Bruno

Canon and everyone else need to see the potential in this and open up their cameras for 3rd party apps. Some consumer cameras already support Android apps, I'd love to see professional cameras go the same route. Imagine if the BMCC supported 3rd party apps, no one would be complaining about the lack of audio meters and tools as you'd probably be able to choose between a bunch of different audio metering apps. Same goes for every single software feature request, they would only have to worry about doing a solid camera with a good SDK, and the rest would be taken care of by third party developers. Also, different users want different things, and the way one feature is implemented might be perfect for one user but totally backwards for another user, this way we'd have options, just look at how many photography apps are out there for the iPhone, and compare what they do to what the standard Camera app does. There's no reason every single camera couldn't be like this.

Think about building your PC, what would you do with it if you didn't have an OS to install that would recognize all your hardware? (or allow for you to install its drivers) Digital cameras are kind of the same, small computers with one specific purpose. What we don't have, besides the software, is an off the shelf motherboard with standardized ports where we could plug a sensor, memory, processor, storage... That makes it very hard to build a viable camera on your own. I don't even think sensors all have the same kind of connections, so the sensor choice would probably determine everything else. And no, designing and programming good camera software is not a straight forward task. :)

Don't want to sound negative, but even if you could find everything you need from off the shelf components, you could easily spend all your budget just on the software/firmware research & development. I think a crucial element to this would be some sort of open source CameraOS, that would give you the foundations and be able to work with different sensors and accessories, but I don't think it exists. You could use Android, Linux, etc but you'd still have to develop the camera software for it, and that alone would be a massive undertaking if you think about it.

  http://www.apertus.org/

It's more like if it makes your sensor bigger. When you use a 50mm on an APS-C sized sensor, you get roughly the equivalent of an 80mm, with this adapter you'd keep it as 50mm, no more math.

Compressing the light makes it brighter, it makes sense. Some of the earlier small sensor digital cinema cameras (pre RED), not sure which now, used similar technology to achieve a DOF more similar to super35, it's great to see this technology finally at our disposal.

That's just a detail, but I guess their reasoning at this point is "better safe than sorry", but you'd have to ask them.   If someone was to go against them, the tax angle could be a strong one, as they could play it in a way that shows they're not only breaking Canon's copyright but also taking tax money away from the government.   Keep in mind that this is not my opinion, but a lot of details like these could be used against them, no matter how farfetched.

  Someone from a big cinema at Leicester square told me they don't run the lamps as bright as they should in 3D movies so they last longer, since they're so expensive, so there you go, it's all about the money. Ones make 3D films because of money, the others project them darker because of the money, same old same old.

One of the main problems IMO is that 3D doesn't work well with some of the aspects that make a beautiful cinematic image in traditional film standards.   3D doesn't work well with shallow DOF, if we're watching a film in 3D, for it to work well, we must be able to choose where to focus, that's the main point, but it that's already defined by the shallow DOF it's a very odd experience, because one could be focusing on something that's out of focus, this happened quite a bit in Tron 2. Tintin for instance had a very deep focus, which I'm sure worked well in 3D, but when I watched the 2D version it was extremely odd and uncinematic to see everything in perfect focus.   Grain can also be very cinematic but also looks weird in 3D. Lens flares too, it would be quite hard to make both lenses on a stereo rig flare in sync and match in the end result.   I wouldn't disregard 3D as total useless, but I think we're talking about a totally different medium here, and a director should go one way or the other, but if going the 3D route, they should embrace it all the way and fully explore its potential. So far that hasn't been done, all 3D movies out there also have 2D versions, it's just an added subtle effect motivated by money, I'd like to see a 3D movie that go all the way and that wouldn't even make sense in 2D, till then I have no interest whatsoever in 3D.

  IMO you're better off shooting a film on the BMCC than on the 1DC. Over 99% of the films on the big screen today have all their post work done and are output at 2k resolution. I only know of a few films delivered in 4k (at a few selected theaters) in the past few years. 35mm film scans are mostly scanned at 2k. So really, if you have a movie to shoot, take the $6k you'd even spend on a 1DX if it had 4k and add it to your movie budget. Just go for it, seriously!   This whole thing could change over time with RED's new 4k distribution platform (and other new ones), but that's not what's gonna make or break your film.

Even though I don't particularly like it, 3D doesn't have to be non-artistic. Scorcese researched 3D movies from all ages before shooting Hugo, and you can clearly see it was shot with stereo in mind. Does it make it a better film? Probably not, but when you watch it in 2D there's a bunch of shots that kind of lose their purpose as they rely heavily on the 3D experience to be effective.

