Chinese 2K RAW S35 Cinema Camera, 8000 dollars

Its a sub-PL mount. I would have preferred a sub-BNC mount, but it works for many of the lenses needed, you see the Eyemo lens with a FFD of only 1.5" is out in the open and not in a hole like it would be in normal PL, likewise if you make an Arri Standard lens adapter the focus ears would be out where you can get to them.

Also if you have several lens adapters you can leave them on the lenses, and swap lenses like using PL lenses, but the FFD would be pre-adjusted using shims etc. so the lens focus would be repeatable.

I think their PL mount has FFD adjustment, you can ask, I told them I did not need it since I do not have any PL lenses, but I did need to make the OCT-19 and other adapters, so the had CNC machine some aluminum "PL-GEN" for general mount parts, and I turned and drilled those as making the PL ears would take me too much time, so they may have those for sale so people can mount whatever that want that will fit.

They say the production camera will have the mount closer to the sensor, so even more lens types can be mounted for quick swap on the sub-PL on the body.
 
You can email them and say so, they took the comments on the first S35 prototype and worked on making improvements, I think its a nice usable camera shape now and easy to pack around with the top handle.

There are several tripod holes in the bottom with both 3/8-16 and 1/4-20 holes.

I can pick up the whole matte box, follow focus and camera thing in the photo by the top handle as the camera has an all metal shell and internal frame that seems to be able to take the load.

The power is by the 4pin XLR in the back, I'm using a 13.8v lead gel 12AH battery that seems to run it for at least four hours, I only had it force power down once so far when the volt meter on the battery box got down to about 8v to 7.5v, so that was a surprised that it could run with that much drop, I don't know what the rated specs are but that seemed to be the auto-shut down limit.

To avoid using a separate battery for the monitor I made a Y cable and so I can plug the monitor into the same cable as the camera power and just use one gel battery.
 
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Thanks for the complements, you can feel free to email them at the address on their Kinefinity.com (sm) web site and I am sure they would enjoy hearing the positive reviews of the new case configuration.

The buttons seems to work well, and most of the menus pick using the encoder knob that has positive clicks to make the selections. There is a graphical interface that pops up when you press the buttons and goes away when you push the encoder knob in to contact its internal switch, that tells the camera what your selection is.

Most of the common settings come up with the buttons marked for shutter angle, look group, and ISO etc. The less used commands are in the menus you get using the small round button marked for "config" under the encoder. In there are the guide lines and monitor adjustments, and monitor setup test patterns etc.
 
Wow, this camera is coming along really well. It has this nice modern/vintage feel to it. Keep it up. Thanks for sharing Dan.
 
Thanks for the comments, be sure to email Kinefinity.com (sm) and let then know your thoughts also.

I was out shooting some daylight footage and the tonal range from deep shadow to bright light is great even looking at the ungraded Cineform (tm) version on my Brother's 2K monitor. Set the Cineform (tm) codec control on the task-bar to the high sharpen and quality setting, the bi-linear is quite soft but has better motion. His 8 core computer is not fast enough to give smooth motion at the best quality maximum sharpen setting, yours may do better though.

I shot several types of things:

1) Half sun and shade

2) Full shade with Sky in the same shot

3) Random people with various skin types in different shots

4) Hand held and on the tri-pod

5) 14.5mm, 22mm, 35mm, 75mm, and 150mm

I am uploading those Cineform (tm) clips to Kinefinity.com (sm) now so they can share them with people that are interested in trying to grade some shots made in the camera. The 3D-LUT will give a one light grade, but I exposed some shots higher or lower by about a stop to avoid clipping or noise with the intention to have those shots graded to bring more out in the highlights or shadows than is visible in the automatic CC done by the 3D-LUT in the Cineform (tm) codec, so plan on needing to grade some of those clips if the are shared.

It will take a few more days to upload them, they are going at 22KB/s and as low as 6KB/s depending on the time of day. Don't ask me for the Cineform (tm) they need to be cleared by Kinefinity.com (sm) and sent out from their share site.

