The main issues are bandwidth - camera head to the PC, PC bus in and back out to the RAID and RAID continuous throughput.

1920x1080, 12 bit, packed 24fps is about 75MB/sec average. This is a 64bit/66MHz PC, 2 drive SATA RAID. No compression in recording. Sometime later maybe.

Our camera head should be equal to or better than another Altasens 3562 design. We will have a 3570 when available.

On Bayer, I've heard the 25% number before, also 30%. It depends on what color you look at. For red or blue primary colored objects, it is much worse. For something with a mix of RGB, it might be nearly zero loss with the proper algorithm. So, I'll give you a very qualitative 'it depends'.

Steve,

I'm not computer expert, I'm student filmmaker. Please explain me following:

1. Resolution should be equal to Sony CineAlta recorded to tape 1440x1080p because Bayer is known lose about 25%. Or does Bayer loses vertical resolution too and resulting effective pixels be 1440x810?

2. Color will be better, so will lattitude, because is 12 bit, Sony is 8 bit system. If you record at 10 bit, how better lattitude will you have compared to CineAlta?

3. The shutter is some kind of rolling type, which creates unnatural effect on movement so mechanical shutter must be integrated into camera? How much extra is with the mechanical shutter? What is mechanical shutter reliability, noise level?

4. Sony has X300 and X310 box cameras with HDSDI, even HDV output. You can feed HDSDI to computer with dual compressor chip and compress everything real time 6:1 with Prospect HD. Is there way get 10 bit signal out your comera, use same computer system? Would RAID still be needed? Filmmakers need complete solutions. Why don't offer small factor dual processor computer with Prospect HD with your product, and LCD? I posted info on such computer in HDV main acuisition forum.

5. You have very nice product but are in group of buyers that is buying 3K USD HD cameras, 500 USD 35 mm adapters, makes wedding videos or student type films on most part. That why your low price is not appreciated.

6. I think you should develop your product further. There will never competing products from Sony etc., because they need sell 10x more expensive products, which market bear. If product is less convenient than Sony's product, no big deal, indie filmmakers will buy, if image quality is there.

7. You have finalized system; you should ask DVinfo to give you forum on that product. It seems that here your product not very appreciated.

8. If I were you, I would continue investing in indie filmmaking market segment. It would be very profitable. You just need market it to the segment where buyers are.

9. Is chip 2/3"?

10. You should work with P+S, have them develop series 400 35 mm adapter for it.

11. You will not gain profits by lowering price but by adding features and promotion to different market segment, product improvement, cooperation with DP's who give their opinions.

Radek

10. You should work with P+S, have them develop series 400 35 mm adapter for it.

Expect to pay 10g more for the product if so.

you can indeed shoot a movie on 35mm film for under 10grand. The movie 'Primer' was shot for around $7,000 on 35mm and it happened to be one of the best movies made last year...

http://www.primermovie.com/

Expect to pay 10g more for the product if so.

I would not buy P+S. I would buy one of cheap ones but SI needs it if they want attract rather pro customers. That's where their profit will be, once they can start make money there, they can develop better cheaper products to us.

Radek

I think the thing you have to realize is that at $5000 you're competing with minidv and mini-hdv cameras. At $10,000 you're competing with 35mm film. You can shoot a feature film on 35mm for less then $10,000.

I couldn't disagree more. At $5000 you are blowing minidv out of the water, and definately not getting what you deserve for your efforts. Maybe at $35,000 we are talking about competing with film (and that's low)...but while a $10,000 film can be made...you should budget the extra $15,000 for therapy.

However more importantly...at 4:4:4 10bit...you are competing with film in image quality and that is really saying something for $10,000. Especially since once you have the equipment paid for (lets not forget that equipment can be rented or financed while filmstock itself cannot) then your tape or other capture media is about 1/100th of the cost of film...litterally making movies for pennies on the dollar.


This is just my two cents but independent filmmaking is all about weighing the quality vs. the convenience vs. the price and you have a rare opportunity to offer all three, if you don't get greedy.

