4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project

[Obin Olson]

http://obin.weet.us/outdoors-1.wmv

No, but we would also not shoot with a 35mm ARRI this view. Obin, i think there is a differently "look" we need. You compare all images with a normal video camera. But i dont want video look. I love cinema, and so i love your earlier images.
But my main problem now is the rolling shutter -->>>


I don't care what you would shoot with a 35mm Arri...that is NOT the point. The point is this thing has bad artifacts in the shadows, period. end of story

how you can talk about my SHOT is beyond me.. As if that shot has any meaning beyond showing dark artifacts...what gives?

I don't compare this camera with a "normal" video camera, how could I? I have thought about it and the idea makes me sick..this is so far BEYOND a "normal" video camera it's not funny at all.

So Rai, take it easy, I am hear to HELP you. I could just as well design a camera system like Kinetta and NEVER talk with you about it or anyone on the boards..this is my decision to SHARE and I don't like it when people start giving an attitude in here..it's not worth it..so don't even start.

If you want put me on your payroll I am happy to send you pictures every day and work all the time on this and NOTHING else. Until then CHILL OUT...Shoot your movie on FILM and WAIT a few months for my camera or buy a Kinetta.. I would NOT recommend you use anything on this board for a FEATURE that you have pressure shooting, not until we have a better workflow for all the HD stuff.


not bad Ben, but I would still want to start out with the MOST color I could for that much more range when I "push" it around in Combustion

[Ben Syverson]

Yeah, no doubt -- I'm just trying to show that it's not as dire as it seems...

[Jason Rodriguez]

Hey guys,

I did some dynamic range tests with those MacBeth charts.

Anyways, what you see there, after gamma correction, is just about correct exposure since the third square from the bottom is middle grey, and should line up with around 50% grey, which it does when gamma corrected.

So the good news: These cameras are uncompressed

The bad news: You aren't even close to the Viper or even the F900 (newest /3 upgrade) in dynamic range.

If you'd like to see a Viper test chart, here's one, and it spans 9 1/2 f-stops (there's another 1/3 of a stop in the highlights according the the cinematographer who shot this, so almost 10-stops total for the Viper). These Macbeth charts are only showing maybe around 5-6 with around 2-3 stops over 18% grey cause the shadows look really bad and the highlights clip awefully hard. Now it could be the lighting not being even enough, but from the looks of things, you're not getting something for nothing.

There's still a reason the Sony F900 and Viper cost $$$$ :-)

http://home.mindspring.com/~jrod/ViperChart.jpg

This is a test from the F900 with the film gamma curves. I've applied a reverse log-lin LUT on the image, and as you can see here you're getting around 6-7 f-stops (4-stops over, 2-3 stops under), although I've crushed the shadows down a lot, so there's another 2 fstops there for a total of 9. And I've done other tests witht the F900 and gotten 9 legitimate stops out of it, so this is about right.

http://home.mindspring.com/~jrod/F900Chart.jpg

I could just as well design a camera system like Kinetta

Watch it there Obin.

The Kinetta has one of the finest minds in video hardware design behind it, as well as a number of top DP's from the ASC, BKTS, and Jeff himself is a Sundance award-winning Documentarian and has filmed with some of the top names in documentaries such as D.A. Pennebaker, etc.

There's A LOT more to the Kientta than just a chip with a PCB and hard-drives attached to the back.

And as I hope you check out from the Macbeth charts above, you need to be getting a lot more out of your chips before you're on the scale of the Viper or F900/3.

[Les Dit]

Can't wait to see a Kinneta sample. I wonder why they are so shy about posting one? I commend Obin and Ben for posting numerous clips on here ! This is all a learning process, and yes, sometimes there are critical comments. From me as well. If my comments seem criticizing sometimes, pleas understand I'm talking about the images, not the efforts of the folks shooting them.

I noticed Steve had a Dollar bill in the back there, on his new test shots! ( My Idea to use that as a res chart that is easy to get! ).
Any chance Steve shot that as well, I'd love to see it.
I'm wrapping up an engineering class I'm teaching this summer, so I'll be able to spend a bit more time on projects. I'll shoot that $1 on my JVC HD10 real soon. As well as some 35mm lens tests on the same camera.

Cheers
-Les

[Wayne Morellini]

The JVC Altasens camera, posted before, claims to fix image skew in panning by directly accessing pixels, I thought this was a global shutter methord?

Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : The IBIS-5 was run in global shutter mode since the color is better that way. It was run at a slower clock to allow for sufficient exposure time.

Thanks Steve, I've been after this answer. Is this the only quality effect of global shutter, does it effect sensitivity and range?

Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser: The altasens will be first on camera link since its top end is about 300MB/sec. ... I will be curious how you fare on the USB 2.0 because we have them too and have written them off for cinematography.

So is the Altasens still going to be one chip?

Provide you pack, and frame buffer, Gigbe and firewireb (and even guarantee 24fps capture on USB2) has plenty of bandwidth for single chip (3chip if you compress). I guess I have been getting too caught up in the cameralink vs HDSDI cost savings, and SHD/UHD possiblities, but you're saving hundreds on the capture card.


