Rai & Markus' "Drake" HD camera

Wayne Morellini · April 12th, 2005, 04:07 AM

Juan

I didn't actually mean that ;), but that they are used to lower colour levels (not about washout).

Wayne.

Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn · April 12th, 2005, 04:08 AM

I will say it again, sorry guys.
The new Sony HDV camera looks light years better than what I'm seeing from the "Drake" system...

Obin Olson · April 12th, 2005, 08:15 AM

Juan I would not say that untill you see some footage that is daylight with lots of colors in it..maybe some flowers?

lets some flower shots Rai

Wayne Morellini · April 12th, 2005, 11:20 AM

Obin, I have seen it, and pushed it around a bit. But the problem is gloomy European weather in the scenes (everything is pale in real life, Autumn/Winter shooting) just not the same light levels as over here or in the US. There are clips on that English page posted above. One clip has trees with yellow flowers in the back ground (can't remember but it looks over cast). When I pushed the colour around a bit and see that there is beautiful detail, and colour works. A lot of compressed HD cameras have flat colour and flat detail instead. So it is a matter of look.

Rai Orz · April 12th, 2005, 01:23 PM

Thanks for checking out and your comment.

The reason why some clips are looks so dark and low coloured are not only the gloomy European weather, its a look for some "dark situations" in the movie. The sand in the hand clip for example is extra flat color corrected, near zero, because this is part of a bad dream sequence. They shot all this "dark" clips in winter or by night without big lamps. Now they wait for sunshine to shot the "other side of the movie", also with "color" scenes.

Please understand, the clips on www.drachenfeder.com are not made to sell DRAKE, they made for the movie. Thats why Markus posted the link to the movie page. I am sure, he will post some comments, if he is back next week.

BTW: The magazin CUT is out, but i still wait for the postman...

I wish i had more time, but here i have a case of illness in my family.

Rai Orz · April 13th, 2005, 01:24 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : I just dont like the ibis chips .... -->>>

You know, ibis is a fillfactory sensor. All fillfactory sensors worked at the same internal technology. Some of fillfactorys sensors are custom-designed. But that means not different technology, that means only changes by size or multiple output ports to increase readout speed.

But here is the news. Its new, also for me. Go to the middle of this page ...

http://millimeter.com/mag/video_capturing_vision/

There is short article about ARRI D20. They write:

.......ARRI...D-20 contains a custom-designed 6-megapixel, 35mm-sized CMOS from Belgium's FillFactory......

Obin, do you also dont like ARRIS chips, now we can say: DRAKEs big Brother ?

Wayne Morellini · April 13th, 2005, 05:48 AM

Ahh, that explains it, the dream sequence. I notice these clips look a bit duller compared to other clips (still twice as good as compared to Ben's old Sumix Ibis5a camera). If a man walked through my town that white, people would immediately think he come from the winter down south, or was a foreigner (we only have a few weeks a year where we need to dress up for winter, mostly at night).

I think it is not the best not to have good sample photo's on your site, customers might think those clips are an example of the best that Drake can do.

Now, I think the Lupa series has additional technology to the Ibis5a. The 5a was developed (in house pre-release) something like a year ago or year and half. I still think they need to do 5b. How do the Lupa (I know you test all sensors before going with Ibis) compare to these pictures, and also Altasens to Lupa (apart from it's lack of DOF compared to Ibis)? I also interested how does Ibis compare to Micron, we see bad smear there (needs variable ND to compensate), but what over colour, noise, sensitivity and latitude (I think Ibis will trounce them).

I am sorry to hear the sickness continues.