That's alot easier said than done. These guys have been working on this project for some time...and all that labor is worth something. Personally, I would charge more (but also I'm lazy and getting me to do any work means overpaying me). Also there is the issue of production numbers. Too much demand can be a very bad thing if they were to create such a camera and sell it for $5000. Could a small company fulfill 30,000 orders in one week? Supply and demand curves aren't perfect curves in the real world...they are stair stepped at the various levels of production efficiency that can be achieved with real world machinery. The amount of money it would cost to fulfill the demand a $5000 price point would require the use of a production facility of unreasonable proportions for a risky venture such as this. They aren't Sony....they just have better engineers :}

I couldn't disagree more. At $5000 you are blowing minidv out of the water...

that was my point. at $5000 you are offering the best option. the thing about these systems is that they're not complete out of the box. a $10,000 camera still requires a very high-end computer and lenses and tons of storage. we're talking close to $15,000+ when all is said and done :(

This is the thing that concerns me about all this. Almost a year ago I saw Obin capturing 14fps from a thousand dollar camera at uncompressed 8bit and that footage video looked excellent. It just looked so much more vibrant and organic then standard high-definition. There were problems with that camera concerning the shutter, etc. but it was close. Now a year later all anyone is focusing on is these $10,000 solutions. I don't know how i'm going to capture 4:4:4 12bit uncompressed. Obin spent a year trying to build a computer that could do it and it still hasn't happened. How about focusing on a data stream that the average person can capture to their laptop? If you could get uncompressed 8bit from a thousand dollar camera, that still kicks the shit out of high-def. Go ahead and mark that one up $4000 and i'll still buy it. Maybe i'm totally clueless to how supply and demand works but I know how much independent filmmakers are willing to spend. I guess maybe a company like silicone imaging would rather sell 10 cameras at $10,000 then 100 cameras at $5000 because its less work to make?

I agree with Matt, developing something like this is an unbelievable amount of work. Just flooding Steve with posts saying "cut the cost in half" is not helpful. The Altasens camera that they are basing this system around costs $5000 for just the box, so unless SI is supposed to throw in the software and buy a capture card from Epix to give away there is no way this camera will cost under $5000.

That being said, it is a very interesting point of what niche this camera would fulfill. I have always considered this project as a 35mm substitute, and when you shoot 35mm many things must be considered. It is not an easily portable solution and it takes 3 people to run a camera. I see this camera being very similar to that. The only real difference between the two solutions is that with this you do not have to pay the extrordinary cost of developing/color timing/printing/ect..

I am a professional videographer and would LOVE to have a shoulder mounted system shooting 1080p uncompressed that ran off a battery for 6 hours, but right now its just not gonna happen. I believe that a totally hardware run solution is the ultimate answer but that takes time and tons of money, Obin is working on it. The software solution gives a solution to us now however. The one thing that I am wondering is the possibilities using the cheaper SI-3300-RGB, then it would be possible to have a solution for around $6000 I am guessing. But the real stitch is Panasonics new baby coming out this fall that will shoot in DVCProHD straight to solid state memory. That camera will be about as expensive as this project and it won't have as nice images, but it will be MUCH MUCH MUCH easier to use.

I am really pulling for this project in whatever way it manifests itself I have been following for over a year. Good luck to both Steve and Obin, but I think it will be a lot easier for people to pay $9000 for an Altasens if they can buy a $5000 SI-3300-RGB solution, try it out, and realize they want the upgrade of the better chip.

Ive mentioned this idea before, but didnt get a lot of responses. Everyone is talking about $5000-10,000 camera systems which would be in the range to compete with the upcoming panasonic and jvc hd(v) cameras, but couldnt it be done a lot cheaper?

Personally I would not spend 10s of thousands on a homemade camera due to the high probability of something not quite working correctly and lack of funds in the first place. Also, it seems to me that there is a point where it becomes exponentially more expensive to build your own HD camera system, that happens when you have to build portable raids or use cameralink. This means if you want to keep costs down use gige and keep it to a data stream that is possible on a single HDD. Tomshardware shows there are plenty of big, relatively low cost 250-400GB 3.5" SATA drives that can run with a MINIMUM practical write speed of 37MBps.

The silicon video 9T001C camera from EPIX uses the same micron sensor as the si-3300 (steve verified this) and it comes bundled with a gige framegrabber and cable and software for $995.

Hook this up to a small formfactor (probably shuttle) computer with an athlon64 winchester core CPU (from what i understand the best power consumption in its class, although i havent looked into the new venice core) which all together is likely to cost around $600 once you add in ram etc. Make that more like $1000 if you add in a 12v power supply and a high capacity heavy duty battery belt.

