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Digital Bolex raw camera, no longer made
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  • @Roberto

    This is highly suspicious firm.

    Looking at whois:

    Domain: digitalbolex.com

    Date Registered: 03/21/11
    Date Modified: 03/06/12
    Expiry Date: 03/21/13

    Registrant ienso
    Stylianos Derventzis
    20 Mural Street, Unit 7
    Richmond Hill, on (CA)
    L4B 1K3

    And the company they are referring to as their partners who make some development:

    Domain: digitalcameradesign.com

    Date Registered: 02/08/10
    Date Modified: 01/01/12
    Expiry Date: 02/08/13

    Registrant
    ienso
    Stylianos Derventzis
    20 Mural Street, Unit 7
    Richmond Hill, on (CA)
    L4B 1K3

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    Thanks for doing the detective work. So far it looks like Bolex are standing back, making comments only by email.

  • @Roberto

    During the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, a US-based company called "Digital Bolex" announced to have licensed the brand-name "Bolex" for a video-camera

    Nothing personal, just business.
    No one stand behind them. And Bolex has zero to loose as they are not responsible and are just getting good money that, considering their 16mm cameras sales, can be very significant to them :-)

  • It looks great at first sight.

    The Digital Bolex is a “digital cinema camera” or a camera that shoots RAW images (sometimes known as Digital Negatives) instead of compressed video.

    What I was wondering is how they get it to write 12 bit 4:4:4 RAW data to a CF card!? They state it will be 3 MB per frame, so the would need a (lossless!) compression ratio of about 4:1 as well as really fast cards that support av. write speed of about 100MB/s. Is that even possible?

  • @DirkVoorhoeve

    No one really knows it.
    Right now they got ready network camera with RAW shooting ability (with very fast ports), connected it to computer and presented result :-)

  • What I was wondering is how they get it to write 12 bit 4:4:4 RAW data to a CF card!? They state it will be 3 MB per frame, so the would need a (lossless!) compression ratio of about 1:4 as well as really fast cards that support av. write speed of about 100MB/s. Is that even possible? ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

    Wasn't that the quandry of the A cam? I think they designed and produced there own propriety CF type card to solve it.

  • problem is this ... technology for cheap s16 ccd raw camera is In existence for some time... u can make it under 4000$ ... guys from kineraw ,optimacine and ephiel etc... my worry is this if dbolex camera is vaporware ... many people already give them money ... and in few month we got another company but with real camera and they ask for funding nobody will believe them ... this can shut down many other projects...

  • what i found about that guy Stylianos Derventzis it looks like he has patents in optics and signal processing .... he is probably head and that two are just front .... cool looking hipsters to make all this sexy ... Internet makes spy work easy :)

  • @DirkVoorhoeve

    It "supposed" to offload raw data from sensor to an ssd buffer, then ssd buffer will offload to dual CF cards as some may not be "fast enough". This is said in the interview.

  • The hardware to shoot 1080p raw can't cost more than $1000 these days.

    A Canon A1200 cost $100 new(now $80). Shoots great 720p at 24fps, 12.1 megapixles CCD. The stills look great. How much more hardware would it take to get that cam to shoot 1080p raw? It can't be more than $1000, including the cam.

    The biggest problem with this is...how much better is this gonna be vs a hacked GH2? The footage doesn't look 3x better to me....looks about the same.

  • Raw or not to Raw, I think a lot of person don't understand that it does not mean anything. My first digital photo camera was a Nikon D70 and now I have a d300 before hopefully in the next month a d800. I have 7 years working in Raw and I can tell you that I would prefer using my D300 jpeg than the D70 RAW. The D70 was damn awful beyond 320 iso. If you take nearly everything in terms of rez/noise and perhaps DR. What I mean is simple, for sure the D300 raw is much better than the its Jpeg but if the sensor is not that good (to todays standard I mean) RAW or not RAW the output won't be good. I don't know if it is representative of the output of this future camera but the highlight (dynamic range) looks awful. Look at the girls hat, the blue is losing detail etc in such a controled lighting shot!!! The other movie with the girl in the class room where a ray of light hit her white shirt yuk. I can definitely say that even if the gh2 is no raw output it looks much better than this.

