Digital Bolex raw camera, no longer made

cantsin

@goanna http://www.c-mountlens.com/2011/bolex-reflex-rx-lenses-the-difference/

endotoxic

camera fantasy. Its all i can say for this hipsters.

Cde

@endotoxic Are we really still at this level of discourse? There's plenty to criticise about the camera and footage without resorting to name calling.

vicharris

@BurnetRhoades I'm afraid to make this comment and derail the thread but most of those examples of the blown out window are not a good comparison to the Bolex clip. I can see some outside detail in all your examples but in the Bolex clip, it's completely blown. Nothing. Now I know there's probably 20,000 watts of light being bounced around on the pro clips and who knows, maybe the outside it fake on some of the examples but I've always been able to save a little bit of the outside when I have light on any kind on the inside, even house lights, with my BM cameras.

Once again, I get it, many variables but I think the blown highlights are litter harsher in the Bolex clips than what we're used to with some of these newer cameras.

BurnetRhoades

Now I know there's probably 20,000 watts of light being bounced around on the pro clips...

No, there's not. No film lights as I stated. Read up on both The Tree of Life and To the Wonder. These are available light and practicals only features, basically high end Dogme, shot on a mixture of 35mm, 65mm and digital.

Yes, some of them have minor details visible, when the camera and subject are within mere inches or a few feet away from the windows, as I said. Inverse square falloff of light at work, maximum potential for bounce in hand. Look at the ones where subject and/or camera are a room's distance+ from the window/door. Nothing. C'mon man. And that's with two and a half stops of more DR at most, yet you still get blown highlights and edges.

My point is, it's unfair to expect this, or the BMD cameras, or most cameras to do better or even equal to what you can do with film when you're shooting available light interiors. Maybe if it was an Alexa. But the fact of areas of over exposure and underexposure do not equate to either a bad camera or bad photography if the image as a whole works in context (whether or not it's necessarily "pleasing" in a classical sense).

Too often these test clips get reviewed without any sort of proper context or evaluation of what the clip ultimately represents. Some arbitrary, idealized standard is projected onto everything that has very little correspondence to real work in actual films. What someone can do in a "lab" situation is both irrelevant and boring. To me at least. I want to see what these cameras do in real situations, especially those with which it was supposedly designed for.

cantsin

The best negative stocks like Kodak Vision3 have about 14 stops DR. The Alexa has 14 stops, too, BMD's cinema cameras (including pocket but excluding the 4k production camera) 13 stops. 13-14 stops dynamic range have become the modern-day standard DSLR/mirrorless camera sensors (13 stops for the NEX 5-N, for example, 14 stops for the Nikon D800).

My bet is that the D16 has a usable dynamic range of 10 stops. This would be perfectly normal for CCD/global shutter sensor technology.

lunalobo75

I found this to be an interesting read: http://www.digitalbolex.com/forum/shooting-on-the-d16/philip-blooms-video/#p8197

CFreak

@cantsin Thank you for the link to this wonderfully updated version of the 1976 article linked at the bottom.

I have been amazed how many people use c mounts on cameras w/out a prism (ex: digital cameras) and don't know this and aren't concern about the swirly bokeh they get. Just that it's a cool lens. For stills, IMHO.

I had always known this info from the article linked in Dennis Couzin, 1976, THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BOLEX PRISM http://www.city-net.com/~fodder/bolex/truth.html

Since a digital cameras has no prism, the reverse RX rule theoretically applies:

"The RX RULE is reversible. RX-mount lenses will work well on C-mount cameras provided that they are stopped-down past f/3.2. There are also implications for macrophotography. For example, at 1:1 magnification the effective f-stop of a lens is twice the indicated f-stop. So at 1:1 an f/1.6 C-mount lens will work about as well on an H16 RX camera as on a C-mount camera, and similarly for an f/1.6 RX-mount lens."

The update spells it out clearly for today, but, doesn't mention the reverse of the RX Rule.

I own a lot of nice Switar RX glass from my days of shooting film. To me this means if I want to shoot on the D16 with my Switar RX 10mm I had better stop it down to at least f3.2. If I need to shoot more wide open or If I want swirly bokeh, I had better use a good monitor for focus confirmation and shoot some tests before trying it on a real job.

nomad

RE: Bolex RX lenses: it applies to the shorter focal lengths, less than 25mm. Beyond that you won't see much of a difference. All of these are very soft in the corners anyway when used WO.

DrDave

real sample from PB, looks average in all respects http://t.co/XYwfnVXFtz

vicharris

That's the same footage that's been linked already Dave, thought it was new stuff. Bummer.

DrDave

Clumpy grain, blown highlights, curious what PB will say.

lunalobo75

@DrDave there's a discussion on it here: http://www.digitalbolex.com/forum/shooting-on-the-d16/philip-blooms-video/#p8243

DrDave

Let me guess, the horrible color can be fixed in post, the clumpy grain can be removed with Neat Video, and the blown out highlights add a vintage look :) OK, OK, I will read it. tum tee dum tick tick

OK, worse than I thought... " The noise "issue" is just a normal part of electronic imaging." Classic

"Grain is your friend" Not this grain. I do have some grainy friends.