I sent them the G1 video for Vimeo, but they did not approve it yet, if its approved I'll upload that to Vimeo, its shot S35 and shows various gradings and the raw sensor balance and level as recorded CinemaDNG (tm).

I have still BMP uncompressed from the E1 and F1 Vimeo videos I posted if anyone is interested they can email me about that.
 
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vincent thomas said:
Do we know When they expect it to release a production version?
Click to expand...

You have to email them about that, I making some more monitoring tables for the KineRAW-S35 (tm) today to maybe shoot some more shots in the next days.

The S35 camera you see in the photos I posted with the OCT-19 adapter and 150mm lens will be the general look of the first production run as far as I know, its in field testing now they are making some changes to the firmware, the user interface on the KineRAW-S8p (tm) was somewhat different, so they need to revise what button does what and how the menus look, the S35 has a more advanced interface and the encoder to select items in the menus.

Your best bet is to email them and ask for their estimate. I'm trying to make some monitoring tables that are close to calibrated to be available to users of the S35 when it ships, and they are emailing me about getting that done, so sales in China seem impending, unless some unexpected delay is encountered maybe.

They are asking me to make them in 1/3 stop increments, so that's a bunch of calibrations to shoot and hand balance on many points, but it does show they are serious about shipping before too much longer, maybe.
 
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I posted the KineRAW-S35 (tm) video #G1 on Vimeo, here is the link,

https://vimeo.com/45595673


You can contact Kinefinity.com (sm) directly for many more shots with additional ones in the pipeline as Cineform (tm) *.mov files in their camera original form, without double or triple compression losses hat may be caused by uploading to Vimeo.

I have over 250GB of footage to edit and process to make additional videos when I have time.

If you would like some uncompressed BMP frames from my videos A2 through G1 you can email me directly at: tempnulbox [at] yahoo [dot] com with "DVXuser user wants uncompressed frames" in the subject line.
 
I'm very interested in this camera. Really want to see production models etc and more test. I think I'm going to email for some frames. The cameras' specs are great but it's all about the image.
 
KineRAW-S35 (tm) test image from shoot a few days ago...

KineRAW-S35 (tm) test image from shoot a few days ago...

MoeGunz said:
I'm very interested in this camera. Really want to see production models etc and more test. I think I'm going to email for some frames. The cameras' specs are great but it's all about the image.
Click to expand...

Attached are two half size versions of a frame shot a few days ago, processed in XNVIEW (tm) from the CinemaDNG frames recorded while the camera was using 2048x1080 shooting mode and recording in Both Cineform (tm) and CinemaDNG (tm) modes at the same time, with two sharpen settings.

Many of the MOV Cineform (tm) camera clips were sent to Kinefinity.com (sm) so they could forward them with the associated 3D-LUT to people that are interested in the Cineform (tm) workflow, so you can contact them for footage samples in the camera original Cineform (tm) *.mov file format.

I plan on processing the CinemaDNG (tm) frames in my "freeish" DI system to get an uncompressed master edited and graded frame set, then to make another Vimeo video from that to stream.

The white T-shirt looks a bit hot in this focus test conversion (not done finish mode in my software), in part because I think XNVIEW (tm) uses the Adobe (tm) SDK de-Bayer code for DNG frames and that applies some AGC that clips the highlights a bit maybe, I will have to look at the DNG data in my software to see if it really is clipped from slight over exposure. I was exposing lighter than I would for just use in my programs because people looking at the Cineform (tm) want a "graded" looking "one light" workprint, but for my own use, I would go half a stop lower to hold the highlights better and then pull the shadows up in grading, so don't make a big deal out of the minor issues in this quick focus check conversion I made when I go back to see how the lens used was working out at 2K S35.

I have to make more monitoring tables and those will make different 3D-LUT for playback of the Cineform (tm) so I can extend the highlight detail quite a bit more, although some de-noise in post may be wanted if mid-tone drops down on the actual sensor raw exposure level, it all depends on the de-Bayer software you use and how you apply the anti-OLPF sharpen to the frames, and the subject matter and contrast ratio of the lighting when you were shooting, etc. You just need to gain experience with the camera and know how your work-flow and post tools can handle the image being pushed around to get the exposure right for each subject and lighting situation, something I'm still learning on since this was just the second time I went out to shoot anything with this camera and "look" file being used...

