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Drama 2/3" CCD prototype

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Emanuel A.

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Who knows Otis from his posts, is already aware of his extreme sensibility about pictures, knowledge and seriousness about this business, without losing his sense of humor. What does mean he knows how to get a smile on himself when due.

He has spent his last three years of his life to research and develop a full HD uncompressed camera, that means there's no line skipping or pixel binning, so here is a fully professional device.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?p=2071409&posted=1#post2071409

999z.png


link to uncompressed 1920x1080 sample
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5693/999z.png
 
It's an interesting project glad to see it's coming together..
 
Gunleik Groven said:
What it is he planning to do with it?
Click to expand...

The project is getting to be very interesting. I'm still convinced there is no commercial future in the consumer market sales sense but I'm very impressed but what is happening.

I have been contacted by 9 filmmakers so far who have a serious interest in getting one or two Dramas for their next project. What is amazing is that I was surprised to find that every single one of them is artistically accomplished with awards from major film festivals. I usually talk on the phone but I had the chance to meet 2 of them in person so far in Athens and Thessaloniki. It is exactly the market I was interested in. They work exclusively on feature filmmaking, going through production of a feature every 1 to 2 years.

It's always about projects that require 6 to 12 week shoots and the budgets are 100,000 to 300,000 euro. Film is prohibitively expensive for most of these projects due to the required shooting ratio, and the currently available digital cinema solutions cost way too much for long term rentals, especially when more than one cameras are required. Buying the cameras is usually less expensive. But buying such expensive cameras is a large part of the budget once you add all the required shooting/workflow components. It's not really an option with most high quality camera packages being 40,000 to 200,000 euro.

It feels great to talk to a filmmaker and hear all the points I have been making on the thread for almost 2 years now. It justifies the decisions and the time I have spent. It feels great when somebody appreciates your hard work down to the details. My plan was to enable low budget filmmaking, the 50k to 200k projects and offer a quality that was not previously available. An alternative to the everyday 5,000 to 10,000 euro camcorder these projects have to use.

Drama will not sell many units, it was not designed for that, but it looks like it will go to the right hands. Interesting projects and real cinema. I'm very enthusiastic about its future. ...Otis Grapsas
Click to expand...

An interesting camera, built from off the shelf open market components. A good model for small run custom build to order and for serviceability.
 
Fun!

What kind of sensor is it?

RAW recording?
Price?

hm...
ah... well...

The geek in me is immediately alarmed and enthused.

The sensible me tells me to let it be...
 
The creater of this stated "If you are not aware of the Drama project, it's a project of mine and what I have been working on for about 3 years. It's fully uncompressed digital cinema camera, currently using a 2/3" Kodak 1920x1080 CCD sensor, recording to open media, HDD or SSD, and focused on easy integration with an IT editing and postproduction workflow. The camera records 12bit RAW bayer which can be development to many popular formats, but fully uncompressed is recommended. Nothing less than top quality DNxHD in any case."

He said it will not be a mass produced product but intended more for the Indie/small feature production community. The price is all inclusive at 10,000, Euros which includes 2 large batteries(claims last around 5 hours), charger, monitor (not sure of size), and media for 2 hours of recording.

So it's interesting, can't say I'd really want one but I do like the media recording solution which is very economical if they are reliable. However, I do like seeing how he created this camera basically by himself, pretty neat.
 
Sounds very cool...

We're talking Scarlet 2/3" pricing here...

But I am curious as to how he handles the workflow.
Are there standard applications available for the Kodak sensor?

(Stop it G! It's just another cam! Don't be so intrigued...)
 
Gunleik Groven said:
Sounds very cool...

We're talking Scarlet 2/3" pricing here...

But I am curious as to how he handles the workflow.
Are there standard applications available for the Kodak sensor?

(Stop it G! It's just another cam! Don't be so intrigued...)
Click to expand...

He prefers DNXHD for file format, but is developing encoding software to support common editing file formats.
 
Looks nice.
Cool that it is even possible!

Curious as to how he handles all the custom obstacles we seem to learn a lot about here. OLPF. IR. Reset. But 64 fps is... you know... Varicam'ish, and that's fine for a lot of use...

And software and... I start sweating just trying to imagine.

Sounds like a good alternative to that Swedish cam that hasn't materialized yet...
 
Otis is and engineer who apparently designs and builds custom digital imaging systems for a variety of applications.
Obviously a challenging undertaking to design a digital cinema camera, but he does seem to be taking the most efficient,open hardware, simple system approach.
 
@ 10000 a shot including lens-mount, media, batteries and monitor, he probably could sell a boatload of these. 2/3" is no longer the holy grail of indie filmmakers, but for 3D and a lot of other applications, it is still very cool.

Reminder to myself:
Dot get too intrigued!
 
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