A-cam dII 'High Definition RAW Format Motion Picture Camera

I haven't used them until now. But I will buy them as soon as I get my Ikonoskop. They are high precision lenses for machine vision applications and made by Rodenstock. The 16mm F1.6 lens does cost about 1200$ so they are not cheap.
The plan is to make an Ikonoskop rental bundle here in Switzerland, therefore I go for quality. And if it's good enough for PS Technik, it's good enough for me.

A Fujinon 16mm F1.4 c-mount lens for 5-megapixel applications does cost about 225$. Less then a fifth of the Linos. Is the Linos so much better. I don't know yet. But we'll see (literarly)

I can't compare 'em to other lenses, because they are top level. I'd say other lenses have to compare to them.

Peter
 
This camera looks amazing. I have to admit, I'm waffling between getting one of these rather than a Scarlet. I guess that might be one reason that Red is re-designing Scarlet. Many of us really wanted interchangeable lenses, but were told emphatically it was a dumb idea. Meanwhile other camera companies are coming up with light, portable digital cinema cameras that do allow you to swap lenses.
 
IMHO the variogon 10-100 is not acceptable for this application. Distortion is -4% to 4% which is unacceptable and sharpness will only look good up to 40lp/mm perhaps. The MTF curve at 30lp/mm is about 50% MTF wide open, and this represents the sharpness at 576x324 resolution. SD is about 40lp/mm at 2/3" and 1080p 2/3" camera is 90lp/mm. The MTF at 90lp/mm will be very poor, even with the variogon stopped down. Other 16mm lenses are not designed for 90lp/mm either so prepare to accept some softness when using cine lenses at this pixel size.
 
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Fast but extremely soft. Practically zero MTF 30lp/mm (about 320 lines per picture height) at the corners at f1.

You can achieve a lot better low light with larger pixels and sharp f1.4 lenses while maintaining usable DOF. And if you can use b&w results, you can see in the dark. B&W sensors are faster than human eyes adjusted to low light,.
 
Hi I'm from Perú. I'm 27 years old, and I am in a very big dilemma.



I have my own small video production business, and I was ready to make a change to more like a digital cinema production here at my country, and was planning to invest about $50,000. Buy a couple of HPX500, or maybe HPX2000 and other hardware and make that big next step.
Suddenly this camera appears, and changed a lot my costs perspectives, and about the same in camera standards and working flow. I'm not a cinema producer, never the less, I've seen the potential in technical perspectives and costs and what you get for what you pay for, is kinda more than good. I was planning to invest in buying two of this cameras, with a couple of monitors, two tripods and 6 memory slots of 80gb. (assuming they are 900 each).
I know for sure that there is no competition with this camera here at my country, even in the most expensive camera rentals.



So my big question is, SHOULD THIS CAMERA BE THE NEW ANSWER TO THE PREVIOUS TECHNICALS LIMITATIONS THAT MONEY BRIGNED. SHOULD I TRUST THIS TO PAY THE 50,000 LOAN I'M MAKING YES OR YES IN DOING THAT BIG NEXT STEP. WILL THIS CAMERA BE THAT ROCK SOLID IN SOFTEWARE AND HARDWARE.


I'm relying on your experienced members to bring an experienced answer.
 
Jonathan-

Save your money and rent gear that you need at clients expense. I find that you rarely have exactly what people want anyways. Unless you have projects lined up to pay for that $50,000 investment, It might be a good idea to hold off to keep your overhead lower.

I am just now about to finish paying off the $40k+ that I have borrowed over the past few years for cameras and take my advice, its not fun having an extra $1500 payment every month and I cant imagine if I would have not had the work to pay it off.

Just think it through before jumping into $50,000 of debt.

If you do have the projects lined up and you want to buy gear now, then wait until 2009 to see what happens with camera gear. There are a lot of new low-cost options on the horizon, the a-cam d2 is just one of them.
 
Hunter.

THANK YOU . I have now a more complete perspective of this case. You are right. It is rarely to find exactly what people want anyways, and i dont have the projects lined up to pay for the $50,000 invesment. i should think twice before doing so.

Dammnit but you are right.


About the new low cost options??? there are only 3 i think isnt it?¿ ACAM DII, SCARLET and the one that Otis Grapsas is doing. 2009 should be a good year for releasing new cameras.

Thank you very much for your help, some times emotions are bigger than thinking.
 
All I can say is, everyone should witness the power of RAW processing for Video. There is nothing that will make your video footage look "filmic" faster than the flexibility and robustness of RAW.
 
Raw is geat. But there are different solutions for differet needs. I don't think my camera or DII competes with a 2/3" camcorder in every use. Processing raw images takes a lot of time and the difference in quality may not be justifiable in some uses. I-frame camcorders give you a large percentage of the quality and minimise the time spent on transfers/processing/etc. For rentals, the high cost of a Sony or Panasonic i-frame camcorder may be justifiable and return a lot of profit really fast.

It would be nice if all jobs were the type that could wait for days until the final editing is made, but some people do need to shoot lots of material and edit really fast. I have experimented with raw cameras a lot. At this time, it's still not practical enough for these uses. It's ok for commercials, music videos. shorts or features because the material is less or sorted out over a longer period of time.

Things will be a lot better in a couple of years though.

For a rental house or production office that needs long corporate interviews, documentaries with tons of material and a short delivery schedule or any commercial applications (events etc), I would recommend a 2/3" camcorder over my camera or any other raw camera (compressed or uncompressed).
 
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So it is true that the Red camera project SCARLETT has been canceled due to new redesign. ( i suppose Ikonoskop has to do something with it ). I bet this new redesign has to do something with the fixed lens.

I think the DII is already making a proper market change. It will be not tu much time till Panasonic and other big companies beging to follow.
 
Jonathan Briceño said:
So it is true that the Red camera project SCARLETT has been canceled due to new redesign. ( i suppose Ikonoskop has to do something with it ). I bet this new redesign has to do something with the fixed lens.

I think the DII is already making a proper market change. It will be not tu much time till Panasonic and other big companies beging to follow.
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The big companies do not really have to respond. They are making money on other segments on the market. You can't put one of the new cameras we are working on on a live tv show or use them for ENG. They do have camcorders in this price range which will look bad in terms of sensor size but they still remain capable tools for production IMHO. I don't think everybody needs uncompressed and lens flexibility. I don't even think the sales of the big camera companies will be affected in sub 10,000 euro range.

These new cameras have their niche. My niche is feature filmmaking at extremely low budgets and I'm focusing on that.
 
In-depth Q&A with the makers

In-depth Q&A with the makers

In an effort to clear up any remaining confusion about the A-cam dII, we have posted a 30-minute discussion with Ikonoskop about the camera. Several of the questions I asked were spotted on this forum and others, hopefully this podcast will further clarify this camera's place in the digital cinema world. http://www.freshdv.com/go/ikon/
 
Thanks for the interview, this clears quite a lot of questions and i'm pleased to hear that they will soon be releasing footage on their website.
 
the look of the RED guy on their booth wasnt really "HAPPY".....I doubt this camera will be the reason for changes announced with scarlet but I am happy to see others jumping into the pool....the race is on and lets hope for many more contenders!
 
timbook2 said:
the look of the RED guy on their booth wasnt really "HAPPY".....I doubt this camera will be the reason for changes announced with scarlet but I am happy to see others jumping into the pool....the race is on and lets hope for many more contenders!
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The interesting thing about this market is that everybody is going to an entirely different direction. The dangerous thing is that almost everybody is copying the practices of large video companies.
 
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