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

What is wrong with repackaging off the shelf parts, as long as it works and they can deliver. I'm not in a position to buy into vaporware, but I'm keenly interested to follow it and see if it pans out. The technology is working now in the Ikonoskop, and they have shown several workflows for cinemaDNG that seems not ridiculous given current drive prices.

I'd Love to see that Yolk camera come to market, does it have an optical view finder? I love the Aaton form, it is damn sexy. No doubt way beyond any amount of money I could afford.

Anyone who is offended by the notion of using off the shelf parts, I dare you to go build your own, can't be much harder than assembling a PC.
 
Looks like an interesting camera. Please don't include a lens turret. Always hated those on film cameras, they just add more weight to the front, offset the balance and make working with some lenses harder as you have to maneuver around the others.

I also hope the prototype image with the pistol grip is not the final design. Looks off balance coming off the back of the camera like that. Even slanted toward the front. I would personally prefer the pistol grip just screw into the tripod mount near the front, nicely centered between the body and a bigger lens.

Last but not least I would have preferred a b&w EVF over a 2.4" screen. You still have a video tap for a bigger screen and at least then it would be more usable in a variety of lighting conditions while also providing three points of contact with the camera (eye, pistol grip and lens) when shooting handheld.

Other than those things, this camera looks great. The idea of going back to shooting film-style with a nice bulky image to work with in post... sweet. :)

What's the deal with the battery though? is it actually built-in and non-removable? They didn't make that clear.
 
I, personally, agree with you, yolk, and think it would be insane to try to dupe people over that amount of money. But the company and idea seemed to have come out of nowhere... and raised a decent chunk of change with not really that much for potential buyers to go on. So from a skeptic's perspective, which if it stays in a respectable tone is great to have, I can understand that pov. I just don't share it.

I can't... I've got my $ involved now!:grin:
 
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They did an update and said the following:

...
We're really excited to start producing the first 100 cameras, and of course any funding that exceeds our $250,000 goal will go towards designing new mounts and accessories and making the first 100 models as strong as possible. Our Kickstarter camera backers are our ambassadors to the rest of the camera world, so rest assured that we're going to work personally with each one of you to make sure your camera works as promised.
Our manufacturing partners, based in Canada, Iensco (http://digitalcameradesign.com/), are putting together a video update for all of you that we hope will be online by this evening. That should answer some of the questions about everyone's tech background, and will show some of the electronics they're working on for the camera. Check out their website to learn more about the design work they do on really cool niche cameras.
Joe and I offer our eternal gratitude to each and every one of you. Keep on asking questions, and we'll do our best to answer as soon as we can!
Click to expand...

Will this clarify things or dump more blood into the shark infested waters? Stay tuned!
 
@yolk
no man.... :)
and i dont think to use camera with same sensor to show capabilities is unfair...
but be honest dont say its a image from your camera...
they could tell as this is what u get only with internal recording , less money and cool look ...
i think that they put the cart before the horse ....
what i see they are not engineers and they dont know how much is this going to be complicated ...
this project could be postponed indefinitely ...
and i hope i was wrong
 
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Our manufacturing partners, based in Canada, Iensco (http://digitalcameradesign.com/), are putting together a video update for all of you
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One thing that Mr. Rubinstein has going for him is that he is working with two companies, Bolex and Iensco. Bolex is probably mostly helping with the body style. Iensco is taking on most --- or all --- of the internal electronics, although I read somewhere that Rubinstein worked in electrical engineering for five years (correct me if I'm wrong). Basically Rubinstein could just be the designer, calling all the shots, and getting Iensco to make it happen.

Then again I've never heard of a company quite like Iensco, a "digital camera design" company that will work with you to design, develop, and manufacture your camera. Hey, if Rubinstein fails, maybe I'll call up Iensco and put up my own project on kickstarter.com!
 
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I Googled Otis Grapsas just for grins to see how far he has progressed with the DRAMA project. Most recent info on Cinematography.com

" You might have heard of Drama, an uncompressed digital cinema camcorder I have prototyped. In order to take the project further I decided to expand its scope.

The user interface and image development software used for my Drama prototype digital camera system is now fully compatible with any GigE Vision compatible camera head. These cameras are high quality CCD and CMOS heads that connect to a computer using a gigabit ethernet cable and stream fully uncompressed 12bit raw video. They use 12v power and typically support a very wide voltage range. They come with a C-mount lens mount.

These heads come in:

Kodak 2/3" 1080p CCD
Sony 2/3" 1080p CCD
CMOSIS 2/3" 1080p GLOBAL SHUTTER CMOS
Sony 1/3" 720p CCD
A multitude of other sensors for special applications, 4:3 formats for scanning film, very high resolutions, medium format for stills, etc.