Gigabyte sent me some email saying it's new motehrboards has Firewire B, so the firewire revolution is continueing.

Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : Hey guys,
I did some dynamic range tests with those MacBeth charts.
These Macbeth charts are only showing maybe around 5-6 with around 2-3 stops over 18% grey cause

Thanks Jason, 5 to 6 stops that's what I expected, I may not be a production expert but I'm not completely dumb ;)

Still if Steve can tell us how gain affects range, we might be able to get a couple of stops more.

Originally posted by Rai Orz:
i not the man who make the post.
I can only say what i like. It is more movie "look" than video "look"

I understand what you mean, the guy that experimented with the post image correction thought he could correct and use them, and they were film like and you liked that. The way it was said sounded a little different though.

Originally posted by Aaron Shaw : >>Why is it so necessary to expose for the highlights? Is it not possible to get good blacks without blowing out the image? I admit I'm somewhat lost...

I think it is a matter of Style Aaron, where ever you crush the top (Push Navada), bottom (a lot in The Marla movie), or make it all look like a clouded low contrast day (like some of the X-Files), or bright high contrast.

[Rob Scott]

Wayne Morellini wrote:
So is the Altsens still going to be one chip?

I am certain it is -- you can't use standard C-mount lenses with a 3-chipper, for one thing. This kills the usefulness of the camera for SI's primary market, industrial imaging. SI is also far lower volume than JVC, so it would significantly increase the price.

[Steve Nordhauser]

Resolution targets:
Money is one of my favorite targets for testing cameras and lenses, although newspaper isn't bad. Here is a test image from our monochrome SI-3170:
http://siliconimaging.com/Samples/3170M%20Jackson.jpg

Rob on SI-1920HD single chip:
Yes, first pass is a single chip. We we can handle 300MB/sec, we will consider a 3 chip. We are not adverse to using larger format lenses if required - we have a camera coming out with a big sensor soon (too slow for here) and will either go T2 or F mount on that. You are correct though that the optical path through a prism is too long for most c mount applications.

[Rob Scott]

Steve Nordhauser wrote:
Yes, first pass is a single chip. We we can handle 300MB/sec, we will consider a 3 chip ... You are correct though that the optical path through a prism is too long for most c mount applications

OK, I'm no expert on this, but I thought it was impossible to use standard lenses (C-mount, F-mount, whatever) with a 3-chip system.

[Obin Olson]

Jason if we use the Altasense then our camera will take the same picture as the Kinetta! I would not put the Kinetta on such a high seat ..it will be great I am sure but nothing is "GOD" anymore IMHO...even if we want it to be it will fall sooner or later because in a world of? what 8B people or so it's hard to have an original idea for long ;) anyway the Kinetta has nothing to do with my efforts..I had no idea it was a pcb camera untill after I started on this quest..

Although if this effort fails I guess I know who to give my $60,000 too!!

Do you have any idea how much $$ Jeff has spent sofar on R and D for that camera?

Steve N:

Will we get a better dynamic range from the 3300?
if Jason is right 4-5 stops is not that good

[Rob Scott]

Just a quick update -- I've had to lock down the ObscuraCam wiki. Some jerk went in and deleted half the topics. You can now read the "static" pages, but if you want to edit you'll need to e-mail me for a un/pw.

[Jason Rodriguez]

Obin,

I have no idea how much Jeff's spent so far.

One thing though is that image quality is not the end-all-be-all.

You have the bayer demosaicer, all the electronic in the camera, portability, durability, etc. Have you read his article in Showreel Magazine (it's on the website in PDF format)? He's got a lot of really good ideas, and it's in a very nice compact, cameraman/cinematographer friendly package. Great OLED display, RAID 3 hard-drives, and to boot he's got one of the pioneers of video equipment design making the electronics for the thing.

Anybody can shoot film from Kodak and get the same "image quality". There's only one Arri or Aaton though.

[Wayne Morellini]

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Scott : Just a quick update -- I've had to lock down the ObscuraCam wiki. Some jerk went in and deleted half the topics. You can now read the "static" pages, but if you want to edit you'll need to e-mail me for a un/pw. -->>>

Typical, hope you have a backup.

[Rob Scott]

Wayne Morellini wrote:
Typical, hope you have a backup.

I was able to recover the topics -- though we may have lost a few things, I'm not sure.

[Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn]

Steve,

The flower image from the 3170 is overexposed.It isn´t a good test image.The whites are clipped.
The dollar image looks amazing to me, I can´t see noise.
Also when I work with video I never let whites to go over 90 %.
Could you test its sensitivity?
Get a photometer, shoot a grey card or a TEC (TEC should give you a final image after gamma correction and the rest with these values: 4% for Black, 50% for Grey and around 97% for White)
Also If I'm not wrong, I guess the values for a ¨negative¨ should be 4, 36,72....

Obin,

I'm curious about your pedestal settings, how do you manage them?
In IRE scale Black for NTSC is 7.5 and for PAL is 16...
I ask this because on the images that show the streaks I see washed out blacks...
Thank you for all your work and courage :)

[Les Dit]

I get a kick out of terms like pedestal and IRE black, when they are applied to computer images!
They even use "Mhz" to talk about resolution sometimes!
-Les