S35 digi cinema camera for US$8000

[Dan Hudgins]

I got time to convert the KineRAW-S35 ™ 2048x1080 version of the video Alvin Somwaru helped shoot in Golden Gate Park into Letter-boxed MPEG4 1920x1080 for posting on Vimeo,

KineRAW-S35 (tm) I1 2K boxed 1920x1080 full range (grade a1) "Daisies and Windmills" on Vimeo

I used TEncoder ™ set to 12000 kbps and two pass compression for the conversion from the graded uncompressed AVI but there are still some compression artifacts that show up here and there, anyone have suggestions for a better free, or maybe not free, encoder for making H.264 video files that Vimeo will accept?

I was using just the MPEG4v2 option in VirtualDUB ™ but that is one pass and shows much worse compression artifacts. If you see the video as looking too light and washed out on your MAC notebook let me know about that, I may try to post another copy graded darker. It seems there is a bug in Quicktime ™ where it shows videos too light and washed out looking, under Media Player ™ on my Brother's PC with the CRT monitor set to 1920 resolution it looks OK as far as brightness. Viewing on a LCD or HD monitor it may look like the highlights are burned out and the shadows too dark since I encoded it full range for PC viewing.

If you follow the link for Alvin Somwaru from my Vimeo page for the video above, you can see some more footage on his Vimeo page he processed from Cineform ™ clips shot in the KineRAW-S35 ™ that I have not had time to grade and letterbox yet for posting on my Vimeo page...

[Dmytry Shijan]

The samples looks very filmic! Maybe you can tell us something about situation with KineRAW-S35 model? After first announcement there is no more any info about it.

[Dan Hudgins]

KineRAW (tm) cameras to be shown at booth C12813 at NAB 2013 in Las Vegas

==

Got word from Kinefinity.com (sm) that they will be going to NAB 2013 in Las Vegas (in April),

2013 NAB Show: Digital Media Industry Event for Video, Audio, Film & Communications Professionals.

Quote: [Our booth number in this coming NAB is C12813.]

So if you have wanted some 'hands on' time with their cameras, this will be the first time they are showing them outside China as far as I know.

I've been shooting some additional test footage with both the KineRAW-S35 (tm) and the prototype KineRAW-S8p (tm) and may post that on my Vimeo page when I get it edited together. They are working on a demo reel for showing at NAB 2013, so if you have any suggestions of shots you would like to see you can email them and ask them to have one of their field testers shoot something like what you would like to see maybe so that when you go to NAB 2013 you can see how it turned out. They said they will have cameras there you can look over, and maybe the KineRAW-S35-mini (tm) they are still working on, its a smaller version with the same high quality 100% true RAW DNG recording and S35 sensor with sub-PL mount for using a wide range of movie and still lenses, as I understand it, you can email them for detailed specs if you are interested.

Also the MSRP and shipping should be lower for the KineRAW-S35-mini (tm). So jot down booth C12813 if your going to NAB this year and say high, they have been developing these cameras for many years, and the larger KineRAW-S35 (tm) has been in field testing in China (in addition to the one I got to do calibrations in the monitoring with). They said they are very busy putting cameras together to ship out, so, so far things seem to be going well for them.

==

You cannot judge the quality of the images from the KineRAW-S35 ™ based on looking at some H.264 version, the raw data holds so much detail that some skill is required to blunt it enough to get compressed versions, using Cineform ™ YUV is a much better option for PC playback.

[Markus Nord]

Dan, have you got your hands on the new Mini? Would really know how it feels and how it's operates.

[Dan Hudgins]

I was able to see the KineRAW-S35 (tm) "Mini" (projected MSRP about $3000) at NAB 2013, in fact they worked on it in the hotel room between the first and second days of the trade show, and just got it working.

The user interface at that time was not fully ported to the new controls, it just has a few buttons and an encoder dial that tilts like a joy-stick as well so its like a one hand universal control for navigating the menus on-screen.

I was able to try a 25mm f/2.3 Baltar in Mitchell NC mount on it in a Mitchell NC to sub-PL (KineMount (tm)) on it because the sub-PL adapter is very close to the sensor plane so you can adapt just about any lens to work on the camera.

The on screen displays and viewfinder zoom options looked like the larger S35 and the Super8 version I was testing before, because the firmware is related, so you get live on screen waveform monitor as well as histograms in both raw sensor levels and levels shown through the monitoring LUT, in KineLOG, KineCOLOR, and Kine709 etc.

They tell me they have advanced pre-orders in China and hope to ship many units sometime in the next two months. They have the larger KineRAW-S35 (tm) already shipping in China and many people at NAB 2013 said they were interested in purchasing both models, as well as some interest from companies that would like to be sales reps around the world.

If you have questions you can look at their web site,

kineraw web site

And email them, although a few people have told me they did not reply right away to their emails, maybe because the are busy and are waiting to answer some questions when they have the distribution worked out in detail. I'm working on another video to post to my Vimeo page, and have some more lens tests to shoot for the Super8 model. We were talking about the revised Super8 model and how it can share some of the hardware they developed for the S35 mini to reduce development costs and speed deliveries, and part of that is developing technology using a mechanical shutter to get jell-o and skew free results while still using a low cost CMOS sensor that may work up to 3K resolution, so that is on-going development.

[Simon Wood]

Looks like KineRaw have missed the boat a bit at this point with the Black Magic Camera finally on sale reliably, and the BMC 4K and Pocket Camera around the corner (allegedly). Though it will still be interesting to see how this KinRaw mini develops.

Dan, are you aware of the 5Dmk3 Hack that allows Raw footage from the sensor? Seems people have been talking about looking for a debayering program to work with it, and that seems to be something you are involved in (I couldn't understand it from your website though)?

[Dan Hudgins]

The KineRAW-S35 (tm) and Mini models are finally on sale in Europe and seem to be avalable for shipment to the USA and other places as well now.

http://www.hdvideoshop.com/en/271-kinefinity

There is a discount using the Cinema5D code.

They will be showing at IBC,

Quote: [Hi Dan

We will not attend IBC next week. But there will be a booth shows our
cameras, its number is 11C 80 (Lanparte Booth).

Jihua]

I get no part of the sales of the cameras, I am a software developer supporting their and other RAW cameras in my free de-Bayer program and freeish DI system.

Issue with color balance in smaples on Vimeo made by other people relate to workflow issues that those people are using and the "looks" they may be applying, I have not had the Mini here to shoot reference frames with an re-calibrate the color balance so I cannot say for sure what the quality is but its probably be worked out in time, you can email Jihua at Kinefinity.com (tm) if you have any questions about their current models or the planed S8 and S16 models as more people that ask about the S8 and S16 models they will know you are interested...

I posted some new videos made the KineRAW (tm) cameras I have here for testing and calibration,

S1 KineRAW-S8p (tm) Angenieux f/1.2 6-80mm Zoom Super8 C-mount lens test reel on Vimeo

KineRAW-S8p (tm) R1 ISO 100 to 800 KineCOLOR8 test reel under various lighting conditions. on Vimeo

KineRAW-S35 (tm) Q1 2K EI ISO 160 to 5120 test reel on Vimeo

I'm working on a 220fps video shot with the KineRAW-S8p (tm) now and hope to have that posted in a while when I get some more footage shot in various fps and resolutions to add.

I've added support for the BlackMagic 2.5K uncompressed DNG camera and the Canon raw hack from Magic Lantern to my free de-Bayer program as well as developed a Ubuntu Linux version that is up for download in DANCINEC.ZIP as dancineu.