Lasse Roedtnes

Hi All, It's incredible how much this thread has evolved during the last month or so - thanks for the many replies it confirms us in the belief that there's a need for a new camera. I'll keep replies short and to the point this time as I'm travelling abroad. We will only do C-mount. CS mount is not an option due to the design of our 45 degree oscillating mirror shutter. The other mounts mentioned will not be implemented either due to lack of space etc. We have tested the following lenses with our camera so far... Schneider Optivaron 6-66mm Zeiss Tevidon 10mm Cooke Kinetal 9mm Pentax 8-48mm For those interessted in buying used lenses I can reveal that we actually bourght the Schneider lens on eBay for a bargin and had that collimated later on. Regards Lasse

Hi Erkan, I think I misunderstood what you meant before. If your main concern (which is very valid) is that your sound guy is "far away" and he wants to adjust the sound parameters such as recording gain, bass, treble etc... he would have to go back to the camera and fiddle with it there then there's (a few) good solution for it. A ) Your sound guy uses a small audio mixer box which he carries locally on him - these are available from multiple sources online - he then connects this via a 3.5mm Jack cable to the industry standard Line input of the camera - in the camera menu you then set the recording gain to 1 and turn off the AGC this allows the external box to take control completely. B ) You wait until we have the apps up and running from which you should be able to control audio settings as well. :) Regards Lasse

Hi Erkan, Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but I dont understand why you would like to have a seperate audio recorder? It doesnt make sense to make it modular - it only adds cost and complexity of connectors, extra plastics, batteries etc. and it hurts the estics of the camera. The only modular thing we are planning for our camera is that you can order it with XLR + Phantom power or completely without it meaning that you can still use the 3.5mm jack microphone connector or stereo line input but the XLR connector will not be monted then (you could send it in later and have it retrofitted though) The reasoning behind this is that it's a seperate printed circuit board with it's own 48V power supply and gain amps that goes together with the XLR so this obviously has a cost adder but *I think* most people will be just as happy by using a regular 3.5mm jack microphone. This is up for debate though. /Lasse

Hi Benjamin, We are contemplating the following options: A. One audio file per shot (every time you press record a new file is started) - this is what we have today already B. One audio file per session 1 (a new file is started everytime you power cycle the camera - it records sound even though the camera is not recording film also) C. One audio file per session 2 (a new file is started everytime you power cycle the camera - it does not record sound when it's not recording film) D. One audio file per casette The trouble (for option C,D) is that the internal firmware has to merge the files on the fly which is a bit tricky to do as it requires keeping track of elapsed audio so far but that's our firmware teams headache - we can not promise that option C,D will make it into the first firmware at present time. Option B has been is implemented this morning. In our opinion, sound on super-8 has always been a problem. We wanted to overcome it in an easy matter without people having to carry yet another "box" with them for the audio recording alone, if we think of our option B or the contemplated option C this would be exactly what people where already doing today (I believe). We could strip away the audio entirely from our camera (it would still be a crystal synchronized camera though) that would properly reduce the price point by 200$ but would anyone really appriciate that? Regards Lasse

Hi, Time-Exposure is technically possible - it *could* be made possible to adjust the time between each image and the time of each image exposure. (time which the shutter is open) We havent done this as we've had plenty of other stuff to worry about, but that being said it could come as a firmware upgrade later on. You wouldn't be able to see the image while it was being exposed though (shutter opened) only in the "idle" period (shutter closed) could you see it... so for example if you choose 1 frame every 5 seconds with 1 second exposure time it would mean that you can see the image before it shoots the first frame - then the screen goes black for 1 second (the programmed exposure time) after which you would be able to see the image in the view finder again for another 5 seconds. Bear in mind that there's only 1 viewfinder on this camera and even if you "hacked" the camera you still wouldn't be able to see the image during exposure as a result of our oscillating mirror shutter principle. This was considered originally (frame grabbing during shutter open operation) but it means that it just "freezes" the last known image when the shutter was opened and then showing that (while shutter is closing and closed) until the shutter again was opened so you still wouldnt be able to see what's being exposed that's why we didn't design the electronics to do this (as it would just cause confusion) it would eliminate the flickering though but there's also a big cost and complexity adder for implementing the frame grabber compared to what we are doing today. Best regards Lasse

