Tyler Purcell

My comments fit within the framework of something affordable for general consumer consumption. The high-end Chinese market is rarely tapped outside of China because the prices increase dramatically. Nobody discussing China manufacturing would add those speciality markets to the discussion of mass production. This is why they were ignored in my comments. We are not talking about government funded technology projects, with huge multi-billion dollar contracts. Can you imagine going to one of those firms and asking them to build a film camera? They'd laugh and hang up the phone. China's "manufacturing strengths" -the reason you would use them in the first place- is their low-cost labor force, which leads to high yield, low cost production and free trade agreements. When you pay your employees $5,000 a year (on average), there are very few countries who can compete. When the required labor force needs to be highly skilled, things change dramatically. Again, they have zero interest in low yield, highly technical manufacturing. I know this because I've asked dozens of manufacturers personally over the years.

No, I absolutely don't. I also think it's impossible to make a camera anywhere near the price of USED cameras, even the higher-priced 416. A great example of that is the Logmar Super 8 camera, 50 were made and not all 50 were sold. If only 48 people in the entire world could afford a $5,000 Super 8 camera... then even less would pay for a $20,000 super 16 camera because that's about how much it would cost to make a home brew. I do think it would be awesome to have new, all-mechanical Super 16 camera, made with modern technology. But it wouldn't create better images then a 50 year old camera. That's the real trick with film cameras. The technology was perfected long before any of us were born and it's only been refined since. Unlike digital technology which in my opinion is far away from perfected in the same way.

It's the truth. I worked in manufacturing and design for mechanical and electronic devices for years. I was an engineer and dealt with Chinese manufacturers on a daily basis. This is how I made a living and I was very good at it, won many awards including best in show at NAB. So yes my broad generalization is how me and my staff talked internally about China's capacity. We tried outsourcing many products to China, including software programming because we couldn't afford to do it in-house. The results were catastrophic on every level and every time I've had to deal with Chinese vendors with one-off custom products, they have failed to achieve any standard I'd consider acceptable. Our product used lasers, mirrors, photosensors, motors, belts, plastic parts and lots of PCB/IC's. The cost savings of making it in China vs the US was negligible for the low quantities. Vendors were simply uninterested in making 10 or 20 items, they were only interested in high volume. Because what we made was so complicated, we couldn't even get a sample without paying full boat for development. We even helped write the machine code for them because they couldn't figure it out. My dad was also in the manufacturing business for decades, visited China on multiple occasions to help negotiate new agreements. His company designed power supplies for high-end integrated systems for HP and Compaq. They could have moved the entire assembly line to China and saved quite a bit of money, but they choose not to. The results he was seeing from Chinese test samples was poor compared to the US made power supplies using Chinese PCB and integrated circuits. He found, even if you specified a certain component, they would find a way to cheat. Either re-labeling physical components, hiding the fact they were a different model number and/or simply using off the counter PCB's and claiming they couldn't make what was required for the price. They cut corners everywhere and refused to burn-in products for more then a few minutes. I've also been in other manufacturing businesses over the years, including the paintball industry where the cost to manufacture in China was more expensive then the states thanks to the low quality. We tried to get someone on board, but nobody was interested with the low quantity order. Those are my personal experiences with precision product manufacturing in China over the last two decades and I'm not in any way claiming to be an expert. Someone else mentioned making a camera in China a few pages ago and I simply said it was impossible and that's based on MY experience. I'm certain the Kodak Super 8 camera will be made in China, but it's nowhere near as complex and I'm sure it will be 90% plastic and electronic, again what China is "good" at. It's not a "racist" comment, the US is not good at mass production of electronics like China is. You wouldn't hire a US firm to make the iPhone 8 for instance, we simply don't do things like that. We're good at making precision components though, made with good clean (non diluted) stock.

Right, but my point is... a bicycle is a bicycle. All of the dozens of Chinese bicycle makers, make bikes for a wide-range of distributors. This offset's the cost of making a more specialized product in limited numbers. Bicycles to this day are still made by metal specialty companies. They buy tubing in different dimensions, cut them to fit their design and weld them together. They have milling machines to make parts like cranks and sprockets. They have anodizing baths to give the parts color and even an assembly line to put it all together. Sure, carbon fiber layup is another thing, but you can do carbon fiber layup at home, it's not complicated at all because the molds are generally made of wood. It's more labor intensive, but that's why they charge more money for them. Making "custom" carbon fiber bikes is actually pretty easy in the long run. All they do is cut the molds based on the riders data, fold the carbon fiber around them, bake and assemble. So what Chinese manufacturer makes high precision metal components, precision glass components, plastic components and precision electronics/motors under one roof? Nobody does. This is the big problem. You can't pay a Chinese company to make you one single part of a product, it doesn't work. I've tried, it doesn't work. They need to make the ENTIRE product in-house and as I just stated, nobody in China does all of those things in-house. All of the DSLR cameras and stuff, they have multiple factories who specialize in each component. There is zero chance they'd put our one-off product on their assembly line, do all the beta testing and insure it works before delivery. Maybe they'd take our money, spend a year trying to make something that works and deliver complete junk, OR something VERY expensive. Might as well hand make it here in the states.