Cameras that can record more than 30 minutes of video or so need to pay an extra tax as they are considered video cameras. Not sure if this is only an Europe thing, but it's why even newer non FAT DSLRs still have recording time limitations. ML are probably worried this could be used against them.

Many 16mm lenses would lose about 2mm focal length on the wide side when converted to Super 16mm. The Zeiss 10-100mm for instance, originally made for 16mm, became a 12-120mm when modded for Super 16mm. Maybe something similar can be made to go from super16 to the BMCC sensor size, allowing good 16mm cine lenses to be used with the BMCC.

  Agreed, most 3D films are shot like that as the result of a studio decision, not a creative one, and the directors have to go with it even if they don't want to or know anything about 3D. And many of them are not even shot in 3D, they're just converted in post.   The technology we have at the moment may be far from perfect but it can work well, as you can see with CG animated movies, but for it to make a difference with live action movies, it needs to be part of the director's creative approach to the story. Pina used 3D in a sublime way.   Having said this, I personally wouldn't miss it if it's gone for good.

  That was not the discussion and I never disagreed with that. There's loads of products out there that I would love to have for half the price with the companies still being able to make a profit out of it, but the point is they cost what they cost and I can't afford them. They do have their reasons to price them like that, the main one being "because they can".   Threatening with or suggesting hacking those cameras as a solution and in our own benefit was my main issue with your post, as it is ethically and legally wrong. I know damn well Canon wouldn't take legal action against independent people hacking their cameras, but they could shut down a site like ML in a heartbeat if they wanted to. ML knows this and reminds its users constantly, they can barely afford a camera body let alone a trial.

Never tried to, you just had to come up with ridiculous arguments and accusations to weaken my opinion, which is just what it is, you're free to disagree, no need to question my education or bring my mom to the discussion though. It does say a lot though...

Seriously? I never signed a contract for any piece of software I bought, but the copyright laws still apply, that's nonsense. http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/open-source-copyrights-legally-enforceab/210004154?nomobile=1

  Can't you understand that's not the point here? The point is not what you do with the camera you buy, it's the features you're stealing from a camera you DIDN'T buy.

  I'm not voting against anything, I'm speaking my mind, which is a problem around here every time the opinions differ from your own.   Having an online community that promotes hacking cameras to "steal" features from higher end cameras without paying for them is what will hurt our community's interests and credibility. As was mentioned by many different people before, that's a common practice with so many different pieces of hardware, but you're biased against Canon as usual and you won't listen.   I never said I think the price is right, I've mentioned several times before they should lower the prices on all their C series of cameras to at least half if they want to be taken seriously by the indie community, but that's a different story, and maybe it does show they don't care much about the indie community, and we should just move on, but these rants about missing features are pointless.

  That was hilarious... yeah you got me!  Keep bashing Canon and you'll go far around here Mr. OverCranky.

  That's probably true, but still doesn't make it legal or give you the right to port one camera's firmware to another camera. If you don't like it, don't buy it.   If someone else releases such a camera at half the price Canon will be forced to do something about it, but until then, no matter how outrageous it might seem to you, it's their product and they're the ones who decide the pricing.

Keep in mind that ML designs their own software to run on Canon cameras, they have never stolen software from one model to the other. If they implement features that exist in other models, they do so from scratch and they'll tell you this themselves. The only fooling around they do with Canon's firmware updates is a workaround in order to run their own software in those cameras as they are not prepared to run external apps, but they are not distributing anyone's code, it's all their own code.   What's being suggested here is quite different.

  That settles it then.     You kind of lost me there. Does that mean you wouldn't consider your computer crippled as long as you have Houdini and an ancient command-line version of Nuke? When did this become about Maya vs Houdini, yourself, or whoever used the first command-line version of Nuke?

  Do software and R&D costs have no value to you?

  That may be true, and I'm all up for getting better cameras at lower prices. We need a video DSLR with focus on the video side and that costs no more than a 5D, not held back by the stills side of it. There's no such thing yet. You could mention the BMCC but it is not a DSLR, it's quite bigger and different, and many people would prefer a decent DSLR shaped video camera. Canon and everyone else are taking their sweet time before coming out with something like this, and they'll try to milk every other product they have before coming up with something like this.   The 1DC is a different thing, good or bad, like it or not, there's nothing else like it out there, and it could be 6 months or it could be 6 years before they get direct competition, and until that happens they'll want to make as much money as they possibly can.   Regardless of the constant bashing Canon gets in online forums, the rental industry and small production houses these days are still dominated by Canon, and you still can't get a better video DSLR than the 5D3 from any other maker.   Constructive criticism would probably go a much longer way than the current blind bashing, ridiculous demands or piracy/hacking suggestions.