Ikonoskop has temporarily stopped the production of the A-Cam

Its really too bad since I love my A-Cam and its such an amazing camera but the culture of camera buying has really turned into how much can I get and how cheaply. Hopefully they'll get some outside financing.
 
Breaks my heart. I have not had the opportunity to shoot with this camera, but I am absolutely in love with the footage I have seen. I hope they can bring someone on board. I pre-ordered the BMPC, but not a day goes by where I don't try and figure out how I could buy the A-Cam instead.
 
Yeah, it's not exactly my favorite camera - everybody here knows this, but I also hope they come back on their feet though.
 
The world economy has not been kind to small companies making high quality niche market products in the last few years. I think Europe has perhaps suffered worse than the USA. I really hope Ikonoskop finds a path forward like Aaton has. the DII is a really sweet camera and Ikonoskop was just getting the IQ dialed in with the last firmware release in March. I love the way the KAI series sensors render color when properly tweaked.
A sample from Jesse Borkowski shot with the new firmware:

https://vimeo.com/68143289
 
That's a damn shame. I really like the images this camera produces. I hope they succeed, but it's an expensive camera for a small niche market.
 
vanvideo said:
That's a damn shame. I really like the images this camera produces. I hope they succeed, but it's an expensive camera for a small niche market.
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For most of my career an "expensive" camera was $30k and up. The DII falls in the under $10k prosumer space along with a lot of other entry level pro video cameras. Maybe too expensive for the average hobbyist consumer, but it is less than most of the 16mm film cameras it was developed to replace. Just because you can buy a rolling shutter jello aliasing and moire polluted video DSLR for less than a grand doesn't make the DII expensive for what it delivers. It was a bit ahead of the curve for raw cinematography which is just now becoming popular. It was designed for the kind of artisan film makers that loved to shoot 16mm film, not the madness of no budget quick turn video production.
 
Times change, and getting one's hands on one of these niche cameras is the problem, not the customer. The ideas behind the D Bolex and Ikonoskop are great....can 20,000 people buy one, NO. They never seem to be finished or available. So go on about "polluted" cameras all you want.(lots of magic has been made on them) Customers actually have to have a camera to shoot anything, and many of them aren't going to wait 5 years to shoot material.
 
I think that is part of the problem, they are really hard to get a hold of. Only 2 guys in LA have them that I know of. I wanted to shoot with it for my first feature, but realized if it went down for some reason during the shoot, I'd be dead in the water. Ended up going with the C300, which worked great, but I loved the look of the Ikonoskop.
 
Razz16mm said:
Just because you can buy a rolling shutter jello aliasing and moire polluted video DSLR for less than a grand doesn't make the DII expensive for what it delivers. It was a bit ahead of the curve for raw cinematography which is just now becoming popular. It was designed for the kind of artisan film makers that loved to shoot 16mm film, not the madness of no budget quick turn video production.
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IMO, it's expensive for what it delivers in 2013, because you can get much more value for your money for far less. Also, you can get a DSLR with no moire/aliasing and great low light for under a grand, the Nikon D5200. Also, now there are also post fixes for rolling shutter that work quite well unless you operate the camera as if you're having a seizure. lol. The Canon 5D Mark III, moire/aliasing is not a problem, shoots full frame RAW video with Magic Lantern, crops lenses to give them extra value, has tons and tons of features, for a fractions of the price. BMPC 4k Global Shutter, 12-stop dynamic range + DaVinci Resolve/Ultrascope for $3,995 and Pocket Cinema for $995. These all, in combination, put the nail in their coffin; Not just under $1,000 DSLRs. In fact, I believe it has less to do with the under $1,000 moire/aliasing ridden DSLRs (though they certainly didn't help, because they do offer big bang for the buck despite their flaws). Clearly they didn't get with the times & price it aggressively enough to compete and they got weeded out. Nice camera, but not enough value for the money in 2013. I appreciate their efforts, but it's BlackMagic Design's time now. :D

But then again, who knows, maybe they're working on a new camera. We shall see. Dun dun dunnnnn! :)
 
To me DSLR are a pile of poo - not the images - just the stoopid mini HDMI and 1/4 jacks for one

What was the ikonostop? 7kEU

It was really on my radar but just never quite swung it for me,

I dunno I felt the need for one of those arri zooms that are another 4K Eu to make it work

Also as a 'left eye' it had a real problem

To me there is a market for a camera priced somewhere between an FS100 and and F5 - a raw artisan minimal thing - but none have quite floated my boat yet - for example IMO the Scarlet is too slow and too heavy maybe the BMC4k is it - it is on paper

Anyway if ikon could know off a few G they could get back on my radar .. good luck to them

S
 
Maybe they'll be financed on the verge of going bankrupt and loose most of the company to an investor. Sharks do attack when they see the oppurtunity.