However, assuming the bandwidth limitations are the 37MBps hard drive and 33MHz PCI and the gige. It should still be possible to get 1920x800 8bit at 24fps for 2.35:1 and you still get the flexibility of programmable framerates, ROI, binning (for better than bayer color?) and 10bit color so you can choose your balance of color, resolution and framesize. Also it gives you compatibility with various really fast c-mount lenses for shallow DOF. So throw in another $500 for a nice set of angenieux f0.95-f1.3 lenses for up to a stop and a half better low light and shallower dof than any 3ccd lens.

The main problem as i see it besides getting used to XCAP (which i havent heard amazing things about) and finding a good resolution to shoot at being limited to 37MBps (although i wouldnt want to have to deal with much more than that in post anyway assuming 3x more data for rgb but then lossless ~2.3:1 compression would bring it to about 50MBps). ROI at 720p would probably leave the usable sensor area closer to 1/3" but would allow more flexibility in frame rate and the ability to use 10bit color and that could be fixed with a $100 homemade 35mm GG adapter (but that would likely introduce a loss in sharpness and a lot of loss in light).

Overall cost ~$2000-2500 for a camera that could run tethered (gige can get pretty long) to the computer or possibly be shoulder mounted. A homemade shoulder mount that could optionally hold the computer case and/or the camera head would be few more $$, but then it might also be possible buy (or use since i have a bunch sitting around) an older CPU and shuttle barebones as I am not sure of the system requirements for capturing over gige in XCAP.

Anyway I'm kind of obsessed with this idea and am seriously considering going ahead with it, but tell me if you see big problems I missed. But I tend to consider 1080p to be more than I need and would probably prefer to shoot in 1.85 or 2.35 aspect ratios anyway. tapeless 10bit uncompressed 24p recording from a 1/3"-1/2" CMOS chip with fast manual movie lenses seems pretty awesome to me especially at a price less than a dvx100. Of course the dvx100 takes less than 30sec to power up... but then it cant double as an editing station :)

Oh yeah and another $200-300 for the 7" touchscreen LCD and whatever shipping charges I didnt take into account in the prices.

eric, I checked out the primer movie website and it says the film was shot on super16mm and blown up to 35mm.... and its only 77min, which im sure cut the cost down a bit. I'm pretty sure shooting a >90min 35mm feature would be pretty impossible for $7000 or even $10,000

I'm pretty sure shooting a >90min 35mm feature would be pretty impossible for $7000 or even $10,000

this is all off the top of my head, so i am sure i'm not exact on figures, but i'm probly pretty close. 1000' of vision2 is around $600 (something like $.60/ft iirc). 1000' mag of 35mm is roughly 11mins. (90min / 11min)x$600 = ~$4900. So.. even if you already owned all the camera gear, editing equipment, etc.. and got everyone to work for free, with even a 2:1 shot ratio you'd be pushing $10k.

(someone feel free to correct me if my math was insanely wrong.. it is 8am and i havent slept yet)

The Altasens camera that they are basing this system around costs $5000 for just the box, so unless SI is supposed to throw in the software and buy a capture card from Epix to give away there is no way this camera will cost under $5000.

Uh... Altasens doesn't make cameras -- they make sensors. Their sensor costs about $1500 -- NOT in bulk. Forget about software and capture cards -- what we're talking about is a FPGA-based device that streams data from the sensor to a couple of hard drives. It's not rocket science. The parts would cost at the most $3000... You could mark it up heartily from there...

eric, I checked out the primer movie website and it says the film was shot on super16mm and blown up to 35mm....

oops.. my bad.

BTW, just because I'm being critical of the direction some people are going in, that doesn't mean I don't wish them well... even if I can't afford these more expensive cameras, if they are profitable, then there will be more chance of someone making something cheaper... I'm just trying to remind people that us low-no-budget filmmakers need a camera too.

