why RED TWO must have optical viewfinder and a rotating mirror shutter.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Interesting concept there, ibloom.

I agree with you on the "shutter artifacts" exhibited by RED, but I'm not so sure a mechanical solution like this or even a conventional mirror shutter will do a whole lot to eliminate the effect, let alone eliminate it. I suppose it's worth testing.

I'm also interested to see if we get different motion and shutter characteristics with the new batch of cameras vs. the current 100.

I'm interested in negating these artifacts as well. Especially the split-frame effect of uncontrolled strobes, pyro effects or muzzle flashes. Some of this can be duplicated on film cameras as well, but the effect is softened -- actually no where near as sharply defined as on the RED. That's probably what you're aiming for. Other digital cameras that do not exhibit these effects are CCD sensor cameras that do not have a scanline "rolling" shutter, but rather a simultaneous read of the entire sensor array.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

But... if you add a rotating shutter in front of a scanline shutter.... how does ... wait... what? I don't think your gizmo would work unless used in front of a global shutter... in which case you don't have any rolling shutter artifacts anyway... I'm lost... wouldn't you just get a harsh horizontal line in addition to a soft vertical line?

 

[DAVID McNAMARA]

Optical viewfinding is one reason I love film cameras. You can see through it without batteries. EVFs tend to be more taxing on my eye for a long period.

That said, the main feature of the OVF is the overscan, which RED delivers. I still would probably prefer optical, but its a slight comfort/convenience thing.

I come from the film world as well. I love my RED camera but having just done a job with alot of low light, fast moving objects(f-18s) and long lenses I really really miss my optical viewfinder. Even the crappy one on my old arri 3 !

http://www.collectiveny.com/

 

[chuck colburn]

If you could put up with about a 30% light loss perhaps you could mount a pellicle beam splitter in front of the sensor. Mayby incorperate the OLPF into it and kill to birds with one stone.

 

[DAVID McNAMARA]

Chuck,
how would I do this? Are we talking similar to a Bolex?

 

[chuck colburn]

Chuck,
how would I do this? Are we talking similar to a Bolex?

Not the same. The Bolex Rx cameras used a prism block to divert some of the light to an eyepiece. A pellicle beam splitter is a thin piece of plano (flat) optical glass that is mounted at or around forty five degrees to the film plane and is partially silverd to divert light to an optical viewfinder. This was commonly done with motion picture camers that were not reflexed to start with or had not been converted to a spinning mirror shutter.
Think Cinema Products XR-35, early Panavision , Fries and others.

 

[Cail Young]

If anyone is interested in manufacturing such a device, I'll be your first customer.

It's a rain deflector but with a half-opaque disc.

The real trick would be synchronising it to the camera - I think you'd have more luck with your LCD screen concept - the Zscreen used in RealD systems could be a good starting point...