Keep in mind that these samples are half size, the 2048x1080 viewed on a 2K monitor from uncompressed BMP or TIF show more detail, but to show anything here, massive compression losses are introduced, but it gives you some idea of the image tones. In case you are wondering why there are two samples here, one was over-sharpened to try to compensate for some of the JPG losses.

XNVIEW_quick_test_Alvin_KineRAW-S35_150mm_LOMO_JULY_10_1a_half_size_1.jpgXNVIEW_quick_test_Alvin_KineRAW-S35_150mm_LOMO_JULY_10_1a_half_size_2.jpg
 
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I like the texture and color qualities you are getting from these cameras a lot Dan. Keep up the good work. Is it possible to get some DNG raw frames to play with?
 
Quote: [I like the texture and color qualities you are getting from these cameras a lot Dan. Keep up the good work. Is it possible to get some DNG raw frames to play with?]

Yes its lovely in the 2K size uncompressed.

I have the DNG tags for color balance close to right, although its set desaturated so that the saturation can be brought up in post, if the DNG tags for that are set too saturated with the flat contrast, then the chroma will clip when people grade the images to a higher contrast around mid-tone.

Right now the code in the camera that does the FPN masking is being worked on, I am doing the FPN masking in my own code so it does not matter there, but if you were to process the CinemDNG (tm) frames in another program some FPN might show, and it would not be fair to the camera's team to let out things that are not quite finished yet. By definition DNG do not allow for FPN masking in the Adobe (tm) SDK, the camera is prescribed to do that as far as I can tell, so that's one of the last things being worked on, as you can see in the samples shot its getting close to being something.

I got another firmware update with some improvements to the black level calibration across a wide ISO range, ISO 10240 is getting better all the time, I was thinking about some changes I might make from my end to get to ISO 40960. Even with just 10240 I put a T/2.3 Cooke Speed Panchro Series II 32mm on the camera and turned off all the lights except for some sunlight leaking in around a corner and the image on the monitor was many times brighter than what the camera was pointed at, its like a night vision device sort of, can't wait to shoot some night stuff with our 50mm f/1.1 movie camera lens to see what the usable noise level is. I know from processing the KineRAW-S8p (tm) footage that "ants crawling on the viewfinder screen" from high gain settings don't mean the footage will necessary even show any major noise after de-noise processing from the full raw data because you can cancel the positive noise peaks with negative ones to some extent, and apply temporal noise reduction. Its just better to lock the camera off at higher ISO since you know you will have to have the de-noise set to maximum and it works better with the background not moving. There is a minimum S/N rato that you cannot recover footage from, but what that is in the S35 I have not figured out yet in part because changes to the firmware make the innate results better and better as the sensor circuits are 'tuned' up.

Kinefinity.com (sm) will probably have some sample DNG at some point to share, right now they do have some Cineform (tm) to share, and those have FPN masking and the 3D-LUT are more or less calibrated to the in camera monitoring, so I would suggest that you contact them about getting the Cineform (tm) shots, the one the frame above is from is part of the group of samples I am sending them, they should have all of those in the next week, so once they get them uploaded to their share site, they may be able to give you the link to those samples from that shoot.
 
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Thanks for the frame grabs. I contacted Kinefinity directly and they sent me some KineRAW S35 footage. I downloaded cineform decoder and the footage imports to Adobe Premiere CS6 without any issues. For each clip I'm having 4 versions. One normal, one with the lut applied, another with Misfire post contrast, and one totally grade by me.

Loving the footage and I'll keep in touch with Kinefinity and Dan. Once I have the footage with the various grades, I'll send them to kinfinity. Maybe they'll use them for something. Grading is very easy with this footage.
 
Thanks for the feedback.

I'm still uploading the Alvin footage from a few days ago, its about 1/3 uploaded so some more days.