Hi Nicholas & All, Thank you, I would also like to stress that this is no "lasse cam" it's been a team effort to come this far - it's taken two years and heavy investment to get to this stage and it's a commercial design - we did not originally want to release pictures of the camera before it was completed however in spur of the moment I made the mistake of revealing a little too much and then the ball was running. We then decided that we might as well reveal what we had instead of keeping people waiting and facing the inevitable comments like "I knew it was a hoax" etc. As said it's a prototype the appearance will change ;) Also my role in this camera development is not so significant - I'm the lead architect on the electronics - nothing more. Let's entertain a few questions shall we :) Users can access it by voiding the warranty (you have to dismantle the sides) - this is not recommended obviously, that aside, I talked to the mechanical designer and he stated that it would be possible to remove the cmos camera and make provisioning for optical viewfinding through the side of the camera by drilling a hole and using some mirrors (it would not be a walk in the park though) - we decided against optical viewfinder because we didn't want all the hassle of making the optics that's all. Let me start off by saying that none in this team have ever owned or operated a Mekel or Leicina camera, talked to Mr. Ambsbery or Mr. Pendley. Our sole source of inspiration came from professional 35mm cameras - we are investigating patenting our film pulley though (the pin registration etc.) which is why it's a "black box" on the photo - loads of R&D hours and money has been spend on this and it's truely unique. We are in the early stages of QA testing at the moment. --- We will do a more formal release of information next month. Thanks for your support! /Lasse

Hi Benjamin, Please read the original post - it answers most of your questions :) The monitor is 16:9 - the viewfinder is standard 4:3 - it's possible to set the monitor to 4:3 as well right now the monitor streaches 4:3 to 16:9 but this is a setting on the Lilliput not our camera. The gate is widened like Max8 - but is aligned to the "new center" The camera has standard C-mount so it can be used with any lens of this mount type. The monitor doesnt do anything except provide viewfinding with overlaid information on light meter, fps etc. There's no DC input - there was originally but we opted against it after finding that a single battery can sustain several hours of operation. It will retail way cheaper than your mentioned 5,000€ price tag - how much depends on how many we produce first off. The camera is fully synchronized so regardless of operational speed the audio will be consistant. Regards Lasse

Hi Erkan, The camera only supports standard kodak cassettes - it's impossible for us to change this at this stage of development. Actually the camera has provision for internal storage for audio as well - originally we didn't know if we wanted to have SD-CARD and all the R&D hassle it brings along - we have the USB port so we could have made the camera appear as a harddrive in windows/linux/mac from which you could fetch the sound and log files but we decided against this and went with the SD-CARD. The battery acts as a counter balance for the camera so it resides where it is for a purpose other than powering. Because our camera is very energy efficient the battery doesnt get hot - we also wanted to use an industry standard camera battery - we didn't want to invent our own battery casing. As mentioned it's our first prototype (the casing that is) - the aluminium casing you see cost us close to 7.000$ in tooling and setup costs to have custom made at a metal factory if we wanted to deviate too much from our initial design we would have to pay new tooling costs which at present time is not an option for us. It's possible to attach a standard handgrip underneath the camera - we do not supply one however. Our shutter is an oscillating mirror (please read original post and explanations further up) the beamsplitter is use solely because we want to add light meter functionality - if this was not a requirement the beam splitter would not be needed. Best regards Lasse

Hi Matt, This camera was designed from ground-up so this has been taken into account ;) /Lasse

Hi Heikki, with the current firmware it only records audio to file when it's recording actual film. monitor audio is always present in the background regardless of recording state - you could record this on a seperate audio recorder although this is not what you are looking for, i know. I will take your idea about audio buffering into consideration for the next firmware release - here's something that could be done "easily" without too much efford. - work flow explained from boot: 1. you turn on the camera 2. it starts recording sound only into file "background audio ddmmyyhhmm.ogg" - where ddmmyyhhmm is date/time 3. you press at some point record 4. "background audio.ogg" file is closed and a new file "recording audio.ogg" is started with the actual recording 5. you press stop 6. the "recording audio.ogg" file is closed and a new background audio file is started .... process repeats itself.... this has the advantage that you can take what every audio you like from background audio (anything from 1second priort to recording to x minutes) Best regards Lasse

Hi Andries, The mechanism is mechanical - there's several optical sensors inside but they are used for parking positioning, film speed assesment, frame counting etc. The electronics inside is not PC/ITX based - it's all custom embedded based around an energy friendly ARM Cortex M3 80MHz microcontroller. Regards Lasse

