Blackmagic Cinema Camera gets a rival - Dan Chung shows us the KINERAW MINI

[shijan]

11.5 stops is epic fail for this device. i personally vote for same camera but with 16 mm sized sensor with wider dynamic range which can be used with tons of inexpensive lenses. and also allow to reduce the camera cost as so as small sensors are pretty inexpencive. 

[shijan]

but from other side dynamic range of test videos from big brother of this camera for my eye visually looks mush wider than 11.5 stops.

[markm]

Actually 11.5 stops is great at this price! However it's been going on for a few years now.

 

What they need is to mass manufacture them But for some reason someone is holding it up. Possibly concerns about reliabilty. Seriously. By the time this gets going we will have a new BMC with a 35mm sensor.

[noirist]

These small indies haven't "exposed the true cost of making such a product" until they can actually make such a product and ship it, which they haven't.  Given all the production problems with the BMCC, Digital Bolex, and Kineraw etc cameras have experienced, I think all we can conclude is that it's much more difficult and costly to make a digital cinema camera than they anticipated.

[Tzedekh]

Given all the production problems with the BMCC, Digital Bolex, and Kineraw etc . . .

 

Although it's arguably included in "etc.," Red by name is oddly missing from that list. Epic and Scarlet were released years behind schedule, the latter's original 2/3-inch design ultimately abandoned. And this is after Red already released a digital-cinema camera.

[noirist]

I agree, Red's notorious production delays are further evidence of the difficulty of producing a digital cinema camera. I didn't explicitly include them in my list because they're no longer considered a "small indie".

[nigelbb]

I agree. It's vaporware. Like the digital Bolex. Almost like a look what we can do project.

Black Magic have delivered a handful of BMCCs so that camera isn't vapourware but it's not exactly solid either.

[markm]

Black Magic have delivered a handful of BMCCs so that camera isn't vapourware but it's not exactly solid either.

BMC had an issue with the sensor manufacturers which has now been resolved. BM Had everything ready to go it really is unfair to accuse them of making vapourware when they did everything right. Not so the kineraw who have produced prototype after prototype and never mass produce. As I said something is holding them back and I think its a fear from the moneymen of something going wrong with it.

 

Seemingly its quite easy to make a camera with off the shelf parts and a factory these days. What isn't easy and the japanese do so well is to make ergonomic complicated cases and camera bells and whistles.

[Matt]

I wonder if you really could make a camera with ALL the parts being off the shelf?

 

People have talked about it a lot.

 

I wonder how much it would actually cost?

 

Shall we ask Andrew to start a kickstarter project to raise enough money to make ONE camera.

 

All the financial contributers could vote on which parts to use.

 

Because of all the followers and publicity maybe certain companies would give free parts.

 

It would be a very interesting project to follow / be involved in.

[markm]

Good idea Matt!

 

Andrew I want a camera with a 35mm sensor 14 stops and records RAW with SDI and hdmi out. Don't worry about sound if it adds to much the cost or hard to implement. Be nice to have some zebras and a histogram but again not neccesary.

 

Cheers in anticipation,

 

Mark

[Bruno]

Shall we ask Andrew to start a kickstarter project to raise enough money to make ONE camera.

 

http://www.apertus.org/

[markm]

That looks promising!

[Matt]

I remember this project. There is a post on this forum somewhere about it.

I remember reading on their website about using Kickstarter or Indiegogo

 

I'm suggesting more the idea of just building one camera.

Keeping it simple. Not trying to start a business or mass produce.

Just to see if it is possible with off the shelf parts and to discover the costs incurred.

It would be a great little project I think many people would find interesting.

It would be about showing what we the users could build ourselves in the year 2013

I don't know but maybe you would only need a few thousand pounds.

 

If you could build one camera that pretty much did what everybody wants regarding resolution etc.I think it would be very positive.

Perhaps contributers regardless of donation size could vote on the components used.

What type of lens mount to use etc.

Arguments for and against components could be put on a forum and then a vote taken.

 

Personally I prefer modular over sexy but thats what voting would be all about.

Maybe someone with design experience could chip in and design a sexy but simple, functional, applesque, aluminium housing.

 

It would be like building or modifying your own pc. Maybe it would be the future of indie filmmaking.

Could it really be that simplified?

 

Picture this....

A young filmmaker setting up a camera at a shoot.

A passerby asks "Is that a Red?"

