Digital Bolex announced at SXSW 2012

[Lee Mullen]

Seems they have already pre-sold all their 100 planned cameras.

Bloom is giving us all his twopenneth The Digital Bolex D16. Raw 2K for less than a cost of a 5Dmk3? | Philip Bloom

[Richard Gillespie]

I have heard Fisher Price have shown a huge interest in this! They may even have it in the shops by Christmas, along with the launch of 'My first film studio'. Let's hope so.

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

Impressive marketing. Sounds like what the original Scarlet was to be: 2/3" single chip. But Red gave up on that and went for a bigger chip. Maybe the smaller chip market still exists.

Weisscam are launching a camera (or camera platform) at NAB with interchangeable sensor boards that include 2/3", Super 16 and Super35mm. Although, I suspect it'll be more expensive that this camera, they must think there's a market. There are quite a few Super 16 lenses out there.

WEISSCAM TO LAUNCH NEW “SOHA” CAMERA PLATFORM AT NAB 2012

[Steve Game]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

The BBC and other UK broadcasters all shot on 16mm, including negative for their both their high end documentaries and dramas. There were also a number of successful feature films shot on 16mm, including "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

The weak link in the chain were the telecines of the time. Running that original film material through a modern TK comes up with results far better than the original transmission and the quality often surprises people.

I should add that I bought my first 16mm film camera for £40, it was an old Bolex, you don't need to buy a brand new camera with film.

The BBC started shooting some fairly large budget programmes on 16mm in the '90s in anticipation of HD broadcasting. The contemporary 16mm stock had a native resolution that matched HD at a comfortably low price point. What they didn't cater for was the level of grain, which although low enough for raw viewing and SD digitisation, created merry hell with inter-frame compression at HD resolution as it gobbled up too much of the bandwidth. The consequence was that several programmes that could even have done well on the export market, only ever had SD showings.

Steve

[Brian Drysdale]

BBC, with the odd exception, always shot on 16mm or Super 16 until recent times when engineering did what what they've been trying to for years. In recent years the BBC have shot dramas on 35mm, ITV have a history of shooting 35mm dramas for sales in the US. An example would be the Avengers, 35mm from 1965 onwards, before that it was 405 line B & W.

A number of people would argue the grain issue given modern degraining methods, however, you still get Super 16mm being used for slow motion shots on major BBC productions.

Economic factors also come into the equation, now that there are digital cameras that don't look like video available, although they may not actaully look like film on closer inspection.

[Robin Davies-Rollinson]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

BBC, with the odd exception, always shot on 16mm or Super 16

Indeed. I shot a number of dramas in the late 70's and early 80's for BBC1 / 2 on 16mm with the Arri BL and then the Arri SR.
However, HD was on a distant horizon then...

[Lee Mullen]

Wow. No disrespect but you are a veteran sir.

[Graeme Sutherland]

What I don't get with the design is why use an SSD as a buffer, instead of being the recording media.

A 512 GB SSD is around $700 at Newegg, and a bit more here in the UK. If the 3 MB / frame figure is accurate then that would give about two hours of recording time.

My concern about the project would be that both Red and Ikonoskop have failed to deliver cameras in as aggressive a timeframe as the Digital Bolex team are proposing.

The real risk in the project is going to be in its software stack. Joe Rubinstein does have a background in image processing, but I don't know what his experience in the industry is like. (And I can't find him on LinkedIn either.) Hacking up a one-shot application is rather different to delivering a maintainable, bug-free piece of code.

For those of you who aren't software engineers, the rule of thumb is that you always double a programmer's estimate. One professor I knew at university used a sliding, exponential scale, so a two week project would actually take a month, one estimated to last a month would be a quarter, and so forth.

It's a cool project, and their intention of using as much off the shelf hardware and software is a good one. Fingers crossed they pull it off.

[Buba Kastorski]

i think of a form factor, is this a 100% hand held camera? how do you set it on the rig, or a tripod, (forget the steadicam) and I don't think they will implement in camera IS

[Chris Hurd]

The hand grip is removable and yes it has a standard 1/4-20 tripod mounting socket.

Interchangeable lenses with a choice of lens mounts (EF, PL, B4 etc.), so no it probably does not have in-camera IS.

[Peer Landa]

Originally Posted by Brian Brown

I, too, am skeptical. Any team that can't center their dual-mono interview tracks in post seems like they might now be laughing all the way to the bank of over-promise/ under-deliver vapor-ware.

After I had donated my $40, I pointed out a couple of issues that I had with the project -- also mentioning the sloppy audio track(s) in their promo video. This is what Elle replied in regards to the audio:

> You are totally right, we forgot to center our audio and deserve all the fcp ridicule the Internet can muster.
> This is what happens when you edit a Kickstarter video after a 24 hour road trip from LA to Austin :)

Since she also gave me her private email, I suddenly feel much better about this project -- I'm so gullible ;^)

-- peer

[Brian Drysdale]

There have been some updates with full HD output SD cards and requested changes:

Specs Update Full HD output SD cards and more | DigitalBolex.com

Also, maybe a change from the "estimated $3299 retail price"