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Digital Bolex raw camera, no longer made
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  • Traceroute and ping both OK but via http and a browser, their site http://www.digitalbolex.com/ loads an unorthodox file containing only "Content-Length: 0" ( a redirection except they haven't written a redirection into the header).

    wget returns a 302 redirection.:

    walker@localhost-Rev-1-0:~$ wget -p http://site.com
    --2013-06-10 07:07:45--  http://site.com/
    Resolving site.com (site.com)... 204.74.99.100
    Connecting to site.com (site.com)|204.74.99.100|:80... connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
    

    Wget retrieved the index.html file attached. Looks like the intended redirection could be to Site.com's default page for any of their hosted sites which haven't provided their own error page. (A good read if you're a propeller-head)

    What's gone wrong could be anything: from somebody simply forgetting to renew a domain or a hosting service, all the way to messy code. [Or, yeah, failure to pay for the hosting.].In which case, perhaps, if DigitalBolex pay Site.com, then their index.php header will get populated with its restored redirection via some sort of php insert, like:

    <?php
    if ($DigitalBolex Payment > $39.95) {
    echo "redirecting to www.digitalbolex.com's path at site.com";
    } else {
    echo "redirect to www.site.com";
    }
    ?>
    

    ;-) Maybe somebody should tell them (site.com or Digitalbolex).

  • Their site seems to be down for few days already.

  • But it looks like as if they still have a solide financial background - who can afford a team that walks in the wrong direction for months?

    We don't yet know this. Most probably hippies had been hired to run Kickstarte and try to get money, and this was used as argument to get venture capital. As soon as venture capital will be over all can end in one day.

  • But it looks like as if they still have a solide financial background - who can afford a team that walks in the wrong direction for months?

  • @Alex

    Last article is just hilarious, all DB in one short text.

    Working enginners who don't know a dime but want their salary each month, etc.

  • … but copy and paste sample code from the SDK isn't that much work :-)

  • “We got an image with the new firmware, it’s not perfect, but the F*ing thing works!”

    They just forgot that they already told that they got the image. Quite a time ago, but that it has "small issues".

    At that time our engineers had been working diligently, going through our sensor setup and AFE line by line, even though that’s very time consuming. Our new hire promptly said that 85% to 90% of that work was unnecessary.

    LOL

  • here is an new episode of this great show:

    DigitalBolex_s02e06 http://www.digitalbolex.com/image-improvements/

    abstract:

    allright, here we go! We've got a picture! (the quarter of a picture though)

    they flew in some real FPGA and CCD experts to enlighten the great DB team.

    DB: we've got an image but its pink!
    Expert: allright, let's think about a infra red filter for the CCD!

    ... by the end of the day they had proper colors - awesome.

  • @robertGL

    Most of things being said make no sense. It is not a scam. Just very strange shit that can have same result as scam.

  • I'm on that forum all the time and as far as I can see JR's being forthright about the project. There's certainly a bit of mystery surrounding the players and an overhanging concern about it never coming to fruition, which then leads to conversations about it being a scam altogether-- but everything that is laid out seems good to me; it's definitely a camera I'd want to come to market for the sake of us with a glut of 16mm lenses. Its sensor analog afterall is the ikonoskop which looks very good with the latest firmware update.

  • According to the Kickstarter website's Terms of Use, creators are required to fulfill the promises of their project, or refund any backer whose reward they did not or cannot fulfill

    Via: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409316,00.asp

    Really guys demand refund and go to authorities, put the stop to all this drama.

  • I assume they're using it to buffer data before spooling it out to CF or to save a second copy when writing data out to CF so that they can check consistency - the former case making it function somewhat like the log device on a database or some logging file systems.

  • I wonder how much they are paying for each of those 400GB SSD drives. It looks like retail on them is around $600 USD. It seems like that would take a pretty hefty bite out of their profit margin unless they are getting a REALLY good deal on them.

    It also interesting to see any real reason to place 2.5" SSD drive inside such camera.

  • I wonder how much they are paying for each of those 400GB SSD drives. It looks like retail on them is around $600 USD. It seems like that would take a pretty hefty bite out of their profit margin unless they are getting a REALLY good deal on them.

  • Saga continues

    Seems like another update is coming

    http://www.digitalbolex.com/d16s-media-core/

    I have huge problems understanding this fluff (what SATA drive is doing in their camera?), as main issue for cameras is not bad controllers or "enterprise" things. It is too smart controllers with compression, geared for fast read/writes with long flash lifespan. And cameras could benefit from much more dumb controllers, I think.

