Low Cost HD Available to Buy Now: Cameras, Recorders, 35 mm Adapters, Lenses, etc.

[Jason Rodriguez]

I said 3K (3000x2000 pixels for a total of 6Mpix), not 3Mpix.

BTW, saw some footage from the Arri at NAB as was very impressed.

[Jason Rodriguez]

The Kinetta's not vaporware. I played with it at NAB.

[Rob Belics]

Someone mentioned the cost of Panavisions Genesis. Panavision does not sell cameras or lenses. They only rent equipment.

[Mike Metken]

Adrien,

The Sony HDC-X300 camera is 3-chip, 1080p and costs $15K. Canon HD zoom lens for it is $7K; it is auto/manual focus. The camera has so many adjustments, basicaly like a studio camera. It's really nice. It has HD SDI 10 bit, 4:2:2 uncompressed output and analog viewfinder/monitor output.

Mike

[Obin Olson]

So I will happily join in the discussion of Silicon imaging and other industrial cameras. However, I don't think its realistic to think that you will buy an inexpensive camera so that you can own everything in the production post production chain. Its still too expensive to own everything if you plan to do competitive work. -->>>

Randall would you own a camera the quality of the Varicam if you could buy it for $5,000? I am looking at shooting a feature and the rental alone for a varicam is going to be some $30,000 for the show....from what I have seen and tests I have runsofar my camera has the POTENTIAL to out-perform the varicam in some ways and at the rate I am burning cash i think it's well worth the cost...I can sure spend the extra money on a good HD Apple Edit system and HD monitors etc

[Laurence Maher]

Well, I guess I'll go ahead and post something ON topic . . .

http://www.vaytek.com/cameras.htm

http://www.americanpredator.com/prod..._microatx.html

http://www.prosilica.com/cv1280F.htm

http://www.xenarc.com/product/mp-fl8.html

http://www.bensoftware.com/btvpro.html

http://www1.leitch.com/custserv/prod...7;20Production

http://www.powerwand.tv/prod05.htm

http://www.fast-vision.com/cameras/PDF/FastCam13.pdf

http://www.lumavideo.com/

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/

http://www.edmundoptics.com/onlineca...=2411&search=1

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/index.htm

http://www.cineform.com/products/AspectHDP65.htm

http://www.siliconimaging.com/


SIDE NOTE:

IMHO, since Steve Nordhauser seems to be ACTIVE on the threads, his products in the next few months will be worth a serious look at --- complete with camera/computer ssystem/storage alternatives ranging between 5 and 15k depending on what you want (and the reps from Summix also seems to be closely monitoring this site, so perhaps them too)


P.S.

I think a thread specifically to list currently buyable and near buyable systems is a fantastic way to sift through the jargain and talk. I'm for keeping this particular thread a little more on topic. Thanks!

[Mike Metken]

Laurence,

I know it is extra effort, but it would be a lot easier if you'd add a couple of lines description to each of the links. Oterwise important info may go unnoticed by many memebers.

Mike

[Laurence Maher]

Say guys, I copied this from another thread:

Not sure if this will help or not but I found a codec for free that supports 16 bit per channel as well as an alpha channel making a 64 bit video codec. It works on mac and pc with just quicktime 5. Best of all it is free. They even have a lossless codec that can get 6:1 compression with no loss but that codec is $99.00. I know it isn't 12 bit per channel but it might be an easier way for people to manage files opposed to a series of stills. Besides right now the tiff files will need to be 16 bit anyways.


http://www.digitalanarchy.com/micro/micro_none16.html

[Wayne Morellini]

Mike, thanks for this, as you can tell trying to keep people on topic is the major problem (as you can see in the home made camera thread, you can pickup more links there).

Yes your right, there are more solutions out there than what we kinew of when we started, but we are after a better fit for production purposes. If you look at the Sumix announcement it appears to be comming for now.

Some of your prices are a bit high, we are comming way under that. We are locking at different cheaper solutions with or without expensive software, secondhand, optional cheap lighting set, lesne etc. So we can come way under $10K.

Now all these rental comparisons, I'm glad rental prices seem to have suddenly come down, but you are comparing one camera to Mike's camera pluss a lot of other equipment you need to rent. Now, ignoring that, you are comparing one months filming, for a system you can use for many years filming. If I go and do docos I might be carryng that cammera around for a month at a time. So that saves me multiple months rental a year (and I do mean a carring a small shoulder mounted ENG version).

Funy thing about blur, is that there is more fine grain than blur ewhen I go to the cinema, and 720 is the minium would say.

Laurence, links, links, can you repost using [url]www.address.com[/rul]?

Thanks

Wayne.

[Adrian White]

Haven't posted for a while as I have been following the contributions of the more technically knowledgeable people on this forum. I have come up with a possible low cost hd workflow solution. (feel free to respond and pick holes as any feedback is very welcome.)

Hardware:
Camera link camera (silicon imaging or imperx) 1920*1080
frame grabber
Streampix recorder software.
Suitable spec pc with either raid or number of external hard drives.
Use 16mm c mount lenses bolex or sneider (or get c to f mount adaptor and use nikon 35mm?)

1. Use streampix software to record 8bit images from camera and save to hard disk/raid. Save in a file format that is compatible with both streampix and Vegas.
2. Import video files into Vegas Video 5. Here are a list of file formats acceptable, when i last checked, streampix uses at least 3-4 of these:

AC-3 Dolby Digital AC-3**
AIF Macintosh® AIFF
AVI Microsoft® Video for Windows®
BMP Windows® Bitmap
GIF CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format (stills and animated)
JPG Joint Picture Experts Group (JPEG)
MOV Apple® QuickTime® Movie
MP3 MPEG-1 Layer 3 (Audio)
MPG MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Video
OGG Ogg Vorbis
PCA Perfect Clarity Audio™
PNG Portable Network Graphics
PSD Adobe® Photoshop®
RM RealNetworks® RealAudio® 9
RM RealNetworks RealVideo® 9
SWF Macromedia Flash
TGA Targa™ File Format
TIF Tagged Image File Format
W64 Sony Pictures Digital Wave 64™
WAV Microsoft Wave®
WMA Microsoft Windows Media® 9 (Audio)
WMV Microsoft Windows Media 9 (Video)
Still Image Sequences (Script)

Apparently Vegas 5 is resolution independant and can manage frame sizes up to 2048*2048! 1920*1080 is supported with 23.976,24,25,30 fps options.

I dowloaded the trail version toady and will be web hunting for small clip samples to try.

Further info can be found at "sony pictures digital"
Am I missing something here or is this workable, any responce welcome.

P.S. If this is workable, I also found out about a linescan dalsa camerlink camera currently in beta version that has a frame size of 2048*2048 at 30fps but can be reprogrammed to do 24p, would this be practical?