Michael Maier · April 20th, 2005, 05:59 PM

Wow. I just went through all of this thread. Almost 3 hous of continuous reading. Very interesting read. Is it my impression or the people who are building similar or their own cameras are the most critical and ones who are picking in every little detail? I think no matter what, the Drake is a great achievement.
But now that the new panasonic camera was announced for $6,000 and it does 108024p and variable frame rates in 720p, will it still be a good deal to pay $19,000 for the Drake system? Yes, I know the HVX200 is compressed, but it still is 4:2:2 100mbps which should hold up pretty good in post. Besides it's much easier to do post production. The Darke has the bigger sensors, but you have to record sound wild. A headache for indie production. Besides it cost over 3 times more than the HVX200. I think the HVX200 is more of a indie tool with it's higher resolution, more flexibility in frame rates, easy to edit image and really affordable indie price. How many here can afford the Drake? I think a HVX200 would do better for most indie filmmakers. Not necessarily better in image quality, but sure more practical and affordable while still having an edge in resolution and frame rates and maybe even color range, if the Drake's look is limited to low saturation. Looking forward to those sunny day clips :)

But regardless, the Drake looks very good and is a great achievement. Congratulations to the whole developing team. That only goes to show the big companies make us pay a huge premium for technology we could have for much cheaper. That's the way to go. If they won't give to you, make your own. I'm truely impressed!

Wayne Morellini · April 22nd, 2005, 06:05 AM

Good points Michael. Yes it does seem that most bashing comes from competitors. I sum it up as it currently is, improvement at a price. In normal cinema equipment market there are huge differences in price of equipment, one camera might be less than 10K, another more than 100K, but still record on the same film ;) So some will buy the extra features because they have the budget for good equipment. Drake was done for a cinema company, so offers you more pro cinema features than the Panasonic. I think it is not doubtful that a much better image can be gotten from the Drake than the Pana. To cinema people this can matter more than the Video features and picture of the Pana (unless they have no money).

From the limited information I have read. It appears the the Pana is using a codec not too different than the DV codec, recording much lower HD horizontal resolution (in 1080 and 720), and using 24fps is at 40mbit/s, and 100mbit/s is at 60fps. This produces high compression rations. HDV uses mpeg2 compression, which is much more efficient and records much better quality for the same compression ratio (but 4:2:0 8 bit). So it might only get an advantage over HDV in motion artifact. But until proper information, compared to this here say, comes through it will be hard to say what exactly the situation is. But it looks certain that our cameras will be much more HD Cine worthy cameras.

There is suggestion that an uncompressed picture "might" be gotten from the Pana, which would somewhat improve the situation. I think the real star might be the JVC that does have uncompressed output and is a nicely mechanically featured camera.

How much is the base line mass production price for a single chip raw HD camera? No more than the $1595 HD1. I actually say less than $500. But you mostly need to be million/billionaire manufacturer to make such a thing from scratch at that price.

Jason Rodriguez · April 23rd, 2005, 11:41 PM

Quote:

The Darke has the bigger sensors, but you have to record sound wild. A headache for indie production.

How is recording sound in a dual-system setup a "headache"??

How else do you plan on getting good audio? Surely not with an on-camera mic into the pre-amps of a cheap little mini-DV camera. If you want your audio to sound reallly nice, then you're going to have to pay for gear (it's not that expensive for a 24/96 recorder now), and you're going to need a second sound person to run at least a boom mic. Now when you have a boom teathered to the camera, THAT is a major headache, because the sound person is limited in their position in relation to the camera, and if you don't have a third person to manage the cables, then you're going to be in a tangled mess.

Since paying people is typically more expensive than renting or owning gear, ideally you would have a camera person and sound person with their own recorder and boom mic for professional level sound, and not need another cable wrangler to manage the mess you create when you try to record sound on-camera with a seperate boom operator.

Wayne Morellini · April 24th, 2005, 01:46 AM

Rai,

The PC sound market is very competitive. The latest EMU professional sound cards was (may still be) the best in the world (close to 120db SN) and better than much professional equipment. Creative own EMU, and are trying to move higher spec audio to motherboard integration, VIA is also trying o do this, and Intel, but I don't worry too much about them. So the spec of audio on MB are going up (assuming that you are using a MB for this addition of the camera). But also they are making sound cards as USB models. So you have very good chance of finding external ones with specs above 96db, and maybe even MB ones. Go to Creative and VIA audio site (the VIA audio processor is an external professional design they bought).