Yes, it's absolutely true and again, if you re-read my post, you will see it states "small batches". Also, there isn't a single part on a bicycle that comes near the precision of a spinning mirror shutter, pull down assembly, gate/pressure plate, timing/drive system and viewfinder. Bicycle parts are generally not made in small batches. Plus, that same manufacturer making the bicycle part for one distributor, is making a nearly identical part for a different distributor. So they use and re-use the same drawings, castings and/or milling machines to make millions of parts which are very similar. With a film camera, everything would be new to whoever makes it. Chinese manufacturing is really only interested in long-term mass production on a large scale.

Cool! tho I will say, had they used an ebm it would have been a lot easier! wind up cameras don't work so well in the air! lol

What? Hmm, IDK about that. I thought the high end cameras were made in Japan. That's why the consumer pays a premium. Right, but the lens doesn't have external focus and it has a fixed aperture. It also has an imager smaller then a pen cap. So where it's pretty cool and it does work well for some situations, it's still a toy in the grand scheme of things. If your idea is to use plastic for the viewfinder, I think you'd find it to have too many flaws and aberrations when made at the size necessary for a super 16 ground glass. Heck, the whole viewfinder system currently used on film cameras is pretty complex and if one component isn't absolutely flawless, if the surface of the glass isn't at a high polish, there are noticeable issues with the viewing. As the operator, you won't know if the problem is the lens or the viewfinder. This is WHY we use high end optics in the viewfinder and why it's so critical. Unlike digital cameras, the only real way to tell if things are right before shooting is seeing the optical path on a film camera.

Re-read the earlier parts of the thread, where I mentioned straight 16 gates with larger S16 apertures. That's where the discussion came from. My point is that, why would you want a camera that has one side S16, but the other side straight 16? It seems like Arri was just being lazy.

Ohh I wholeheartedly agree some of the DJI stuff is pretty cool. I've used the Chinese follow focus kits and they were garbage compared to the preston. Yes, they were easier to setup, the preston is designed for high-end cameras with external power etc. Still, the accuracy and speed of the Chinese units wasn't nearly up to par of that of the Preston. Also, as I said earlier, electronics are China's specialty. They are not good at high precision mechanical things because they simply don't have the tooling. If they did, all of the Japanese car companies would use them to make engines because it's SO much cheaper then doing it in Japan. China is good at making vacuum formed plastic molds in high volume. They are good at making cast parts in high volume. They are good at making integrated circuits and PCB's. But when it comes time for precision, throw that out the door. Even some Japanese manufacturers have a tough time producing the high tolerance levels of European manufacturers. Now, the big problem comes not from the horrible diluted Chinese metallurgy, but it also comes from precision optics and glasswork. You would need to hire a very high-end lens manufacturing company to make the optical viewfinder path. That would be done in Japan at great cost since there wouldn't be many of these cameras made. Furthermore... I bet if you handed a Chinese manufacturer a 416, they'd hand it back to you and say no way. They have very little interest in making small batches of precision stuff. They only want to make hundreds of thousands of components because thats their strong point. When something goes bad, they simply do a whole-unit swap. That's why you don't see high-end stuff coming from China. They have to be able to produce enough units so the defect rate isn't a problem. It's absolutely possible to make an all-new camera, they're not THAT complicated. However, it would cost a lot of money. The $5000 USD Logmar camera is a perfect example. They knew putting in an optical viewfinder would raise the price too much, so they didn't bother. They only did what they could do in-house with limited outside help, which is why the retail price is so "low" considering it's a one-off design like any new 16 camera would be.

The big question is camera rental. There weren't very many 2 perf movements made, so buying/owning a 2 perf camera is difficult. Renting can also be a challenge, as most rental houses have dumped their 35mm cameras. The best bet for 2 perf is Panavision, but they'd rent you a Gold II package, which is 3x the size of a IIC, though silent. Where 3 perf and 4 perf cameras are everywhere. As David says, 1.3x anamorphic and 3 perf is the best of both worlds. Save on film stock, but also use the full frame to get 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Of course, those Hawks rent for around $5000 a week. YIKES! Ohh and yes, S35 gates are available for the IIC, though I'm not sure if there are any other modifications required to make them work.

