This is Area 51 OK,
All dimensions approximate

Fed up with cheezy video cameras full of promises but low on punch? This is for you.

A Nikon? movie camera about the size of a Pentax 6x7, big and chunky and great handling, optical reflex for critical focus (mirror down) and a big swing out LCD on the back (mirror up). It records Academy 22 x 16 mm, using Nikkor specially developed movie lenses using the famous Nikkor F-mount; which means it can also use Nikkor still lenses and it can crop to 16:9 and other AR.

Total pixel draw is 3000 x 2000 ( 6 megapixel) spread over a single CCD of dimension approx 24 x 16mm with effective pixels being a tad less. It's matte black and has the classic Nikon? badge in gold over the pentaprism. It sports a total of four high speed Compact Flash slots, at the time of writing that's 4 x 4GB el cheapo CF cards, with a total record time of twenty minutes before a reload.

The CCD is read in four row blocks (each row block approx 500x 3000 ~ 1.5 megapixel) by four parallel DSP containing all the cinegamma and opticals you need with ASA range of 50 to 3200, the four DSP link to four parallel HDV encoder boards each generating a 25 megabit stream which is dumped to CF card.

To summarize, Academy gate size is recorded, processed into 4 x 25 megabit HDV streams on 4 CF cards for a total 100 megabit stream when assembled in the computer. Each stream has embedded control information which the computer software uses to assemble the full frames with level and slope matching for seemless stiching together.

It offers a fixed frame rate of 24p and as such there is no 50i / 60i. It is a capture device only (limited playback/review from the CF cards to the LCD) Naturally once in the computer you can turn it into whatever delivery format.

If the interest is high this camera could be made available one year from now.

It uses current technology - be aware that

Nikon and Pentax use 24x16 mm CCD in their megapixel SLRs
Sony and now Canon can turn 1.5 megapixel streams into 25 megabit HDV streams
JVC have shown parallel CCD reading/processing (split image effect needs refinement)
Panasonic are pioneering tapeless aquisition


Only by informing the powers that be can you get what you really want.

If you want this to happen sign and discuss below.

Maybe another way to get this accomplished is to offer a bounty/reward to the first engineer/hacker to extract 16x9 1080p 24fps from a Digital Rebel or similar.

Some guy offered a big reward for the first person to load Linux on an xbox & it got done.

I'll throw in a $100 :)

Man,

Talk is cheap dude. Sure, I'll throw in my "signature". That makes a whole what, 5 of us? 2 Years ago some guy was swinging around some idea of turning a nikon still camera into a 35mm equivilency video cam with 24p. Ya, we've all heard it. Ya, we all want it. No, it's never gonna happen. And truthfully, not to rain on parades, but with the sudden revolution of 10k HD cameras about to be available, what difference does it really make? I've been on this thread a while now and everyone talked this and talked that about box cams and homemade stuff and whatever. Somewhere about 1.5 years ago I said "guys, by the time this all gets done, somone is going to have out a camera at a reasonable enough price and quality and ease of use that these discussions will be mute. And sure enough here comes Panasonic and Canon.

If you can get this thing going, post it. If not, vaporware man, vaporware.

If you can get this thing going, post it. If not, vaporware man, vaporware.
In all fairness, there are such projects, and they have yielded some promising results. Unfortunately, none that I've seen is ready for primetime. Almost invariably it comes down to getting the data off the camera and into some usable form.

Perhaps, instead of saying "it is unlikely this will come to market in near time" it would be better to ask the question "how quickly can this product be brought to market?".

Dont forget that it makes use of technology which is existing or about to be brought to market, in such a way that it is an 'implementation' issue rather than 'a design up from the ground' issue. The technology is not locked up in a hangar at Groom Lake, its out there on the High Street.

In this sense it is no different from the ipod model - which is to take existing technology, integrate and package it right and collect big time.

Maybe it will bear the name Samsung or even Daewoo - who cares so long as it delivers.

The notion of 20 minutes per reload of a 16:9 full width crop from Academy on cheap flash media is way too good to sleep over. Shallow DOF - you bet

Furthermore; the thinking about a 25 megabit stream per card was based on constant bit rate encoding, if it was variable bit rate then an averate rate of 25 megabit with peaking up to 35 megabit should be possible.

Yes, I really like the idea. Having a Nikon digital camera body to shot video using all the lenses of my old Nikon FM2 and recording on my iPod via firewire cable.
(more or less like Kinetta that I saw on this forum).

I subscribe this request to Nikon.

From my bookmarks

http://www.kinetta.com/home.php
http://www.geocities.com/mammacow3/kinetta.htm
http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/lofiversion/index.php?f41.html
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go1593/is_200405/ai_n6410794
http://www.22film.com/ultracms/content/520/1.htm
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/archive/index.php/t-27024.html
http://www.repaire.net/forums/archives/topic/101989-1.html
http://www.hdforindies.com/2005/12/not-dead-just-building-tension
http://www.geocities.com/mammacow3/
http://millimeter.com/mag/video_nab_12/

I dug up this old thread for amusement....


Just like to thank you Nikon, for adding weight to an old dream :)

Ha ha, that's great, considering you were the one who started this new thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/digital-video-industry-news/128802-nikon-d90-has-720p24-over-hdmi.html

Excellent memory, John! And yes dreams can be true, eh.