Thanks

Wayne.

Konst Seraf · April 24th, 2005, 09:06 AM

absolutely agree - there is no problem recording quality sound to separate device. There is ton of solutions from minidisk recoreder/cheap dv camcorder to separate field hdd recorder. What i really like is smth like usb or firewire audio interfaces with xlr inputs and built in preamps, like was excellent m-audio duo (about $200+). Its obsolete now, but there are others. That device/devices could be connected to a laptop and a separate person can control all channels to be recorded to hdd.

Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn · April 25th, 2005, 02:02 PM

Crazy world.Here it is exactly the opposite.It is much much cheaper to pay people than to rent equipment.
the weekly salary for a sound man is around $ 180 USA dollars here.
So this means $ 30 per day.Weekly means 6 days here (usually 12 hours a day for a feature length film)

Jason Rodriguez · April 25th, 2005, 11:24 PM

Crap dude! $30 a day? I can make twice that amount working at Wal-Mart pushing around carts!!

For a good sound recordist in the U.S., depending on the market, try $50/hour for a 10-hour day at least. Typically after 10-12 hours you go on overtime, which is then time-and-a-half ($75/hr.). On union shoots, they actually get $75 every 15-mintues when you start going over the pre-allotted time.

No, expect to pay around $3000 per week for a good sound-recordist, which is just as much as a nice Varicam HD package, and a lot more expensive than top-quality sound gear which rents (like one of those expensive multi-track digital recoders, i.e., Aaton Cantar) at around $1200-1500 per week.

Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn · April 25th, 2005, 11:59 PM

Wow, that should be the reason why Spike Lee was shooting a BMW comercial this past Saturday just 2 blocks from here!!! :0
Imagine Lee shooting Buenos Aires to make it look like New York!!
Amazing, isn't it?

These days you get a full HDCAM (F900) for less than 2K here.
A DP goes for u$ 1333 per week for a feature length film (usually 6 to 8 weeks) or u$ 350 per day if shooting a commercial.
DP is one of the highest salaries here.
Another example. Catering service is around u$ 8.30 to u$ 16 per day per person.

April 12th, 2005, 04:07 AM	#226
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Juan I didn't actually mean that ;), but that they are used to lower colour levels (not about washout). Wayne.

April 12th, 2005, 04:08 AM	#227
Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn Major Player Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Buenos Aires , Argentina Posts: 444	I will say it again, sorry guys. The new Sony HDV camera looks light years better than what I'm seeing from the "Drake" system...

April 12th, 2005, 08:15 AM	#228
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	Juan I would not say that untill you see some footage that is daylight with lots of colors in it..maybe some flowers? lets some flower shots Rai

April 12th, 2005, 11:20 AM	#229
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Obin, I have seen it, and pushed it around a bit. But the problem is gloomy European weather in the scenes (everything is pale in real life, Autumn/Winter shooting) just not the same light levels as over here or in the US. There are clips on that English page posted above. One clip has trees with yellow flowers in the back ground (can't remember but it looks over cast). When I pushed the colour around a bit and see that there is beautiful detail, and colour works. A lot of compressed HD cameras have flat colour and flat detail instead. So it is a matter of look.

April 12th, 2005, 01:23 PM	#230
Rai Orz Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Germany Posts: 136	Thanks for checking out and your comment. The reason why some clips are looks so dark and low coloured are not only the gloomy European weather, its a look for some "dark situations" in the movie. The sand in the hand clip for example is extra flat color corrected, near zero, because this is part of a bad dream sequence. They shot all this "dark" clips in winter or by night without big lamps. Now they wait for sunshine to shot the "other side of the movie", also with "color" scenes. Please understand, the clips on www.drachenfeder.com are not made to sell DRAKE, they made for the movie. Thats why Markus posted the link to the movie page. I am sure, he will post some comments, if he is back next week. BTW: The magazin CUT is out, but i still wait for the postman... I wish i had more time, but here i have a case of illness in my family.