    Plus this drive is really not so fast with real sequential 64K Write at 100 MB/s (http://www.storagereview.com/micron_realssd_p400e_enterprise_ssd_review)

    Sensor tweaks are slower than we want them to be.

    We did have a prominent tech guy come out last week and visit us to verify our process and give some advice. We also have a former Kodak employee on the sensor side coming in to Toronto this week.

    Last week we had the CEO of a long standing tech company from our industry come by and make sure the path we were going down was a good one. He told me that he really liked the Toronto team and felt like we had some really smart people there, and that he was confident we would get our issues resolved soon. Last week we also discovered that our most recent prototype FPGA boards Rev 2.1 had small manufacturing errors in the metal work. They were small enough that they didn't show up on the initial tests of the unit, but were strongly effecting the image quality, in a bad way. We switched back to the Rev 2.0 boards this week, which took some coding work, and immediately the images cleaned up quite a bit. We are still working to get it to the image quality to an acceptable level. Once it is at an acceptable level I can head up there to supervise the final tweaks. It doesn't make sense right now for my work load or economically for me to be up there, as I wouldn't have any direct input. Instead we are finishing up things in LA like website restructures and having meetings like we did today with the guys from Quvis. As soon as there is an image that is clean enough we can start to work on it aesthetically I will have my butt on an airplane

  • s16 was a standard in porn industry before betacam... maybe they want to put things back on old tracks .... :)

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev : That made my day! Heh!

  • so why would any one buy a DB @$2.5k when there will be soon a compact BMCC that also does raw for $995. I believe DB is basically too late too costly and too big. Tough luck but that is (product) life.

  • @Richie

    Even porn stars are involved, result must be great product.
    I am sure next delay will be due to constant requests to add vibrator :-)

  • Oh and on one of the Ustreams some guy had to explain to Joe what APS-C was :/ Even Joe doesn't seem to be very well versed on film or technology

  • Yeah, I know there's a small group of repeat forum posters there who are blindly positive, but I think a lot of the blog post commenters on there are friends of Joe and Elle. Also when you post a comment there it doesn't show up at first, instead saying "Your comment is awaiting moderation." My latest response to him still hasn't been approved and I've heard of people not having their posts approved altogether.

    Also I don't know if anyone's mentioned this yet, but there was a thread on 4chan's technology board awhile back that pointed out that these guys are wasting money to hire "C grade porn stars" who also so happen to be their friends. Like Ela is some cheap porn star and the wife of Joe. They hired her for the company but I'm pretty sure she doesn't do a single thing—just waste the investors' money. Same with Toby, one of the guys who pops up in the background on some of their Ustream videos—he's some porn star as well and a friend of Joe's. Does he posses any electronic engineering skills? Nope! But they hired him anyway. What a joke. Honestly I think a lot of us should email Bolex in Switzerland about how these guys are tarnishing their name by hiring unskilled pornographers instead of more engineers (even though they still don't have a working camera!)

  • @Richie

    DB group became something like a sect now. Few people are constantly posting how great the creators are. Despite reality telling evryone quite reverse.

  • Hi, I'm a camera backer (foolishly, I know) and I just made an account to post some serious problems I've got with this Digital Bolex group. Joe just made this post here: http://www.digitalbolex.com/hotrod-pl-mount-closer-look/ and what troubles me about it is that in the comments he explains that their plan is to charge the camera buyers for this PL mount, even though we were promised a free additional mount with the camera and PL was stated to be one of the options. He tries to make the illogical argument that when they said “we’ll include an additional mount of your choice to anyone who buys a camera” that somehow meant only if it isn't designed by another company, which is absolutely ridiculous. The constant delays and lack of a working camera at NAB were already big signs of trouble but now he's already trying to get more money out of us and lying about their promise? Just sick, I think. If they have to run at a loss for the kickstarter backers? Then they should! He already says here http://news.doddleme.com/equipment/doddletalks-tech-whatever-happened-to-the-digital-bolex/ that they've got outside backers and that's where the bulk of the money is coming from

  • Delivery - next couple of months, may be

    Another presale will be up shortly

    No proper coating on small shitty lenses

    He also shows "color correction" software for real hippies

  • It's ugly.