Filmmaker "Nah I built it myself, does everything I need"

Passerby "Cool"

(I say all this in jest but who knows the future!)

 

Maybe it could be passed around the wider community so it could be optimised on things like software configuration if needed.

.

Maybe the most important thing would be a completion deadline.

 

It's just an idea.

[Bruno]

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.

[Matt]

It's not too negative.

It raises good questions.

 

For one camera wouldn't you just need a relatively straight forward gui?

Software is not my field.

 

Maybe someone with more experience could answer?

 

I like the idea of an open source CameraOS allowing work with different sensors and accessories.

That really is talking about users building their own cameras.

Like so much with advances in computing it would become simplified over use and time.

All become plug and play.

Imagine carrying around not just lenses but different sensors for specific jobs.

 

How modular could a camera become?.

[ScreensPro]

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.

 

Surely the recent "1-DC is a rip off" posts proved that software engineering costs $49.99 and is fail safe?

[Bruno]

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. :)

[Matt]

Be good to get Andrew's view on this.

Also a camera hackers opinion would be interesting.

 

This may all just be theoretical but could you buy a sensor from a company that also provided basic software to use the sensor?

 

Could you have a bespoked sensor housing fabricated with some sort of generic  connection enabling connection to a motherboard?

It might cost a bit.

 

Could you then connect to a desktop PC?

[Dan Hudgins]

KineRAW (tm) cameras to be shown at booth C12813 at NAB 2013 in Las Vegas

==

Got word from Kinefinity.com (sm) that they will be going to NAB 2013 in Las Vegas (in April),

http://www.nabshow.com/

Quote: [Our booth number in this coming NAB is C12813.]

So if you have wanted some 'hands on' time with their cameras, this will be the first time they are showing them outside China as far as I know.

I've been shooting some additional test footage with both the KineRAW-S35 (tm) and the prototype KineRAW-S8p (tm) and may post that on my Vimeo page when I get it edited together.  They are working on a demo reel for showing at NAB 2013, so if you have any suggestions of shots you would like to see you can email them and ask them to have one of their field testers shoot something like what you would like to see maybe so that when you go to NAB 2013 you can see how it turned out.  They said they will have cameras there you can look over, and maybe the KineRAW-S35-mini (tm) they are still working on, its a smaller version with the same high quality 100% true RAW DNG recording and S35 sensor with sub-PL mount for using a wide range of movie and still lenses, as I understand it, you can email them for detailed specs if you are interested.

Also the MSRP and shipping should be lower for the KineRAW-S35-mini (tm).  So jot down booth C12813 if your going to NAB this year and say high, they have been developing these cameras for many years, and the larger KineRAW-S35 (tm) has been in field testing in China (in addition to the one I got to do calibrations in the monitoring with).  They said they are very busy putting cameras together to ship out, so, so far things seem to be going well for them.

==

You cannot judge the quality of the images from the KineRAW-S35 â„¢ based on looking at some H.264 version, the raw data holds so much detail that some skill is required to blunt it enough to get compressed versions, using Cineform â„¢ YUV is a much better option for PC playback.

[Dan Hudgins]

Peculiar thing is that this " mini " rendition never was on the map. The KineRaw's website always had the super35 - Super16 and Super8 categories which mostly didn't have any content. On the other hand Dan Hudgins has been testing a pre-production KineRaw S8 for a couple years. His tests include an awesome anamorphic sample on Vimeo. Why there is no talk of S8 model ?

 

Kinefinity.com (sm) says they are still planning the S8 model, production has been held off so they may be able to produce one that is free of jell-o and skew issues so that it can be used handheld like a Super8 format camera, at least that is what I have been talking with them about, I'm still shooting lens tests with the KineRAW-S8p (tm) using 2/3" and 1/2" megapixel lenses as well as R16mm and S8mm lenses, I have yet to test the 8mm D mount lenses for the high speed modes, it goes to 220fps.  If you are interested in the Super8 format with its light weight lenses you can tell them, so far the Schnieder R16mm lenses seem to work best, but the 5mm Computar-Ganz f/1.4 3MP lens and the 3.5mm Kowa f/2.4 megapixel lens work best, of the S8 lenses the Angenieux C mount 6mm to 80mm f/1.2 seems to cover the sensor in 2592x1104 wide screen mode that is maybe a bit larger than S8 film width.