First, the camera head. I think it's no use to speculate about the sensor, lets just assume it is there. I think the best way is to give users as many options as possible. So changeable mount for lens might be a good idea. Canon EOS lenses might not be best for focus pulling, but they might be very good for some doco work. If somebody would like to use only center part of sensor for greater DOF or smaller storage, it should be possible to use cheaper and smaller lenses.
Mechanical shutter is needed if we want optical viewfinder. Optical viewfinder shows wider picture than sensor can see, so it is many times very useful. Today electronical viewfinder with even full hd res is quite non existent, but this may change very quickly with all these new technologies like oled. Focusing with magnified center might not be always very handy, because then you have to always center your focus point and then re-frame the picture again. A bit like what we are used with videocameras to pumping zooms to check focus. Sometimes magnified center might work better than focusing by eye with optical finder so it would be best have both as an option.
It should also be possible to stop the mechanical shutter to use wider shutter angles than you can with it (like with hvx200 you can choose from 10-350 degrees). You just can't use optical viewfinder when mechanical shutter is off, but hey, that's why we have electronic viewfinder.
After the sensor we get to the dsp. Totally programmable FPGA's are beginning to be cheap enough so they can be software updated all the way. For this modular design there is also a need for some modern high speed bus for all the parts to talk to each other. Maybe pci-express?
Simpliest and cheapest configuration for the camera would be just record the raw data from the sensor. There you would just need the camera head and the storage (+lens of course). This would be enough if you don't need live picture out of camera or can use just the optical viewfinder. In this configuration camera would be very compact eg. for underwater housing and other tight spots. It might be also handy if camera head and storage could be separated and attached by cable.
If the storage would be just 2.5" hdd (write speeds only 40MBps=320Mbps now, but already more when camera will be selling) there should be also raw compression codec within camera head or in the storage.
Raw 4k x 2k x 12bit x 60 fps would be 720MBps, but with eg. jpeg2000 you could get good results with about 10:1 compression rates.
Then if we need hd-sdi-out, there would be own modul for that. That would also make possible hd-monitoring and would be needed for electrical hd-viewfinder.
For hd-sdi recording fancy thing might be a little bit modernized battery belt, where could be 4-5 2.5" hdd's configured as raid.
Another brick might be sd-out, if you need sd-monitoring or have sd-viewfinder of lcd.
Camera head could have few audio inputs on itself, but if more is needed they should be placed on their own module.
And do we need tc/sync module or could those functions be embedded to some other module?
Optical storage could be also optional module in the future when their writing speeds are high enough.
So, if we are now past the "WHOAA"-stage, let's get the design work started.
I'd suggest the title for basic principal for the whole design of the camera.
That way everybody gets what they want or can afford and updating and upgrading will be as easy as possible. This "lego"-idea will lead to challenging design work, but I think people behind this would actually like this to be a challenge.
First, the camera head. I think it's no use to speculate about the sensor, lets just assume it is there. I think the best way is to give users as many options as possible. So changeable mount for lens might be a good idea. Canon EOS lenses might not be best for focus pulling, but they might be very good for some doco work. If somebody would like to use only center part of sensor for greater DOF or smaller storage, it should be possible to use cheaper and smaller lenses.
Mechanical shutter is needed if we want optical viewfinder. Optical viewfinder shows wider picture than sensor can see, so it is many times very useful. Today electronical viewfinder with even full hd res is quite non existent, but this may change very quickly with all these new technologies like oled. Focusing with magnified center might not be always very handy, because then you have to always center your focus point and then re-frame the picture again. A bit like what we are used with videocameras to pumping zooms to check focus. Sometimes magnified center might work better than focusing by eye with optical finder so it would be best have both as an option.
It should also be possible to stop the mechanical shutter to use wider shutter angles than you can with it (like with hvx200 you can choose from 10-350 degrees). You just can't use optical viewfinder when mechanical shutter is off, but hey, that's why we have electronic viewfinder.
After the sensor we get to the dsp. Totally programmable FPGA's are beginning to be cheap enough so they can be software updated all the way. For this modular design there is also a need for some modern high speed bus for all the parts to talk to each other. Maybe pci-express?
Simpliest and cheapest configuration for the camera would be just record the raw data from the sensor. There you would just need the camera head and the storage (+lens of course). This would be enough if you don't need live picture out of camera or can use just the optical viewfinder. In this configuration camera would be very compact eg. for underwater housing and other tight spots. It might be also handy if camera head and storage could be separated and attached by cable.
If the storage would be just 2.5" hdd (write speeds only 40MBps=320Mbps now, but already more when camera will be selling) there should be also raw compression codec within camera head or in the storage.
Raw 4k x 2k x 12bit x 60 fps would be 720MBps, but with eg. jpeg2000 you could get good results with about 10:1 compression rates.
Then if we need hd-sdi-out, there would be own modul for that. That would also make possible hd-monitoring and would be needed for electrical hd-viewfinder.
For hd-sdi recording fancy thing might be a little bit modernized battery belt, where could be 4-5 2.5" hdd's configured as raid.
Another brick might be sd-out, if you need sd-monitoring or have sd-viewfinder of lcd.
Camera head could have few audio inputs on itself, but if more is needed they should be placed on their own module.
And do we need tc/sync module or could those functions be embedded to some other module?
Optical storage could be also optional module in the future when their writing speeds are high enough.