  • If this thing was not american, with all the flaws in terms of communication (No prototype, demo shots done on another camera, etc) everybody would have said it is a scam. Again I hope I am not right, but seeing people already acting like fan-boys on xxx when I say the DR is plain ugly.

  • guys from dbolex should be proud ... they made fanatic fan-boys faster than any other company ... RED and Apple are amateurs

  • I'm very surprised none of the backers are even requesting any DNGs. If they're making their decisions based on specs and Vimeo videos, that's just like purchasing a car solely looking at a classified ad- not even seeing the car in person nor testing driving it.

  • I think it is also due to some of the backers. If I was Philip Bloom I would have been a bit more cautious before backing so much an unknown entity without too much research.

  • If I was Philip Bloom I would have been a bit more cautious before backing so much an unknown entity without too much research.

    I think it is very good example how hysteria and emotions can took other.
    How some bloggers are completely not responsible for their words (as usual). No analisis, critical thinking.

  • @Vitaly The guy on kickstarter is Joe Rubinstein of Polite in Public (its a huge event company), a friend of mine used to work for them so I'll find out more info and check back in.

  • There´s a good chance, Mr.Bloom is "invested" soemhow. I never trust this guy.He makes his living out of sponsorship and NOT filming.

  • the only optimistic version is that Stylianos Derventzis is camera designer and man behind project ... Joe Rubinstein is just for PR & marketing ...

  • @vladnik

    Thing is that they are not developing network camera with Ethernet ports from ready kit.
    They are making SDI output, viewfinder, some buffers, high speed CF cards outputs.
    I absolutely do not see how one man or even small team can make it in such short time.

    It is interesting to note that such project is not new. Ideas to get sensor and all electronics from industrial cameras and rebrand them or just attach computer to network camera appear on all major forums and blogs for years. And such small niche projects with real prototypes exist. But all of them lacked coordinated, good funded marketing company.

  • i know ... there is no way that u can make production camera in 5 month and only thing u got is promo shoot with different camera (with same sensor) ... c'mon they already have problems just to properly debayer image ... and i don't know why peple try to mix gx 2300 with dbolex (repackaging ,rebranding strip version of ...) no , they used that camera just to shoot promo ... Joe Rubinstein looks like a guy who can't tell difference between fpga and asic...

  • @VK: "It is interesting to note that such project is not new. Ideas to get sensor and all electronics from industrial cameras and rebrand them or just attach computer to network camera appear on all major forums and blogs for years."

    One only has to look at SI2K to see the proof that this 'has' happened. However Silicon Image actually 'make' scientific cameras... so they know what they are doing adding other things... (and for the cutdown version just add laptop!)

    There was another company 'Sumix' with there SMX12a2c (I believe) that they were intending to do the same thing with... however they didn't want to do the 'cinema transformation' work themselves... (Trivia: Sumix use the same family of sensors that SI2K use-one version down...)

    Oh well... we are so close to these 'scientific' companies being blown out of the water...

  • "Thinking is the hardest work there is. Which is why so few people do it."

    Henry Ford.

  • I'm going to try to do this myself. But not to sell it to people. I just want to create a proof of concept system, using an off the shelf prosilica 1920gt or gx. I have been talking to the guys who make this camera, and they too said to be wary. But, their cameras are interesting. For $3900 you get the camera. The software is $1000. You have to record to a laptop. They can use c mount, or factory convert to nikon or canon. But here is the nice thing...1920x1080 progressive ccd (global shutter...supposedly superior and low or no jello/rolling shutter)....240mbs...multiple raw codecs, uncompressed codecs, dng. Thats one bad a$$ cam. I'm still researching it. I have a job coming up that might pay for the setup. I have requested raw footage to figure out the camera capabilities. I will let you know how that goes.

  • The 'shoe box' version still has the typical colored gig-e cable hanging out the back ! ( still Allied cam in the box, i'll bet )

    They say shipping a camera by Aug. , I'll be shocked if they pull it off. What does Kickstarter do when a project 'FAIL's anyways ? Are the donors screwed out of the $2500 ? They like to hide those FAIL kickstarter projects, don't they !

    Hipster talk : Old fashioned look . Gimme a break. Did they move on from the ultra shallow focus fad now ?

    Gotta admit, it's the ultimate hipster scam, old leather bag and the yellow look. Apollo nostalgia, etc. Brilliant !