System requirements for 1080p 12bit raw capture:

2.8ghz dual core windows xp or later laptop with gigabit ethernet port (every laptop has it these days).
High quality SSD second drive (not the OS one) or a good 2x2.5" raid0 HDD or single SSD drive connected to an existing esata port or through expresscard or expresscard sata adapter. Of course, one can use any SATA system, including 10TB Raid towers.
Any video card will work, intel embedded or anything else.
Any audio input will work but a good USB sound card with preamps is recommended for high quality. The sound is recorded in sync and embedded to the video files. 200 euro will get top quality phantom powered preamps and full monitoring and routing options in this competitive market. USB mixers are also compatible.

The cost of such a laptop including 1000gb eSATA HDD RAID0 storage for hours of 1920x1080/24p/12bit RAW recording is about 1,000 euro. The datarate for 1080p/24 12bit RAW is 600mbits/sec.

Monitoring is provided on the laptop screen in a similar fashion to a tethered SI-2K mini. A small external VGA monitor can be used or course and it can also be touchscreen. The user interace is identical to that of my digital cinema camera prototypes. Fast, friendly and cinematography oriented with full camera control, transport and powerful non destructive metadata manipulation. It is designed for touchscreen operation but a mouse can also be used. A good 8" LED monitor with USB touchscreen is about 200 euro. It's more practical and the laptop can have its lid closed.

The estimated cost for a Drama software and camera head package is from 2,000 to 5,000 euro depending on the camera head chosen. That includes OLPF installation to the head.

An upgrade to the Drama portable system enclosure which is a small rugged PC, it's very low noise, it uses internal HDD/SSD storage, has multiple monitoring outputs, Anton Bauer battery support, aux power outputs, industrial quality connectors etc will be available for an approximate 3,000 euro.

Everything about the system is open, upgradable and available on the open market from multiple vendors. Even the camera heads. No vendor specific media, monitoring, interfacing etc.

An upgrade to a future sensor will cost approximatelty 1,000 to 3,000 euro and will be a drop-in replacement. There is a lot of development effort from Sony, CMOSIS, Kodak and others, especially in the CMOS department. The old camera head can be sold to the astronomy enthusiast community to further reduce upgrade cost, traded in or used with a new license of Drama software to form a second camera system.

The system includes full functionality of the Drama Digital Cinema software. Image and video proxy or full quality batch output, the Drama color processing and dynamic look up tables, metadata, film emulation, color control, real time color preview etc. It massively improves the image quality of any machine vision head, because it includes 6 key calibration technologies unique to the Drama software and targeted to the specifics of each individual sensor. These technologies improve the RAW level performance of the camera heads. The camera heads will be individually calibrated using Drama calibration software for optimum performance after the OLPF filter is added. Even though the machine vision camera heads are high quality designs, the vendor processing quality varies depending on their intellectual property investment and skill. Drama solves this problem by complementing or replacing it with processing provided by the Drama software.

2/3" C-mount prime lenses with 5megapixel spec, low distortion and large apertures are 200 to 300 euro each.

So, it is:

1,000 for a laptop including 1,000GB eSATA storage.
2,000 to 5,000 for Drama software, a camera head, OLPF installation and calibration.

A maximum of 6,000 euro for a complete laptop based system including lots of storage.

Optionally, 3,000 euro upgrade for a Drama deck if you decide to upgrade from the laptop to a full system.

DIY systems are fully compatible of course, as long as they use Windows and the specs are right. For about 1,500 euro one can put together a system that is smaller, more practical than a laptop, has internal storage and uses Anton bauer batteries.
This post has been edited by Otis Grapsas: 28 April 2011 - 12:32 AM "
 
there is HD-SDI box in the horizon for the camera that goes underneath it. This would be perfect life saver for those who are lazy, can't deal with Raw because budget restrictions...etc
Hyperdeck/Samurai + D16=yummy
 
Berk said:
there is HD-SDI box in the horizon for the camera that goes underneath it. This would be perfect life saver for those who are lazy, can't deal with Raw because budget restrictions...etc
Hyperdeck/Samurai + D16=yummy
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Then it's a roughly $6-7K camera. Not all that attractive at that price -- certainly more expensive than an AF100 or FS100.
 
Berk said:
there is HD-SDI box in the horizon for the camera that goes underneath it. This would be perfect life saver for those who are lazy, can't deal with Raw because budget restrictions...etc
Hyperdeck/Samurai + D16=yummy
Click to expand...