Yea, I was gonna say those LED panels are RIGHT THERE! :) Nice write up David. Great insight to what you did as well.

There really isn't anything else for that price bracket, with the kind of quality of the pocket. Blackmagic designs kinda hit it out of the ballpark on their first attempt and nobody has released anything like it. Remember a few critical things. Still cameras are designed to shoot stills, they are NOT designed to shoot video. All of them crop the imager, which changes your field of view dramatically. Also, none of them have the high quality Pro Res 10 bit 4:2:2 or 12 bit 4:4:4 raw capability built in, like the pocket camera does. They all require external recorders to get any serious "quality" out of the image. The standard 8 bit 4:2:0 100Mbps MPEG capture these cameras can do, is substandard in today's world. It maybe a great "efficient" codec for windows computers and streaming online, but it's not for professional applications and people who care about quality. Now it's true, there are a few decent still cameras that CAN shoot video... Panasonic GH4 and Sony A7SMKII for instance, but both are more money then the pocket and are lacking the 10 bit 4:2:2 support internally. I firmly believe if you're ok with a 1080p camera, nothing beats the pocket for the sub $1000 price range. You can get them used for $500 on ebay all day, every day. That's a killer deal in my opinion.

There really isn't anything bad about the metabones speed booster for the majority of cinematographers. The difference isn't that great though, it maybe brings the 2.88x down to 1.88x maybe? I've done back to back tests and put the results into an editing program to see if it was worth owning one and in the long run, I didn't feel it was useful. My biggest problem is that I'm old school, I light the crap out of everything and I use the sun for most of my lighting, so the camera is already WAY to sensitive for me. I run IRND .6, 200 ISO, 45 deg shutter and I still have over-exposure issues when shooting outdoors. The metabones just exacerbates that issue even more, increasing the amount of light hitting the imager by a stop. So for people who need more sensitivity, the metabones adaptor will work great AND give you less magnification, which for some maybe nice. In the end, you can't make the pocket have a S35 field of view, nothing will do that. The pocket looks like S16, which for some people like myself is great, that's what I'm use to shooting. For others, that look isn't as "cinematic", so the camera may not be the right choice in that case. I mean, I think it looks great: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xonfgpua4u2kqyn/Blackmagic%20Pocket%20with%20Zeiss%2012-120.mov?dl=0

The pocket camera magnifies your glass 2.88x.

That makes sense, for sure different then the other brands.

How is that gap maintained?

Ohh, so it's per scanned minute. Well, that's interesting. Makes complete sense. :)

How about the over exposed area on the right side of the image? That also seems like it shouldn't be there.

My camera always stops with the shutter closed, does yours?

HA! Nice job! :)

Can you post some samples? I plugged the holes that remain after you remove the loop formers. That's one area light could get into the exposing area. The other way is through the silly footage counter. Someone recently had a similar problem to yours and all of their foam protector for the footage counter was missing. The foam goes bad and when you re-build the camera, it can simply fall off. That leaves a pretty gaping hole for light to get in. One solution is to cover the footage counter with a piece of black tape, another is to build your own seal for that area.

How can a 2k scan of S16 be more then a 4k scan of 35mm? Doesn't that seem counter intuitive?

It's a botched design, laziness on the part of Arri. They fixed it on the 416 for a reason. New cameras, maintained by professionals, don't scratch film. Since those cameras now have millions of feet run through them now, since those cameras are dinosaurs with little to no support, they will start to scratch film as those wear surfaces loose their high polish. A design change that only touches where there is no image, would have resolved that issue for the future. I frankly don't believe the pressure plate doesn't pinch the film on the sides by a tiny amount. It sure does on my Aaton. It sure does on my Bolex. It sure does on my K3. It sure does on all the 35mm cameras I've run over the years. It's hard to test on the SR's because you can't thread the film through the magazine without going through the sprockets, unlike those other cameras.

The pressure plate does push the film against the gate, or it wouldn't work. .01mm of flex and the camera is not in focus anymore.

HA! The R&D alone would cost upwards of half a million. China is only good at making plastic and electronics. So sure, them making the HD camera, no problem. All the precision metal and glass components, they'd struggle to make. Even Arri sourced from other manufacturers who were MORE specialized then they were at making mechanical bits. Now Japan is a different story, but they're not much cheaper then the US or Europe in todays market. They could easily churn out a brilliant camera, but it would be very expensive. Unfortunately, cameras are expensive to design and manufacture, especially one's that use precision glass optics, which is what Logmar removed from their $5,000 USD camera. If they HAD a real viewfinder, it would cost a lot more money.