"CCD grain looks more organic to my eye." Looks organic alright. And you know what that means.

"The D16 seems to handle clipping pretty gracefully." This quote appeared over a frame grab, directly over an image of a window that was completely overexposed and appeared as a blotch of white.

We will see more samples real soon, but two things jump out.

If they shipped all the cams three weeks ago, why aren't there thousands of samples?
Can no one measure phantom power with a voltmeter? That is such a strange idea.....buying a 2K camera and unable to use a voltmeter and an XLR "Y" cable. I guess no one needs "Pro audio" after all.

Hoping for better samples.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

1.If they shipped all the cams three weeks ago, why aren't there thousands of samples?

If you check back they told that they shipped 4 final cameras.

And something like one extra per day as they will be assembled.

Check back answers in this topic.

DouglasHorn

This discussion thread always struck me as kind of odd. This is a forum of -mostly- camera enthusiasts who've banded together to -mostly- reverse engineer consumer cameras to expand their potential and make very cost-effective cinematic machines. So when another group of filmmakers get together to actually create a -mostly- from scratch camera to do something similar, it seems funny that there's a lot of suspicion from this group. I could understand it when it looked like the DB might never deliver on their cameras, but at the moment it looks like they are in fact shipping them out. They might not be as revolutionary as promised and not really my own cup of tea, and they certainly have suffered from a lot of classic startup growing pains, but they have actually built a camera from scratch without the backing of a major company, which is pretty amazing in this day and age.

I'd love to see them get some more cameras out the door and look at some real-world footage. Frankly, PV seems like an ideal community to look at the camera's firmware (open source, right @elle?) and find ways to improve the camera.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

This discussion thread always struck me as kind of odd. This is a forum of -mostly- camera enthusiasts who've banded together to -mostly- reverse engineer consumer cameras to expand their potential and make very cost-effective cinematic machines. So when another group of filmmakers get together to actually create a -mostly- from scratch camera to do something similar, it seems funny that there's a lot of suspicion from this group. I could understand it when it looked like the DB might never deliver on their cameras, but at the moment it looks like they are in fact shipping them out.

It is strange that it is other discussions about DB in other places that did not strike you as odd.

Let's check the facts.

Delays - told and predicted correctly, contrary to other talks.
Money shortage - Elle confirmed that moneys of backers are long gone and firm now runs on money of their owners, as I understand for quite a time. And this is not good.
They now want to build scheme to finance money shortage from preorders. I think it is also wrong, as it must be proper orders with instant shipping, good known tests and sample footage at this stage.
I really hope that they manage to survive. But looking at facts it will be hard to do, as they are burning money like mad.

last_SHIFT

If they were really serious - how about sending PV a camera for 'review' seems only politically correct 'bloggers' like NFS and PB...

lunalobo75

Philip Bloom and NFS were backers who paid for the camera; however, I'd pitch into a fund so Vitaly can have a D16 to review and test.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

however, I'd pitch into a fund so Vitaly can have a D16 to review and test.

I definitely won't be making camera reviews in any near future :-)

lunalobo75

@Vitaliy_Kiselev Hahahhaha... review wasn't the proper term, my apologies. I meant just "test" and "tinker." ;)

last_SHIFT

Hipsters unite :-)

DouglasHorn

@Vitaliy_Kiselev - I didn't see a lot of other discussions about DB. I don't have the time even to follow PV as I'd like, let alone other forums. At the suggestion of someone here, I did check out Ryan Koo's site and agree that it seems more exuberant than the facts seem to warrant. And the DB people did really seem to get lapped by BM and others in their development, which is unfortunate but not unexpected given their relative development budgets.

But if the big complaints about them now are that the product took too long to come out, they're short on money, and now they're trying to cash-flow themselves by taking new orders...well, you just described 99.9% of all startups. (At least the ones that actually deliver a product.)

I was a big disbeliever early on and never thought they'd pull through. I spoke with Joe at a Comic-con party a few years back and came away with a free DB coloring book, some stickers, and an impression that they would never ship a unit. But it looks like I was wrong about that. At this point I'm curious to see where it goes. Maybe I'll find a friend in Seattle who has one and check it out. I was never very impressed with the choices they made (the lenses, etc.) but who knows, maybe it'll turn out I was wrong about those, too.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

But if the big complaints about them now are that the product took too long to come out, they're short on money, and now they're trying to cash-flow themselves by taking new orders...well, you just described 99.9% of all startups. (At least the ones that actually deliver a product.)

In fact, it is not true. Startups make it clear that they run on some investment money. Here original statement was that backer money will be fully enough (as many thing were already done and design is almost finished, see initial marketing madness in the backing stage). Backers money ended and now they claim that they are running on their own money, that looks true as they are highly desperate to have some funding via preorders to ship backers cameras. And this is dangerous approach.

I hope that they can get through all this and somehow will bump their sales and solve problems. But I am still pessimist concerning their survival.

vicharris

Maybe if they get some nice looking stuff out there soon it will help but it seems to be just barely trickling in.

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