JUST MY TWO CENTS:

Through the more than a century of film production there has been always one issue:
Shooting film is Expensive, since the beginning and till the end.There is no other way for it.
Cinema and Film Production isn't/wasn't made for people with no money.
If you are ready to produce a "film" you are also ready to Know and understand that it can't be made cheap.
On the other side digital technology and new workflows opened the gates for much more filmmakers to realize their dreams.Film production became more affordable but one thing still remains:It is not at "Zero Cost".
Of course you can go out and shoot the next blockbuster with your MiniDV camcorder.After that comes Post and may be a transfer to 35mm, and guess what: It isn't cheap!!!!
Lightning is not cheap (just go out and get the pricing of just an HMI lamp), Film negative, development and post equipment is not cheap.Even if you weren't paying anyone for his work, there is still the fact that someone needs to recover the money invested on equipment, eat, and pay the rent.
So I will say again something I wrote long time ago:

If you are a filmmaker and you are not prepared to invest the minimum money on your basic "tools" (which by the way are supposed to generate some profit for you, I mean make some bucks) how on earth are you able to buy a brand new car which just generates expenses ?
Would you trust a surgeon who uses a kitchen knife because he doesn't want to pay the "high" price for a scalpel?

Juan,
In general I agree with you as long as people aren't convinced that great tools make a great film. I'm sure a great filmmaker with a DV camcorder and a PC will produce something more watchable than a ...lesser talent.... with a $200K tools budget.

I've seen this effect in woodcarving. Phenomenal stuff done with sharpened scrap metal vs. the newbie who spends $500 on the best tool set he can find. It is skill and practice that set the bar. Sure, the skilled person can be limited by poor tools and the unskilled person can be assisted by good tools but the talent and practice make the result.

Yes it costs money to make a quality product, but do you really think the people with money want to spend it as much as someone who is trying hard to keep costs down? They're in the same boat.

Price points aside, making either product (the one that SI is working on and the HDD machine we all want) the best they can be is the main goal.

I'm not sure I agree with that. There are people who have money and make money with their equipment who know equipment will pay for itself, seems to me thats a lot of security and big reason to buy equipment. For the student/indy filmmaker its much more expensive to make an expensive purchase since in a lot of people's cases they wont be making any money back because they dont have enough experience. I mean who is more quick to spend money on expensive HD equipment than a production company who has paying clients itching for HD content? Those are the people who have the money, I am the people who are trying hard to keep costs down because chances are I wont be making it back (and by the time i start actually making money with doing this I'm likely to have new equipment) but I still want to make an awesome product in HD now if possible.

I'd buy a camera with problems for $2000 even if it meant having some technical difficulties on the set because production time doesnt cost me much money. People with money and bigger productions would pay $10,000 for a higher quality, less buggy camera system; I wouldnt because I dont have the money.

Cinema and Film Production isn't/wasn't made for people with no money.
If you are ready to produce a "film" you are also ready to Know and understand that it can't be made cheap.

I couldn't disagree with you more. Movies have, can, and will be made for very little money.

Would you trust a surgeon who uses a kitchen knife because he doesn't want to pay the "high" price for a scalpel?

I would trust a talented surgeon with a plastic spork over a hack with a laser scalpel.

For the people looking for HD and without "lots of money"

Just go out and buy the One CMOS HDV Sony camera.It gives you 1920x1080i and costs just 1,800 dollars.

@Eric:
Well, just tell me one good and famous movie made with no money.If it was shown at a Cinema ( I mean not Digital), and not shot on film the least it can cost was around 30~35,000 dollars.(and this means having just one or two final copies with sound).
In case you say 35,000 is cheap, so then 10,000 for a Good camera can't be called "expensive", right?

@Steve
I see you got the idea ;)

@to all others

Ok, it was my fault.I should have mentioned that my comment was based on making the asumption that someone looking for a Full RAW (uncompressed or not) removable lens system with at least 1920x1080 with color higher than 8 bit per channel should be a pro or semi pro.
If you are a film student you don't need this camera.If Lars Von Trier can shoot using MiniDV ,why a film student needs something better if not using it for profesional stuff?
Darren Aronovsky shot Pi using a Bolex, and in my opinion it is a quite good movie.He wasn't using an ARRI 435 or the like.

Footnote: Nothing personal fellows.Just common sense.I work professionaly as movie crew.I also do some post stuff.
So my basic idea would be something like this : "You don't need a War Tank to go to the Supermarket"

juan,
I dont imagine filmmaking to be about necessities but about creativity. People could all be shooting movies on analog video formats and people would still watch the stuff if that was the norm. The norm for mainstream cinema nowadays seems to be 35mm or HD. A student doesnt need to use HD for certain kinds of exercises, but for learning how to increase production value with HD or to shoot HD and learning how to take advantage of variable framerates or a 10bit image? If these are factors that could make a production better, or teach a student more, or get me a job (who is going to hire me to shoot in HD if I havent done HD before?) I dont think it would be reasonable to say students shouldnt have them. Students strive to be professional and want to be seen as professionals as quickly as possible, and its possible that creating images that people think look more like the professional, modern 35mm or HD images normally seen in theaters may help a student to be seen as a professional.