Honestly they would need to make their camera much cheaper and competitive to stay in business.
 
morgan_moore said:
To me DSLR are a pile of poo - not the images - just the stoopid mini HDMI and 1/4 jacks for one

What was the ikonostop? 7kEU

It was really on my radar but just never quite swung it for me,

I dunno I felt the need for one of those arri zooms that are another 4K Eu to make it work

Also as a 'left eye' it had a real problem

To me there is a market for a camera priced somewhere between an FS100 and and F5 - a raw artisan minimal thing - but none have quite floated my boat yet - for example IMO the Scarlet is too slow and too heavy maybe the BMC4k is it - it is on paper

Anyway if ikon could know off a few G they could get back on my radar .. good luck to them

S
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There are a probably quite a few industrial cameras that would fit the bill of a raw artisan minimalist camera. Lumenera, iDS, Ximea, Point Grey (Grasshopper3), have USB 3.0 based camera heads, they usually use CMOSIS cmos imaging sensors, but sometimes others based on the model.

Lots of scientific cameras out there as well that might yield interesting effects, like this sCMOS camera > http://alliedscientificpro.com/shop/color-scientific-scmos-camera-uncooled-3mega-pixel-tucsen/
 
atarijedi said:
There are a probably quite a few industrial cameras that would fit the bill of a raw artisan minimalist camera. Lumenera, iDS, Ximea, Point Grey (Grasshopper3), have USB 3.0 based camera heads, they usually use CMOSIS cmos imaging sensors, but sometimes others based on the model.

Lots of scientific cameras out there as well that might yield interesting effects, like this sCMOS camera > http://alliedscientificpro.com/shop/color-scientific-scmos-camera-uncooled-3mega-pixel-tucsen/
Click to expand...

Industrial camera heads don't do you much good for high quality imagery unless you can write your own software to process the footage. The sensor is only one part of a very complex equation. Off the shelf software doesn't really cut it IMO. Most buyers of these cameras have the supplier write custom software for their application, you are talking thousands, sometimes even 6 figure software development costs.

Where has the Elphel project gotten anyone as a film maker's camera? Who wants to be tethered to an external computer to acquire images?

I have yet to see a CMOS camera of any kind at any price, with the possible exception of the Alexa, touch the color accuracy and gamut the Kodak KAI series CCD's are capable of. This is one major reason that seriously color critical industrial applications, like monitoring fabric die processes for color match, and scientific missions like the mars rovers use Kodak CCD's. Leica used Kodak full frame sensors in their M8 and M9 series. They changed to a CMOS sensor for the newest model so they could add a video feature, but IMO their image quality suffered for it.

You can buy a Kodak(Truesense now) CCD with a basic AD processor front end and USB3 output in an industrial camera package. They start above $3k and you will still need a computer and external processing software to produce an image.

Kodak spent a lot of time and effort on their CCD sensors to match the usable DR, color quality, and sensitivity of their Kodachrome and Ektachrome reversal film stocks. They developed and patented their own Bayer color filters for this. Now it is not easy or cheap to realize the full quality these sensors can deliver since they are analog devices and require a full set of external analog and digital processing circuits along with serious software to get the most out of them.
It took Ikonoskop 3 years to dial in the firmware on their camera to a point where they are finally getting really good IQ. Now just when they really have great IQ they suffer this. It is really sad.

Jesse Borkowski has been getting really gorgeous saturated color images from his DII, the latest doc he is working on is being shot with the new firmware. Saturated rich reds, browns and yellows are near impossible for any digital camera to get right. Kodak shines at this. If you care about the motion quality, image integrity, and color quality of your video above all else, the Ikonoskop is a serious bargain. No it won't give you really great low light sensitivity, or high frame rates, or 35mm format or any number of video camera convenience features. But it also doesn't give you rolling shutter issues, or aliasing and moire issues either.


And here is a tongue in cheek comparo between Red and the Ikonoskop with the older firmware. They still had a magenta cast issue due to the way black level clamping was written to the data file which they just solved in their latest firmware release this year.
 
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Im very sad to find that ikonoskop may go out of business. Not just because I own a DII but also knowing that a company that has such a pure aesthetic about making cameras for filmmaking could possibly be gone forever. I love the camera and plan on keeping it forever. What other camera company would have a boot screen reminding the user that the "camera loves you". Well I love you back ikonoskop, thanks for all you have done.
 
Are there any other cameras which produce a similarly lovely image to the A-Cam 2, which perhaps also use CCDs?
 
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