Jump to content

3 New HD Cameras


Guest Pete Wright

Recommended Posts

  • Premium Member

Hi,

 

In the interests of including some actual information:

 

I just got off the phone with the UK suppliers of those little Redlake cameras, which I followed up just out of interest.

 

I was assured that the imaging quality is top notch - these really aren't just big CCTV cameras; the scientific and medical imaging people won't stand for shoddy images. However one thing they do insist on is complete linearity - you can set up LUTs and other colorimitery parameters, and it then stays as you set it until you specifically ask it to do something else. There is no DCC or auto-knee (not that I expected there to be) which could I guess actually be good.

 

The hi-def colour cameras capable of 30fps (and everything less) are available in Nikon mount. I'm not sure how useful this is - is there a Nikon-to-PL convertor, or is it the other way around?

 

To capture the output of these cameras you need a fast modern PC with a cameralink PCI card. That's not so bad - the board is around £1200, or US$2000, and you'd need a particularly formidable RAID to deal with the data rate, but I don't think that's so much the problem. The software is generally designed to capture to RAM, but apparently there is a hard-disk output option. It outputs raw data (multiframe files) which would then be a fairly minor piece of software engineering to convert into a standard format, but there is a slight software hole there.

 

I was unable to ascertain how realtime that DVI output is, since the scientific and machine vision field's idea of realtime is based on different criteria than ours. I'd have to go to the plant in Holland to follow this up any further, which I'm not inclined to do, so this is probably where it will stay.

 

I think you could probably make this work without too much effort. I might look around and see if there's any similar stuff using B4 or PL mount lenses which I could actually go and have a look at. Y'never know, they might lend me a camera for free to shot some demo stuff - evil cackle.

 

Phil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Pete Wright

Hey Phil,

 

I think that the cameras come in C mount or Nikon F mount. Edmunds Scientific sells adapters to use any brand with the C mout. The adapters are $65 each. I am still confused if any of the industrial lenses would be good enough for HD or not. Century Optics sells converted Minolta nad Canon lenses in HD mount for a lot of money. You can get the seme lenses for a fraction of that in the original mount. Then you can use the C mount adapter. Maybe you could comment on your tests at dvinfo.net Alternative Imaging Forum. Everyone there would like to know what a real pro thinks about the cameras.

 

Pete

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I saw that over there and haven't read much of it. Everyone is very enthusiastic but it seems they are all excited to design a product by committee over the internet.

 

Once again, I haven't paid much attention to it but, in a few months, I believe, the whole topic will die. Such a collaboration is very intricate and technically detailed. The time alone will make it obsolete before they get started. If they get started.

 

But, hey, everyone needs a hobby. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Peter,

 

After looking at Obin's pics, it seems like there's the potential for some really nice imagery, it's just that he keeps on overexposing everything, which makes a nice color-correction job much harder. Also I'm not to keen on the bayer converter that he's using, it has a lot of artifacting. With the overexposure thing, I'm not too sure he's maximizing the dynamic range of the camera. A similar comparison shot he did with the DVX100 looked absolutely horrible, major clipped highlights and background noise, so if his camera photos aren't looking so great, and a DVX100 looks totally unacceptable, then he might be shooting under real extenuating circumstances that nothing would look good in anyways. It's just real hard to tell right now as again, every image he's posting has hot-highlights in one form or another, even when he says that there's no overexposure in the original image. Overall the resolution looks okay, kind of like a soft 16mm camera stock from the early 80's or late 70's. That could be from the lens he's using. Color is off too, but again, that seems to be something with the color balance that I'm sure could be corrected, the RAW files he's been posting look green like Viper shots, and the green doesn't seem to removed or balanced as well as it should in some shots.

 

Other than those shortcomings he does have my interest piqued a bit, although I still don't believe dragging a full PC around on set is very inducive to reliable and efficient film-making.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Pete Wright

Hey Jason'

 

I'm kind of confused myself about this stuff. What would be nice if you could plug couple of the future better cameras, when they come out, to a computer and record somehow in sync. You could use this setup to make a 3D film. All you'd have to do is mount the cameras next to each other.

 

Apple has some new high speed computers out. I think that these are 2.5 GHz G5's. They have liquid cooling and super quiet operation. Maybe the cameras could be plugged into one dual input card, or two cards and record simultaneously.

 

Pete

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MORE NOVICE QUESTIONS

 

As I am a writer first and foremost I am finding some of these technical terms bewildering. I originally posted on the Imperx camera a while back. I would be grateful if anyone could answer these questions as no one in the UK is interested.

 

Regarding the Imperx camera : I'm presuming this is 4:4:4? Does this mean that if have a black magic design board which can capture this video, will it be able to output at 10bit 4:2:2? I mention this as this is the current FCP 4 max.

 

Secondly since the interface for the camera link appears to be for PC, how will I go about getting the images into a MAC?

 

Regarding storage, is a raid necessary? I know it wouldn't be as convenient be I have see 300gb external hard disk drives? which would give about 45min uncompressed storage per drive, if my calculations are correct.

 

The imperx camera seems to have a c-mount as standard, which I presume means 16mm? They mention an F-mount adaptor. Does this mean I could connect Nikon F-mout stills camera lenses?

 

In a nutshell, what equipment, file format conversion(s),software processes will be required to get the image from the camera into the NLE. (lets presume its a black magic designs capture board and its destination is Adobe premiere pro)

 

 

Any opinions very welcome.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

RAID: YES!!!!

 

RAID creates multiple backup copies as it runs, allowing for redundant copies of anything sent to a hard drive. So, if your main fails, you have a perfect copy for backup.

Well, That depends on the RAID type. Fastest RAID (Striping) has no redundancy. I believe RAID 5 does speed and redundancy, but not as fast as Striping.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Basic RAID Information

 

Summary:

 

RAID-0 is the fastest and most efficient array type but offers no fault-tolerance.

RAID-1 is the array of choice for performance-critical, fault-tolerant environments. In addition, RAID-1 is the only choice for fault-tolerance if no more than two drives are desired.

RAID-2 is seldom used today since ECC is embedded in almost all modern disk drives.

RAID-3 can be used in data intensive or single-user environments which access long sequential records to speed up data transfer. However, RAID-3 does not allow multiple I/O operations to be overlapped and requires synchronized-spindle drives in order to avoid performance degradation with short records.

RAID-4 offers no advantages over RAID-5 and does not support multiple simultaneous write operations.

RAID-5 is the best choice in multi-user environments which are not write performance sensitive. However, at least three, and more typically five drives are required for RAID-5 arrays.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...