Digital Bolex weeks away

I normally refrain from posts that poo-poo imagery (taste being such a subjective thing), but egads, that was an uncharitable grade of some rather pleasing (though limited) footage.

snowblindfilm said:
Here is a short clip on youtube filmed by Phillip Bloom:
Here is a link to graded version:
I just don't know why people keep insisting on mudding a perfectly good footage with "grain". To my eye looks like cheap video shot on DVX100 in low light. It doesn't look like film at all, looks like a bunch of electronic noise of underexposed CCD. So far I haven't seen a shred of footage that made me want to own this camera. I was really hoping to buy D-16, have a pretty good selection of S16 glass, but picture quality so far looks very uninteresting and video like. What also catches my eye is completely blown highlights of the window. I though with RAW you could avoid that. It really doesn't look any better then any DSLR footage.
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Nice

Nice

In the right hands ... this camera looks great. I know that Digital Bolex has caught a lot of criticism for taking this long to come out with the camera, but it looks like they have a winner. I always loved the Kodak chip, but thought that the Ikonoskop was just WAY overpriced. I'm impressed.

Razz16mm said:
Some more from Philip Bloom.

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I love the cinematic quality I'm seeing of most of the samples from the camera.

But: either something this shooter is doing, or something the camera is doing, makes those clipped highlights very worrisome. I wonder if that's avoidable for most shooting scenarios? The roll-off seems insanely bad when it gets a few stops above peg...

I wish I had one of my own to play around with, but I'm really eager to see someone shoot indoors using only natural daylight (just shaping and bounce and such for augmentation). Hopefully highlights would feel more natural like that?
 
oneonetwothree said:
I love the cinematic quality I'm seeing of most of the samples from the camera.

But: either something this shooter is doing, or something the camera is doing, makes those clipped highlights very worrisome. I wonder if that's avoidable for most shooting scenarios? The roll-off seems insanely bad when it gets a few stops above peg...

I wish I had one of my own to play around with, but I'm really eager to see someone shoot indoors using only natural daylight (just shaping and bounce and such for augmentation). Hopefully highlights would feel more natural like that?
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Peter's doc was shot pretty much cinema verite style with only a small LED panel for interior fill for closeups. Total scene dr from interior shadows to exterior highlights is easily in the 17 stop range. He mentioned the split by the meter, meaning middle gray exterior to middle gray interior, was 7 stops. Pretty difficult conditions for any camera.
 
Lot of focus hunting and shaky footage, honestly I can't believe they could not set up a simple tripod. None of the shots (again) were any better in comparison to what Pocket Cinema can produce.
 
Most of the footage I've seen looks really soft, and a bit artificial. I mean maybe I've seen 16mm stuff look that soft, but I've seen a lot that looks way better too. Is it the Viemo compression? Disappointing so far, anyway, but maybe someone out there can get it to work. Does the Ikon camera look the same as this one?
 
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Today 02:40 AM
Most of the footage I've seen looks really soft, and a bit artificial. I mean maybe I've seen 16mm stuff look that soft, but I've seen a lot that looks way better too. Is it the Viemo compression? Disappointing so far, anyway, but maybe someone out there can get it to work. Does the Ikon camera look the same as this one?​






The Ikonoskop and the Digital Bolex both have Truesense (Kodak) CCD sensors though the DB's is a newer version. I can only comment on the image from the Ikonoskop since I own one but highlights on these sensors clip fast and hard and you have to learn to expose with this in mind and be aware of what you can pull from the image in post without introducing too much noise. These cameras that shoot RAW DNGs often seem disappointing to people in initial testing simply because there are so many decisions that the operator or colorist must make in post that determine the final image.

There are a lot of great S16 lenses out there but the ones that I would shoot with are for the most part PL mount, not a fan of some of these old C-mount lenses that may instead of imparting a vintage look that people are going for just look flawed to the modern eye.

If this bakery piece was posted as simply testing the camera out and not as a documentary then I wouldn't comment on the production value but I think like all cameras the DB will need either steadier hands or a tripod/monopod or a rig. A monopod would have done wonders for this piece as the micro jitters lowers the viewing experience so much that its distracting and I say this as someone who carried my Ikonoskop through the Congo with only a monopod and it makes shooting fly on the wall intimate footage so much easier.
 
Samuel H said:
it can be because of the lenses
many S16 lenses are kind of soft
scroll to the end of this
http://www.similaar.com/foto/pocket-lenstests/bmpcc.html
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True premium S16mm cine lenses are very sharp, sharper than most 35mm glass, as are some of the modern high resolution industrial lenses. There is a bewildering array of older C-mount glass made for SD TV cameras that is not very sharp at all though. Where older lenses don't hold up so well is in color contrast. They will typically look a bit milky unless filtered and shaded appropriately.

The D16 footage will look soft if not sharpened in post. But you can push quite a bit of sharpening without getting bad artifacts as you would with a BMC due to no aliasing issues. Of course people will criticize that as looking like video.
 
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resonance_image said:
The Ikonoskop and the Digital Bolex both have Truesense (Kodak) CCD sensors though the DB's is a newer version. I can only comment on the image from the Ikonoskop since I own one but highlights on these sensors clip fast and hard and you have to learn to expose with this in mind and be aware of what you can pull from the image in post without introducing too much noise. These cameras that shoot RAW DNGs often seem disappointing to people in initial testing simply because there are so many decisions that the operator or colorist must make in post that determine the final image.
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Yeah, I mean that's all possible. To me, for its price, I haven't seen much footage that looks better than a GH2 yet. Even Philip Bloom's stuff.
 
Michael Schrengohst said:
I haven't seen any footage that looks better than a GH2 yet. For it's price, it is an expensive boat anchor…..
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GH2 is easy to get normal looking hd video out of. But it doesn't hold up that well on large projection screens where the compression artifacts, rolling shutter jello and aliasing show up especially on following action . The D16 resolves edges with a much smoother more organic quality and has much more refined color response in grading. But you do have to grade it. It doesn't do the work for you like a GH2 or any compressed video camera does. The D16 can pull detail, texture, and color out of deep shadows far better than a GH2 or GH3. They just block up in the shadows.

Personally I like the color, detail, and image texture in PB's Miami Beach footage better than anything I have ever seen out of the GH's.
 
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