Hi Andries, The camera has an oscillating mirror shutter meaning: There's a direct path between the lens and film when the shutter is open (exposure mode) When the shutter is closed/closing it has a mirror that projects the image (from the lens) into a beam splitter. - the function of the beamsplitter is: Project light from the lens into the light sensor. Project the image into the CMOS camera (through a ground glass) used as viewfinder. There's one amazing advantage of this method which is that there's nothing between the film and lens making the recording crystal clear. There's a drawback of this method as you can only use the viewfinder when the film is not being exposed (shutter closed) this means that at lower frame rates you will see flickering in the LCD (because you are only seeing with the cmos camera while the shutter is closed - when the film is exposing ie. shutter open you will see darkness/nothing) generally at frame rates above 18fps this is no issue except for extreme low light conditions where it get's harder for the cmos camera to function. So what is this "Parking" thing and why is it needed? When you turn on the camera (or stop a recording) the first thing the electronics does is that it advances the film a frame ahead making sure the shutter is in parked (closed) position so that you can see an image in the viewfinder lcd because of the mirror shutter operation described above. The SD-CARD stores (along with audio) a log file containing information of start frame of each recording - stop frame and amount of "waisted" parking frames etc... this is useful when doing the video editing later on. There's no film heater inside the camera at present time - why would you need this? Also thanks for all the encuraging comments! Best regards Lasse

Hi All, Here's a few photo's of the prototype - bear in mind that it's still work in progress, the red parts are printed plastic parts and will not be there in the final version - the body is 3mm aluminium black anodized. What you get here is an exclusive sneak peak - there will be video's available and professional photo's taken once the final camera has been made and we are ready for production. The photo's are taken with my mobile phone so they are not the best quality by far. Please enjoy! Side view of camera As mentioned the red potentiometers will be replaced and the cover behind them will not be there as well - this will be all aluminium the reason for the cover was because there used to be an LCD display here but that was taken off. The potentiometers control monitor volume for the headphone and recording gain for the microphone. All functions / menus are controlled by the JOG wheel - this will not change. There's one record button, an on/off button and a third button "Phase Advance" which is not showed here as the aluminium side used for this photo series doesn't have the hole for it. The SD Card is popped up here (it's used for storage of audio) - when inserted it aligns with the aluminium edge of the camera. On the back side here's what you get: 3.5mm Jack stereo line input 3.5mm Jack monitor audio for headphones 3.5mm Jack mono microphone input Neutrik XLR + 3pin Jack for true 48V Phantom powered microphone (mono) USB for firmware upgrade, parameter settings, audio retrieval etc. 7.4V Lithium Ion battery which will last several films worth of shooting on a single charge. (there are many different batteries in different sizes available) A photo of the Lilliput monitor showing the thru-lens shot with overlaid information - right here the camera is parking it's shutter - what is not shown (because of current parking mode) is: Audio VU level Light level SD Card and audio information Also you have the option to choose from remaining or elapsed frames. Camera seen from the other side with the lid on - the white wifi antenna is also visible. Sorry Matt but you need to go somewhere else for a c*** tease this time ^_^ Regards Lasse

Hi David, I'm on my way out on vacation tomorrow, three weeks in Mallorca so it's going to be a little while until I can post some teasers. By the way someone asked if it was possible to attach an external monitor - well infact there's no monitor build into the camera itself to make it lightweight and because we reckon that most people are not satisfied with buildin viewfinders anyway (some thinks 4" is too small some people like 10" - some wants B&W and some wants something else) so the idea is that one can attach for example a Lilliput monitor or pretty much anything that accepts an industry standard CVBS video signal input and use that as monitor. There's an option to have both "raw video" out and/or "overlaid" video out with all the status details so that one can record the actual video without the overlay while still seeing it on their monitor viewfinder. Stay tuned it's going to be cool! /Lasse

Carl, it's a good idea you mention regarding the laser crossmark - we've been investigating similar techniques but so far none of these ideas have made it into the camera simply because it adds expensive optical solutions to the mix and we would like to have as little optics inside as possible. regards lasse

Hi David & Matt, This camera doesnt come with a lense per default - but that's a good thing. It has a C-Mount so you can use pretty much anything you want - we do not want to be in the business of selling lenses :) And yes it is crystal sync'ed :) Zachariah, The camera fully supports both 24fps or 25fps you can even program 23.976fps if you want NTSC compatibility when you later on do the telecine. Regards Lasse

Hi David et. al. First things first - 12-16fps frame rate is not unrealistic to make - we havent enabled this in the firmware at the moment simply because we havent tested that range - upgrading from 58 to 60fps is the same thing we would have to test it first but I wouldnt expect this not to work - the difficult part is that we have to run an entire film at that frame rate and measure an abundance of things to make sure the film is in sync at all times/loads - and yes the camera is very quite, this was one of the key design goals. There's an almost fully functional prototype(*) with the featureset described in my original post (otherwise it didn't make sense to ask right ^_^) we are currently in the process of filming demo video's with it as well as finalizing the firmware - and believe me there's a truck load of firmware in this thing eventhough the camera itself is mostly mechanical. More info to come (*)=Almost being that we do not have any phone apps ready at the moment, WIFI is working however.