April 13th, 2005, 01:24 AM	#231
Rai Orz Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Germany Posts: 136	<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : I just dont like the ibis chips .... -->>> You know, ibis is a fillfactory sensor. All fillfactory sensors worked at the same internal technology. Some of fillfactorys sensors are custom-designed. But that means not different technology, that means only changes by size or multiple output ports to increase readout speed. But here is the news. Its new, also for me. Go to the middle of this page ... http://millimeter.com/mag/video_capturing_vision/ There is short article about ARRI D20. They write: .......ARRI...D-20 contains a custom-designed 6-megapixel, 35mm-sized CMOS from Belgium's FillFactory...... Obin, do you also dont like ARRIS chips, now we can say: DRAKEs big Brother ?

April 13th, 2005, 05:48 AM	#232
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Ahh, that explains it, the dream sequence. I notice these clips look a bit duller compared to other clips (still twice as good as compared to Ben's old Sumix Ibis5a camera). If a man walked through my town that white, people would immediately think he come from the winter down south, or was a foreigner (we only have a few weeks a year where we need to dress up for winter, mostly at night). I think it is not the best not to have good sample photo's on your site, customers might think those clips are an example of the best that Drake can do. Now, I think the Lupa series has additional technology to the Ibis5a. The 5a was developed (in house pre-release) something like a year ago or year and half. I still think they need to do 5b. How do the Lupa (I know you test all sensors before going with Ibis) compare to these pictures, and also Altasens to Lupa (apart from it's lack of DOF compared to Ibis)? I also interested how does Ibis compare to Micron, we see bad smear there (needs variable ND to compensate), but what over colour, noise, sensitivity and latitude (I think Ibis will trounce them). I am sorry to hear the sickness continues.

April 20th, 2005, 05:59 PM	#233
Michael Maier Trustee Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 1,269	Wow. I just went through all of this thread. Almost 3 hous of continuous reading. Very interesting read. Is it my impression or the people who are building similar or their own cameras are the most critical and ones who are picking in every little detail? I think no matter what, the Drake is a great achievement. But now that the new panasonic camera was announced for $6,000 and it does 108024p and variable frame rates in 720p, will it still be a good deal to pay $19,000 for the Drake system? Yes, I know the HVX200 is compressed, but it still is 4:2:2 100mbps which should hold up pretty good in post. Besides it's much easier to do post production. The Darke has the bigger sensors, but you have to record sound wild. A headache for indie production. Besides it cost over 3 times more than the HVX200. I think the HVX200 is more of a indie tool with it's higher resolution, more flexibility in frame rates, easy to edit image and really affordable indie price. How many here can afford the Drake? I think a HVX200 would do better for most indie filmmakers. Not necessarily better in image quality, but sure more practical and affordable while still having an edge in resolution and frame rates and maybe even color range, if the Drake's look is limited to low saturation. Looking forward to those sunny day clips :) But regardless, the Drake looks very good and is a great achievement. Congratulations to the whole developing team. That only goes to show the big companies make us pay a huge premium for technology we could have for much cheaper. That's the way to go. If they won't give to you, make your own. I'm truely impressed!