There are of course many other moer creative and more important aspects of filmmaking (varying from project to project), but as an aspiring DP with a fairly technical background, it seems limiting to me to be restricted to one frame size, one frame rate, one lens, and the option of only sensors <=1/3" . Anyway my point is I could deal without it, but if I can have better technology to create images that in some ways are more pleasing and use more flexible technology, especially in the same price range as inferior technology, then I consider it reasonable to pursue that option, especially in a world where its not so unusual for people to not get hired just because their camera doesnt do 24p.

@Eric:
Well, just tell me one good and famous movie made with no money.If it was shown at a Cinema ( I mean not Digital), and not shot on film the least it can cost was around 30~35,000 dollars.(and this means having just one or two final copies with sound).

When you say an independent filmmaker needs $30,000 to pay for 35mm prints of their movie to screen it, I think you're out of touch with what's happened in the industry over the past decade. As a truley independent filmaker, your job is to make a movie and get someone to buy it. That's it. Robert Rodriguez's made El Mariachi for $7,000. He shot it on film, transfered it to vhs and cut it on two VCRs. He took that cut he made on tape and from that he sold it. After the studio bought it they spent tens of thousands of dollars cutting it on film and making prints and creating a marketing campaign. But Robert still gets to run around saying he made it for $7,000 because that's all he spent. Imagine if he had been born ten years later and was able to shoot on a borrowed HD camera? His budget would of been almost $0. Well... someone is going to pick-up where he left off. Its only a matter of time before the advances in technology connect with someone talented and ambitious enough to pull it off.

Maybe the technology isn't there yet. These cheap HD cameras might not be good enough and these $10,000 industrial set-ups are still going to be out of reach of most people. We're getting close though and its exciting.

hm
a big story trying to keep rather short.
Living in France not french at all, once a week
all wednesday I'm on air on a free low power
radio station. It is Live political, uncorrect
and low tech but for about 2 million people to hear.
It is only 2 hours but all administrations knows about it
and there is really sometimes some impact.
We are not 124 bit SACD we are using of the shelf cd
and chep mik's but we are uncut live and talking
what a commercial radiostation
most time will never tell you.
We announce where free or quite free 3-8 Euro or $
live music or theatre is to be found and there is pleanty of,
but the newspapers mostly announce only blockbusters.

Let's resume, there is a niche, a need for such a radio station.

So there certainly is a niche for such live political uncorrect
TV station that's DV and if HD a 1080 Sony will be fine maybe with some 35mm adapter using some surplus film or foto lenses.
It's about ENG some experimental shorts maybe but never more.
It's live a lot of fun and not about running any money.
It's shows where all that money taxes are crying for is gone,
and the number of poors is counting more each hour.

That's the story and Sony or Pana at he lowest
entry level are way good enough. Cinerella and Linux
Cynebolic and free streming software is waht the future is about,
Vegas is great and a seven year old dual pro SGI people are
throwing out wit Maya complete not the latest version
will be great for yaers
So what, there is a lot of talent out just whith no
money on the hand, but but with low tech to have a theoretical audience of 2 to 3 million people
that's great and stremin ww is even more fantastic.
Let's face it, let the others dream of HD low budget blockbusters.
Film is the fastest way to loose your money,
there are so many things to be paid you can't get
the set for free.
New's, ENG, Shorts some
crazy Animation that's quite
a free lunch.

sorry for my bad english
sitting outside dreaming of streming
political uncorrect free live content
promoting with low tech clips
the local music groups,
thers is a lot work out
crying to be done
not dreaming of free 3 Cmos sytem

wow this has grown insanely huge...hard to read through all the stuff...question....

how much does the SI-1300 chip cost?
how much do the USB model chips cost?

how easy is it to capture through their software without writing your own?
What are it's limitations?

thanks

Riley,
These are sales questions to be discussed off the list. I have forwarded them to our sales manager.
Steve

for anyone that wants it I have a 1300 camera I will sell at a discount..we are using other sensors now..the 1300 is just sitting around....

check this for some progress on the dvx100 HD output...

www.dv3productions.com/HD.wmv

and yes the project is still alive and well...working hard on the board design for our 1080p system...

that looks pretty good...even on windows media.

what kind of lens? how was it being recorded (compression)?