Both the Alvin footage and the Palace of Fine Arts footage were shot with the same monitoring "look" so you should be able to inter-cut them and the color should still balance without too much grading.

Some of the high contrast lighting shots I would pull up the mid shadows a bit and increase the saturation, but as you say, its just some simple curve adjustments, not needing traveling mattes and such.

Both the Cineform (tm) and CinemaDNG (tm) have the advantage of no block artifacts that H.264 cameras may show that get "amplified" in grading, and the Cineform (tm) and CinemaDNG (tm) have more that 8 bits (12 bits for the CinemaDNG (tm)) so you get fewer histogram gaps and banding issues.

I hope to shoot some night shots before too long, and forward the Cineform (tm) back to Kinefinity.com (sm) to share with interested people. I was making some "look" files for the KineRAW-S35 (tm) today and have film log (Cineon (tm)) output (like a 35mm film scan type DPX file) working from EI ISO 80 all the way up to 81920!

Yes at EI ISO 81920 there is grain, but what would Vision III T500 (tm) look like pushed to EI ISO 81920? EI IS0 1280 looks good and has 4 stops head room above 90% white so the zebras hardly show at all as I look for checking, it fills the Kodak Cineon (tm) film scanner range of 95/1023 to 1023/1023 at ISO 1280, so its got the full range of a 35mm color negative scan more or less, 90 points per T/ stop or (1023-95)/90 = 10.3 stops more or less, their is some extra in the toe curve at the bottom under ~2% black, I could make out the bottom of a metal can I have painted black in side as a black reference, when shooting that looks like "blacker-than-black" because the black inside the can is in shadow from the camera's point of view so KineRAW-S35 (tm) capturing a wide range (I would not argue about the number of stops past 10.3, in tests I counted more but its subjective because the lower stops are mixed with noise so what is usable depends on how you process the footage and de-noise it, but you can measure more than you would think possible based on the 12bit recording and I'll leave it at that for now), I don't know if I shot those tests on film if the grain in the deep shadows would be worse with Vision III but, after scanning and grading I'm doubtful the difference between KineRAW-S35 (tm) and Vision III T500 (tm) both processed at EI ISO 1280 would matter much on the movie screen, perhaps. It would be an interesting test to shoot.
 
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More Cineform (tm) Sample footage from KineRAW-S35 (tm)

More Cineform (tm) Sample footage from KineRAW-S35 (tm)

Kinefinity.com (sm) has posted some of the sample footage I have sent to them, I'm not sure which clips these are, but I guess they picked the ones they think look good. I had hoped that would post ALL of them so you can see various over and under exposed clips so you can try grading the results to pull out more detail from the high bit depth recordings. These are Cineform (tm) wavelet compressed clips, although Cineform (tm) does not show the ghastly block artifacts that H.264 can in HDSLR footage, it is still compressed like RED (tm)'s REDCODE (tm) which also used wavelets, although Kinefinity.com (sm) is implementing the wavelet compression in a special way to maximize the image quality and to reduce the destructive effects of wavelet compression so you can see when you play the Cineform (tm) on your 2K monitor 1:1 pixel with the Cineform (tm) de-coder set to maximum quality and sharpness that the results are stunning.

Here is what Kinefinity.com (sm) sent to me:

Quote: [You may post it on forum with Lens information if he agrees.


http://download.kinefinity.com/download/ALVIN-0001-099-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/ALVIN-0001-112-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/ALVIN-0001-121-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PARK-0001-023-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PARK-0001-028-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PARK-0001-071-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PARK-0001-094-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/XD48K04M.look

All these are cineform mov clips shot on KineRAW-S35, and need to install Cineform decoder on your PC or MAC to playback, Cineform Decoder download link:



http://cineform.com/gopro-cineform-decoder
]

Quote: [When you post the download info, please add following:


When downloading the files, Attention that the server has limited connections, so please download one file at one time.

]

If you have any problems with downloading please contact Kinefinity.com (sm) directly so that you can get instructions direct from them, if they want me to post their instructions here for people interested, they can email those to me with that request.

