Bolex D16: RAW, 16/Super 16 sensor size, costs less than MkIII

Something feels wrong about this company and endeavor. Is this even a legal use of the name? I don't think Bolex is doing a $100k KS just to make a camera for $2,500
 
hmm. hope they licensed the name from bolex switzerland, otherwise this project will be shut down in no time.

EDIT: after listening to p. bloom's interview it seems bolex int. allows the branding
 
Last edited:
Something feels wrong about this company and endeavor. Is this even a legal use of the name? I don't think Bolex is doing a $100k KS just to make a camera for $2,500
That's exactly what I thought when I started to read the OP. Too many question marks.
If the Bolex factory in Switzerland was to start producing a RAW camera, I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere near this price range.
 
Firstly I have to say I am a long time still shooter, and have only a passing familiarity with Bolex. However, I have to agree with the others that something didn't seem right about this. In fact I wondered if it was a spoof at first. Just out of interest I Googled Bolex, and found that the Swiss company is still going strong, and there is no mention of this at all. They are still apparently making and servicing 16mm film cameras.
http://www.bolex.ch/NEW/index.php
 
Firstly I have to say I am a long time still shooter, and have only a passing familiarity with Bolex. However, I have to agree with the others that something didn't seem right about this. In fact I wondered if it was a spoof at first. Just out of interest I Googled Bolex, and found that the Swiss company is still going strong, and there is no mention of this at all. They are still apparently making and servicing 16mm film cameras.
http://www.bolex.ch/NEW/index.php

A quick edit. @underpressure, I see our posts crossed over. I'll take PB's word for it and I was just going by there was no mention of it on the Swiss Bolex company's website.
 
this excites me more than the 5D mkIII.
sure its not great in lowlight but i dont shoot 25,000ISO :P
now i have to see some more footages to get convinced.

waaiit. i cant see an output for monitoring footages... well i hope theres more to see from this cam than just specs...
 
Last edited:
that camera use KAI-04050 kodak sensor . its a bigger version of the sensor from a cam dll .
for 1/3 of the price.
great....
 
Personally I really hope this project succeeds. Fed up with the incremental slow ticking high margin strategy of the big camera camera company. But I did not like the image, the highlight clipping is just not good (I mean more than that but I want it to succeed) all the contrary of film. I would have given up a bit on rolling shutter for a big DR and low light cmos camera if need be. Perhaps their aim was to get really the run and gun type of camera and rolling shutter would have been an issue. But the image will really blow out in less controlled environment.

Another thing I always see, is that many people attribute like a magic word to RAW. Being a 6 years raw photographer, I can tell you that it is like a container/word that all depends on the sensor. I have started with a Nikon D70 and I can tell you that I would prefer to work my actual d300 jpeg (and soon to be d800) than with the d70 raw. So just don't think that because it is raw you can get push it 1, 2 or more stop, I could not work beyond 400 with my d70.
 
Did you see and play with RAW files out of this camera?

Well, until then you can't really comment on highlight clipping can you? You could expose for highlights and bring shadows back in post much more effective with 12bit 4:4:4 then you can with fragile DSLR footage.

We can't make final judgements on image quality just yet...
 
About raw, what danielvilliers and manakiin (both) said is true: It's not a magic solution to every problem, but we will have to wait and see
 
that sensor can give more than 11 stop of DR . its ccd so there is no rolling shutter and snr of ccd is always better than cmos. native iso of kodak sensor is 330 so if u put middle gray on 40% same as alexa its abot 600 iso.
test from a-cam show u can go pump 6 db and there is no noise.
i think they chose that look as a style of '70s movies
 
If it's anything like Ikonoskop A-cam DII IQ (possibly even better)... Well, that is good enough for me. And I really like how it renders motion being global shutter and CCD colours have a nice analog feeling to them.

This cam has better specs then A-cam, will be much more user-friendly and fun to use (USB 3.0, CF, XLR, etc...), and will be offered (I hope) for a fraction of what it costs.

I am so excited about this cam and I hope it does come to life with promissed specs/price.
 
i ask for a price of sensor and its 350$ . rest of parts are probably off the shelf . cinema dng is open standard.
so camera price makes sense .
 
Why does the Ikonoskop footage look so much better? (imo)

I hope they plan to release more examples of what it can do soon.
 
This is totally what I've been waiting for!
I hope they can make enough of em to keep up with demand.
I hope this puts pressure on the big companies to speed up their codec rollout schedules or whatever they have going on, as well as do something about rolling shutter.
I wonder if ikonoskop will adjust their price? They probably don't have to, after all it does have timecode, sdi out and a viewfinder.
 
Why does the Ikonoskop footage look so much better? (imo)

What exactly looks so much better in your opinion?

You can't tell much if anything from this footage. It's graded and shot to what they wanted but it doesn't give you much info about RAW footage and what it will look like.

The deal with RAW is that you are the one that decides how it will look, there is no baked-in look.
 
Back
Top