I am a little bit confused why Obin show us this DXV100 clip ? Why to hell in this thread? Its just a clip from a ordinary video cam. Ordinary video look, no cmos look, no 35mm look, no 4:4:4, no 10bit, so tell us why?

Obin, on what design you working now? Is it this old FPGA story, or your PC 4:4:4 10bit thread design?

Well frank this is no normal dvx video clip but, a dvx100A with a direct Pipe from the CCD's to a usb port on the side..I am also beta testing for reel-stream.com

jsut thought you guys would like to see it...it's 1280x720 8 or 10bit with NO compression..IMHO it's much better then the Panasonic VariCam.....

we are working a a big CGI shot using this "mod" on our dvx100A...I will post when it's done...looking VERY good, you could NEVER do what we are doing with standard old video like dv or dvcpro!

This is very encouraging...the video on the reel-stream site is very choppy. I didn't think the progress was actually this far by now. Very nice looking footage.

Okay, i understand, but it is still a ccd and without 35mm dof.

But realstream is a big step in the right direction. COOL !!!

Work it with or without a PC?
Can you record direct to HDD?
One or two HDD?
3.5 or 2.5HDD?

Question to all.
Why most of the people complain about CCds ??

Hi Obin, I just checked out the video and it looks amazing! Is there a thread discussing this mod or is this something that you have worked on without mentioning in detail on the board? Is the mod difficult? What kind of ccd's are you using and did you install them yourself? Anyhow it looks great and is a very exciting development.

thanks,
Omar

The video looks awesome!

For your new device, are you using the Rockwell Altisens CMOS chip? I read that JVC is using it in their next camcorders and it looks amazing: 2/3'', 1920X1080, and with unusually good dynamic range.

Am I stupid, or it's me almost the only one that understood that video was made using a PANASONIC DVX100 MODIFIED by REEL-STREAM (which Obin bought and is really happy with his great decision)????

I am probably the one who is confused....is the video clip shot in sd and then rezzed up to 720P? If so that I am shocked at how good it looks.

Nope. The guys at reel-stream manage to get a HD signal from the DVX using pixel shift that already exists in the chip setup!

For info, you should go to www.reel-stream.com to find out all about this mod.

Obin: would it be an idea to post your results at their forum as well? People are dying to see some results there!

Steven

ps: footage looks super-clean!

Obin, I think 1280x852 would be the correct size to use.

Hi all
that was Juan did is the best thing so far.
CCD or CMOS is religion, CCD is better with low light, fact.

No 35 DOF, rubbish no -HD even build up from an
industrial cam with Altasens has WITHOUT any adapter 35 mm DOF, FACT.

There is no CMOS nor CCD out with 25 f/ps equivalent to 35mm film, fact.

IF yo do have the money go for a Viper with a Grass Valley Venom Flash Pak
that's a 4:4:4: RGB signal over dual HDSDI conection from the Viper in the flash pack. 10 minutes the same as a 1000 feetfilm reel. You should have three of them, nice pack.

There is Blu-Ray, data transfer rate max 36.5Mb/s Data capacity 23 GB.

Sony has Professional Disk with data transfer rate 72Mb/s (one head)
144Mb/s (two heads, write) 170 Mb/s (read) Data Capacity 23Gb.

Sony XDCAM family will use this disk, BUT different Media formats could be a repeat of the VHS/Betamax debacle, no thank's no need for.

So disk based is the only open and cheap way to go.

To be dependend of the P2 card is no good idea.
An USB disk connected to your Laptop and
your footage is just there as with P2 or any BLU-PROFESSIONEL-HD disk.

Resolution is one thing, low light, good optics, good handling, and colordepth is important, very important too. To upscale the Juan DVX100 pics should be easy. This cam with an decend simple to use, dead simple but genius 35mm adapter, WOW

next week we start production of 2 30sec commercial projects using the reelstream output and a production version of the micro35 adaptor...should get some nice results i hope...i will post images/video when we get it....pcb boards are being done up for our 1080p hd project....;)'

btw as for the ccd vs. cmos....if they are both raw data capture at or above 10bit they are both very good quality imho...just look at the dvx footage so far...and the rolling shutter is a large issue with cmos...we are doing our current design around a 1inch format ccd....its 16mm diag. in size

No 35 DOF, rubbish no -HD even build up from an
industrial cam with Altasens has WITHOUT any adapter 35 mm DOF, FACT.