April 22nd, 2005, 06:05 AM	#234
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Good points Michael. Yes it does seem that most bashing comes from competitors. I sum it up as it currently is, improvement at a price. In normal cinema equipment market there are huge differences in price of equipment, one camera might be less than 10K, another more than 100K, but still record on the same film ;) So some will buy the extra features because they have the budget for good equipment. Drake was done for a cinema company, so offers you more pro cinema features than the Panasonic. I think it is not doubtful that a much better image can be gotten from the Drake than the Pana. To cinema people this can matter more than the Video features and picture of the Pana (unless they have no money). From the limited information I have read. It appears the the Pana is using a codec not too different than the DV codec, recording much lower HD horizontal resolution (in 1080 and 720), and using 24fps is at 40mbit/s, and 100mbit/s is at 60fps. This produces high compression rations. HDV uses mpeg2 compression, which is much more efficient and records much better quality for the same compression ratio (but 4:2:0 8 bit). So it might only get an advantage over HDV in motion artifact. But until proper information, compared to this here say, comes through it will be hard to say what exactly the situation is. But it looks certain that our cameras will be much more HD Cine worthy cameras. There is suggestion that an uncompressed picture "might" be gotten from the Pana, which would somewhat improve the situation. I think the real star might be the JVC that does have uncompressed output and is a nicely mechanically featured camera. How much is the base line mass production price for a single chip raw HD camera? No more than the $1595 HD1. I actually say less than $500. But you mostly need to be million/billionaire manufacturer to make such a thing from scratch at that price.

April 24th, 2005, 01:46 AM	#236
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Rai, The PC sound market is very competitive. The latest EMU professional sound cards was (may still be) the best in the world (close to 120db SN) and better than much professional equipment. Creative own EMU, and are trying to move higher spec audio to motherboard integration, VIA is also trying o do this, and Intel, but I don't worry too much about them. So the spec of audio on MB are going up (assuming that you are using a MB for this addition of the camera). But also they are making sound cards as USB models. So you have very good chance of finding external ones with specs above 96db, and maybe even MB ones. Go to Creative and VIA audio site (the VIA audio processor is an external professional design they bought). Thanks Wayne.

April 24th, 2005, 09:06 AM	#237
Konst Seraf New Boot Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 12	absolutely agree - there is no problem recording quality sound to separate device. There is ton of solutions from minidisk recoreder/cheap dv camcorder to separate field hdd recorder. What i really like is smth like usb or firewire audio interfaces with xlr inputs and built in preamps, like was excellent m-audio duo (about $200+). Its obsolete now, but there are others. That device/devices could be connected to a laptop and a separate person can control all channels to be recorded to hdd.

April 25th, 2005, 02:02 PM	#238
Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn Major Player Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Buenos Aires , Argentina Posts: 444	Crazy world.Here it is exactly the opposite.It is much much cheaper to pay people than to rent equipment. the weekly salary for a sound man is around $ 180 USA dollars here. So this means $ 30 per day.Weekly means 6 days here (usually 12 hours a day for a feature length film)

April 25th, 2005, 11:24 PM	#239
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	Crap dude! $30 a day? I can make twice that amount working at Wal-Mart pushing around carts!! For a good sound recordist in the U.S., depending on the market, try $50/hour for a 10-hour day at least. Typically after 10-12 hours you go on overtime, which is then time-and-a-half ($75/hr.). On union shoots, they actually get $75 every 15-mintues when you start going over the pre-allotted time. No, expect to pay around $3000 per week for a good sound-recordist, which is just as much as a nice Varicam HD package, and a lot more expensive than top-quality sound gear which rents (like one of those expensive multi-track digital recoders, i.e., Aaton Cantar) at around $1200-1500 per week.

April 25th, 2005, 11:59 PM	#240
Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn Major Player Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Buenos Aires , Argentina Posts: 444	Wow, that should be the reason why Spike Lee was shooting a BMW comercial this past Saturday just 2 blocks from here!!! :0 Imagine Lee shooting Buenos Aires to make it look like New York!! Amazing, isn't it? These days you get a full HDCAM (F900) for less than 2K here. A DP goes for u$ 1333 per week for a feature length film (usually 6 to 8 weeks) or u$ 350 per day if shooting a commercial. DP is one of the highest salaries here. Another example. Catering service is around u$ 8.30 to u$ 16 per day per person.