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

pitstain said:
It's quite simple. If there was an EVF on the left side of the camera like nearly all the cameras you site as having xlrs on the right and back - then I would agree with you. Then the xlr's on the left would be in the way.

But this cam does not have an evf there. There is a monitor on the top of the camera, and you can mount an external monitor as well. I suppose one could purposely mount a small hd monitor with an arm and position it directly on top of the xlr's and then say hey everyone look at this? Yes one could certainly do that.
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But assuming that the operator is holding the camera with their right hand (and most do), then the camera is still generally on the right side of the body and the cables are going to be falling across the operators torso.

These things evolved for a reason, it wasn't by accident or coincidence, but through trial and error. Right side cables just made more sense.
 
The Achilles heel of this camera (if it actually ships this quarter of course), will be the offloading mechanism. Having played with the same format on the BMCC, the files are going to take forever to offload. Do people realize this?

30 minutes of BMCC footage (CinemaDNG) took 2 hours (about 500GB) to transfer between two G-RAID (at RAID 0) drives over eSATA.
 
^ I would have guessed a bit over an hour for 500 GB, but twice as much wouldn't surprise me, so yes, that's about right
But I thought BMC was about 5MB per frame, so 30 minutes at 24p should be a bit over 200GB (and DBolex has lower res, it should be about 3.5MB/frame, so 150 GB for 30 minutes of footage that should take between 20 and 40 minutes to offload)
Am I missing something? I haven't played with the BMC, so I certainly could be ommitting something, like huge uncompressed audio streams or something like that
 
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I forgot about the lower res, but yeah. Plus, the Bolex will obvious record the same kind of audio as the BMC I would imagine (uncompressed .WAV or .AIFF), so the only difference will be the smaller frame size. Additionally, USB3 has a "touted" throughput that doesn't reflect accurately in real-world usage. To wit, any multiple transfers make the speed drop heavily. Other thing is that I wouldn't even begin to consider shooting on a BMC with less than a 240GB mag, as we used 120GB and ran out of space really fast, even though I was hardcore about not letting the camera run in between takes. But I would imagine that the CF card will be the space limit for the most part. I just don't see how that's going to be workable.
 
Gary Huff said:
The Achilles heel of this camera (if it actually ships this quarter of course), will be the offloading mechanism. Having played with the same format on the BMCC, the files are going to take forever to offload. Do people realize this?

30 minutes of BMCC footage (CinemaDNG) took 2 hours (about 500GB) to transfer between two G-RAID (at RAID 0) drives over eSATA.
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Welcome to the wonderful world of RAW workflow? On the other hand, I know a lot of people really miss the extended coffee opportunities we used to enjoy in the tape-ingest days.
 
These cameras are so cheap, you could buy a second camera to use while you download the other. Given it has a four hour internal battery, you could use one in the morning and one in the afternoon:-)
 
First thing I will do is transplant the internal electonics to my own chassis & rail system and throw the rest of it in the garbage.
 
I like the D16's looks as well.

The d16's processing software will provide the data wranglers a big green checkmark that confirms the files have been off-loaded successfully by first comparing the transferred file to what is on the cards. This was noted on digital bolex's website on 1/14 post about workflow and software.

Additionally they mentioned this:
A USB 3.0 CF card reader should be able to download a full 128GB cards in under 13 minutes (down to 7 minutes with 1000x cards).
 
starcentral said:
First thing I will do is transplant the internal electonics to my own chassis & rail system and throw the rest of it in the garbage.
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I dunno. It's not *that* bad. The pistol grip is removable which leaves you more or less with a simple box that can be mounted on a tripod/steadicam/rig/whathaveyou. From there I don't see anything that couldn't be resolved with some masking tape and a can of matte black primer.
 
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Things are getting a lot more clearer to me.

D16-evolution.jpg
 
starcentral - can you whip up a quick bmc mock-up with an oversized alarm clock? I'm sure you could become quite busy making "what appliance does this camera remind you of?" photoshops if you really committed yourself to it.
 
pitstain, its pretty obvious you think I have nothing better to do with my time. But how I do like a good photoshop job that makes people laugh. :happy:

bmc-clock.jpg
 
pitstain said:
Additionally they mentioned this:
A USB 3.0 CF card reader should be able to download a full 128GB cards in under 13 minutes (down to 7 minutes with 1000x cards).
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Yeah, I don't buy that. If eSATA to eSATA is not even that fast, how can CF via USB3 be?
 
simonpwood said:
It is a bit...unusual looking. I reckon they should have stuck to their original design and used the textured plastic outer sections (to make it look more like the original Bolex). I guess (and hope) that that was something they just threw together in their garage (you can see the joints in the plastic are not sealed properly and so on) - and not an actual final model.


Still, at least they are moving ahead with it and making progress.
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No plastic, all aluminum alloy and weather sealed. The gaps you see at the back are for the cover door for the CF card slots. That is the first actual completed production prototype in the video, electronics and all, ready to shoot except for firmware tweaks. We may even see some footage in a week or so if things go well.
Joe said they will try to find some prettier screws for the side panels.:smile:
 
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