Hi Matt, I know there's been alot of other posts on this forum about people wanting to produce a new super-8 camera - and it just goes to show that's alot of interest but in order to actually make one is a completely different and extremely difficult/expensive ball game - I know all about this - however never loose faith, think what would have happened if NASA had that attitude when they talked about going to the moon "just another pipe dream - aint going to happen" :P - sometimes all it takes is someone to be proven wrong and perhaps that could be you :) Zachariah: This is "not just, yet, another digital camera" like the Blackmagic this is true film camera with digital viewfinder so it cannot really be compared - the cost of this type of camera is substancially higher because of all the mechanics which goes into it. And yes it does have a "Super Duper-8 / Max-8 widened gate ;) David: This camera does infact have a true pin registered pressure plate which mechanically interlocks the film during each frame exposure - the pressure plate in the film casette is not used, just like the Merkel camera you have shown a picture of. Regarding the 200ft film option this is not possible as the camera is designed for the standard kodak casette only so all the mechanics including the camera casing would have to be altered which would not only delay it further but also cost a fortune. When talking about frame rates the hardware phase locked loop (electronics) can pretty much support anything from 1fps to 500fps with a precision better than 0.1 fps increments - the motor and batteries on the otherhand cannot - I've done lab tests running it at about 80fps to stress test the mechanics this is doable however it's only possible by driving the motor above its specified maximum voltage so from a warranty risk assesment perspective this would be "no go" - we could consider doing special firmwares which did allow this but with a reduced warrenty or alternate motor configuration. By the way what are the typical rates for camera rental? Heikki: Terve!, unfortunatly kickstarter is not an option for non US, GB citizens so it would have to be Indiegogo or similar if it came to that. ----- I'm still hoping more people would add feedback as to the feature set, price point and wanted features - especially firmware features. Take care /Lasse

Hi Bill I guess my auto correction dictionary caught me in a bad moment it should have been hypothetically as you've already guessed. By the way, if the hypothetical camera existed it would have these dimensions 185cm x 90cm x 110cm not including the lens or back mounted battery ;) Hopefully this small size would hypnotize you into buying it if it became available :D

Hi All, Hypnotically let’s assume the following semi-professional camera existed on the market to be put under the christmas tree this year ^_^ A newly designed Super-8 camera with widened gate made in aluminum that records sound in license free Ogg vorbis format 48 KHz @ 16bit stereo (CD quality) on a removable SD-CARD, film frame count information is also stored on the SD-CARD as a log file along with the audio to help aid cutting. Featuring oscillating mirror shutter for the best optical path through the lens towards the film (no glass or filters in between lens and film) when the shutter is closed the image is projected towards an integrated CMOS camera which acts as a digital viewfinder. The camera uses standard Kodak film cassettes, however the film is brought out of the cassette and into the widened gate with integrated pressure plate and pin registration, which completely freezes the film during exposure to make sure the bouncing never occurs which is a typical trademark of older super-8 cameras. It features a build in light meter for easy operation. The frame rate is programmable from 16fps to 54fps frames pr. second with crystal phase-locked-loop synchronization (Lip sync is fully achieved throughout an entire film). Remote controllable via WiFi (the camera creates its own hotspot) and is compatible with Android, Iphone and Windows Phone. Exchangeable lenses via C-Mount. Viewfinder through the lens (while shutter is closed) via internal camera for use with standard external monitor such as Lilliput etc. (standard NTSC / PAL vide out format) Phase Advance feature to increment the phase if you want to interlock the camera with a TV or florescent light for example to remove shutter bars typically seen. The external monitor acts as both viewfinder and camera status display – it shows the following information: Remaining/Elapsed: feet, frame, meter Exposure control Audio VU monitor System parameters The camera is firmware upgradable via USB. It has a mono XLR microphone input with true 48V phantom power and a normal stereo jack 3.5mm line-in and also 3.5mm jack mono microphone-input, there’s also headphone output (3.5mm jack) for monitoring the sound. Microphone gain and headphone volume is adjustable. Now to the big question what are you willing to pay?