Why would you take a RAW image and compress it before manipulating the raw data? If you are so lazy that you can't take the time to 'develop' the RAW data, you would be infinitely more wise to simply use a video camera where you can really dial in the look in the camera. Then you can go straight to Samurai to get a bit more uncompressed video via a higher bitrate, assuming it's a higher bitrate over the internal recording method.

Recording an HD-SDI signal from a RAW camera chip to a deck that compresses it into a codec, is the anti-thesis of RAW workflow. Unless the raw look is the exact look you want, you are really shooting yourself in the foot.
 
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Tzedekh said:
Then it's a roughly $6-7K camera. Not all that attractive at that price -- certainly more expensive than an AF100 or FS100.
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Seems like no matter how you cut it, $7k range minimum is where a practical full featured decent quality production camera falls with current technologies. Dollar for dollar I would take raw over video any day for personal creative work. But then I grew up shooting film, not video.
 
Razz16mm said:
Seems like no matter how you cut it, $7k range minimum is where a practical full featured decent quality production camera falls with current technologies. Dollar for dollar I would take raw over video any day for personal creative work. But then I grew up shooting film, not video.
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My point is that the Digital Bolex is a comparatively bare-bones camera, hardly a full-featured camera, even with the price-doubling HD-SDI module. The built-in LCD is tiny and low-res. Aside from the one feature, raw output, the FS100 or AF100 would be better equipped, for less.
 
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vladszp said:
i m done with this...
im not bickering ...
all i see that they use industrial camera without any modification...
recode image as anybody else who will buy gx2300.. ...
than use that image as commercial for their camera ...
and i bet that external design is only thing that they get
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The whole thing doesn´t make sense, a GXC2300 is about §5000.

I doubt, that they take a $5000 camera, build a fancy housing around it and the electronics for buffer and card recording, plus a monitor and sell the whole shebang for just 2.5 or 3 grand.

just saying,

Frank
 
Since every pro player on the field has some sort of external recorder now that combo would be very attractive. As For Hyperdeck+HD it would cost you $550. I don't know how you came up with $6-7K.
Please i am not after raw versus codecs on the recorders. I just pointed for the fun.
 
@Postmaste
off course they don't ... they use GXC2300 as test prototype ... similar tech ....
remove Gigabit link...
3-axis Motorized lens controls...
Video auto-iris ....
Single or dual Ethernet port operation ....
Auto Exposure....
Auto Gain....
Auto White balance....
Asynchronous external trigger and sync I/O ...
Region of Interest readout ....
and we are getting close
wow i just realize this Little thing is quite powerful
 
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Berk said:
Since every pro player on the field has some sort of external recorder now that combo would be very attractive. As For Hyperdeck+HD it would cost you $550. I don't know how you came up with $6-7K.
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A deck could be $1 or it could be a $10,000, when talking about a raw camera, it doesn't matter.

That combo is not attractive compared any method that actually utilizes the benefit of RAW data. Those cameras which use decks (F3, AF100) are not RAW, so you are actually improving compression by using those decks in the circumstances where deck compression < internal compression. However using low compression decks on a RAW only camera chip would be doing yourself a disservice, as you have introduced a compression to the footage before you have manipulated it (developed it) to have the look you want. Manipulation of data is always best when RAW.

Am I wrong?
 
Berk said:
Since every pro player on the field has some sort of external recorder now that combo would be very attractive. As For Hyperdeck+HD it would cost you $550. I don't know how you came up with $6-7K.
Please i am not after raw versus codecs on the recorders. I just pointed for the fun.
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The $6-7K comes from Elle Schneider's comment, "We're working on an HDSDI unit that will attach to the bottom of the camera. We couldn't include it in the initial camera because it would double the cost. The HDSDI ports are crazy expensive, we were talking to the guys at Canon about it yesterday." Double $3-3.5K is $6-7K.
 
"320×240, 2.4” diagonal, with Focus Assist"

I guess you'll have to use a loupe to really nail focus if you're not going to spend serious dollars on an SDI breakout box. I wonder if HDMI would have been cheaper? May not be as sexy as SDI, but at least then I could use an external monitor out of the box...

Any word on how much the EF mount will be and if you'll be able to control iris electronicly? If that's not too much money I may have found my next camera.

I ain't scared of no steenking light meter...
 
I find Otis's proposal attractive. Micro ITX LGA1155 PC with a PCI audio capture card, HDMI out off the Intel built in graphics to an EVF and a couple of internal SSD's with a small USB touch screen for camera operation back ending his camera head and software package all in a small custom enclosure with a V-lock battery mount. Sweet.
 
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