I am not involved in distributing the Cineform (tm) as it has nothing to do with my "freeish" DI systems CinemaDNG (tm) support. I exposed these clips hotter than I would have for my CinemDNG (tm) processing since I knew that people would want to look at the Cineform (tm) copies because those will play on their MAC or PC in real time, well sort of it stutters a bit on my Brother's 8 core PC, but it does look nice on his 2K CRT monitor with the room lights off. If you have a LCD monitor you may not be able to see the highlights and shadow detail as well as on a CRT monitor. The output of the 3D-LUT here is programed for full range, I am working on Rec.709 output range ITU 601 limited at 16-235 which will take some camera firmware revisions.

I got the camera's EI ISO up to 81920 with some adjustments to the monitoring tables (which control some sensor adjustments also) although it shows grain, I might be able to process the CinemaDNG (tm) to reduce the grain, I know in the KineRAW-S8p (tm) noise on the monitor can be filtered down in the final results with various filters and temporal noise reduction, so it may be good at that speed for like making SD documentary etc. past that time will tell, the results get better with the advances in firmware revision. Even 5120 looks quite usable now, and 1280 probably a good speed for general use depending on your work-flow, camera movement, end format, and if you use temporal noise reduction or not etc. Its always a issue to compress noise, so there may be some differences in the results processing the Cineform (tm) vs. the CinemaDNG (tm) as the EI ISO increases.

I am still uploading the Alvin at the windmills footage, it will be several more days, as the connection breaks and has to re-start over and over before the files get uploaded sometimes. The Palace of Fine Arts footage is uploaded and they should be able to give those out as well. These are just my personal tests to check my lenses out with the OLPF for issues.

If you want to thank Alvin for his help in modeling and acting for these tests you can contact him through his facebook and Vimeo pages, if you would like him to be in one of your films I think he has some free time this summer so be sure to talk to him about that.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alvin-Somwaru/172457242810289?ref=hl

I guess he liked the frame from the KineRAW-S35 (tm), he made it his facebook icon...

There just seems to be a link to the *.look file above, I'm not sure if you need the *.cube file and the other *.look file to play back, if you do not see the color right, ask them for all three 3D-LUT file, I sent them in a *.7z file I think so they should have them.
 
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Updated links to sample KineRAW-S35 (tm) Cineform (tm) MOV

Updated links to sample KineRAW-S35 (tm) Cineform (tm) MOV

Quote:[ Here are more Cineform RAW clips shot on KineRAW-S35; we would like to
share with you.

http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PRJ-0001-011-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/ALVIN-0001-099-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/ALVIN-0001-112-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/ALVIN-0001-121-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PARK-0001-023-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PARK-0001-028-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PARK-0001-071-A1.mov
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/PARK-0001-094-A1.mov

When downloading the files, Attention that the server has limited
connections, so please download one file at one time.

Cineform Firstlight/Davinci Resolve/Speedgrade/Scratch could be used
for grading/rendering. May use the Cineform decoder
settings-->Demosaic Type-->advanced details to make image look
sharper.

Need to install Cineform decoder on your PC or MAC to playback,
Cineform Decoder download link:
http://cineform.com/gopro-cineform-decoder

]

You will also need to drag and drop the 3D-LUTs onto the Cineform (tm) LUT tool in the Cineform (tm) program folder,

http://download.kinefinity.com/download/XD48K04M.cube
http://download.kinefinity.com/download/XD48K04M.look

The 3D-LUT are mated to the ISO and K value used when shooting so need to be installed for the clips above to play with the right "one light" color correction, the look group used is intended for having the shots graded, so graded results would look better. Various monitoring LUT can be loaded into the camera and selected with the encoder knob from a quick button menu labeled "look", and depending on which "look" is selected the camera makes a corresponding 3D-LUT in each shot folder, in this case the same "look" was used for all my test shots so far, that are linked to above for those MOV files.
 
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Dan Chung Video Interview on the Kineraw S35

Dan Chung Video Interview on the Kineraw S35

Dan Chung interview video on the Kineraw S35.

They mention its going to be around 6,000 US.

 
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