You better watch yourself there Ron.

The fact is that depending on how open your aperture is, you're going to get a "similar" DOF to 35mm at a smaller aperture.

For example, if you had a lens that was a f1.3 on a 2/3" sensor(there are lenses for 16mm our there that can do that), then you're going to get similar DOF to 35mm optics at around f2.8. And if you've ever shot with 35mm optics, you'd know that f2.8 is pretty shallow DOF.

You don't need a 35mm sensor to get that "35mm" DOF, nor do you need an adapter. What you need is at least a 2/3" sensor (which there are many out there), and shoot at apertures larger than f1.6.

If you don't believe me, then run down to your local Barnes and Noble, and go get a copy of the American Cinematographer's Handbook. Look up their DOF charts for 16mm, 2/3" CCD/CMOS, and 35mm, and you'll see where the two cross-over, or where the actual "in-focus" areas match for a given set of focal lengths.

Thats some good info Jason. I think a lot of us forget that sensor size isn't everything and the optics used determines a lot about what kind of picture your going to get.

As for the DOF argument a some high school physics will tell you that any sensor size can have the exact same focus effect with a lens with a different focal length. Reality causes things to get more difficult and usually expensive because of the transmissive properties of glass. To get more light to your sensor your gonna have to shell out some more green.

I wonder if their is any sort of DOF wiki out their on the web.

Is the rolling shutter artifacting still an issue with the faster readout on the new Altsens? Has anyone seen video from this chip? Obin arent you using the si-1920HD?

Their are a lot of issues to contend with on the altasens sensor if you dig deep enough. At 60p or even 48p the rolling shutter artifact shouldn't be a big issue but their is the issue of what results because the sensor has to be running at such a high speed. Big data. Sensor has to run around 150mhz @12bit = 214 MB/s, less wanted data but that is the raw data rate including blanking.

So no matter what you need something capable of writing that speed and running at that clock rate. If you only capture ever other frame you need to be able to write at that rate to drives or to a buffer and read the buffer to the drives. Means twice the number of drives or much more complicated hardware. The buffer would have to be at least a frame so you need 3mb for a frame.

That is only one of the many issues. All sensors have their own set of issues it seems, and the altasens has a trade off of less electronics being required initially but will need more processing and more things to make it work in a hardware design.

I have been reading up as much as I can on the reelstream dvx mod, I am a little unsure of a couple of things however; First of all are the ccds producing a real hd image or is it just a rezzed up version of sd?

I have looked over the clips posted and they seem to look very good, so maybe I am answering my own question. What has really struck me however is the notion that this may perhaps be a better solution than the Altsens single cmos camera. Correct me if I am wrong....a camera like the si-1920hd with the altsens chip will produce a 1440x1080p image off a single chip after the bayer filter, correct? Acording to the reelstream site the dvx mod will put out a 1540x990 image when at 4.4.4 RGB, 3ccds. True the sensors are smaller but is'nt the image going to at least be the same quality as the altsens camera? Like I said I am not sure that I am on the right track with this, just wondering what everyone else thinks.

thanks,
Omar

The the output is not "true hd" in terms of pixel per pixel, it is upscaled based on pixel shift which is similar to debayer to my understanding. So once you crop to 16:9 is acts more like a bayer 720p camera to my understanding.

Keith, thanks for the response....that seems to make more sense. It still looks great though. How is your camera project going? Did you ever get a new website up?

Imagine it like being something like the new Sony HDV camera but recording frame by frame uncompressed and with 12 bit bitdepth.
Forgot to mention the "progressive part"...

I don't want to disclose anything at this point about what I'm currently doing so their won't be a new website in a while. I'm just going to say I'm being quiet and working on something.

As for the sony hdv camera, the ccd's in the fx1 have about 3 times as many pixels in comparison to the dvx100 but I don't think they are pixel shifted. The sony hdv camera would likely deliever a superior resolution if it was modded like the reel-stream dvx but at a much much higher datarate.