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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Ikonoscop_First and nice ram footage from Beta2

P

Pierre Gresil

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RAW and no ram... Sorry

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Nick Paton (ACS) is testing the A-cam dII Prototype 2.1 . I,5 Kg of pure cine juice.... Small is beautiful..

"- This camera isn't a mecano set but a camera built for the human form factor. I can't believe I can carry an uncompressed 1080P camera, memory cards, batteries, zoom, 9mm prime and filters in a backpack", says Nick Paton.

http://www.ikonoskop.com/blog/a-cam-dii-prototype-21-delivered-to-nick-paton-acs/

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A video about his prime test is available here.... It looks really nice...

http://vimeo.com/7126893

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The revolution is walking.... :biggrinjester:
 
Not bad, small sized, comfortable enough to carry around, also with a nice picture quality, but...

Euro €6.950 pre-order(!?).

It looks not so like an IKEA price point.

We can see soon what kind of price point RED can offer with 3K Scarlet.
 
it looks awesome. and SUPER small too.
 
I wonder what "isn't a mecano set" was aimed at? :) About the "built for the human form factor" part, what am I missing? That guy looks like he will need a chiropractor without OT. :D
Though there are sure to be better ways to mount it. Perhaps something like Red Rock or Zacuto DSLR rig might work well.

Aside from that, WOW, nice images!

So what are the specs now? Oh, here we go: http://www.ikonoskop.com/dii/

S16 sensor, 1080p, 3.5 MB/frame DNG, 80GB media, 1-60fps, 2 channel 48 kHz, HDMI, PL/Leica M/IMS/C-mount.

What about sensitivity/noise? I didn't see any night time footage in the Vimeo so I guess no 7/5D stuff. That sunset looked nice though. Can't be crazy sensitive with a S16 though, I suppose. This Image is a nice tease, but it is also 0.365 times the size of 1080p so that could have helped hide a bit of noise, though it really doesn't seem pushed much and we don't know the speed of the vehicle.

And that is an OVF right?
 
Very crisp clean footage. That big Canon S16 zoom played a significant role in the image quality for sure. Looks to have pretty decent dynamic range too.
 
Programs that can convert Acam dII DNG to TIF?

Programs that can convert Acam dII DNG to TIF?

I noticed that the DNG sample file from before would not open in the copy of DCRAW like the DNG from Kinor-2K does.

If anyone here can open one of the sample DNG files from Acam dII's website please post the name and version number of the program you were able to open their DNG frame files with, thank you.

Also of interest is a free program that will convert the DNG files from Acam dII into 48bpp so called 16bit TIF for use with my freeish DI/NLE/MIX and filmout software, so if know of one for Windows XP (tm) that does indeed work, please post the name of it or PM me about this as well, thank you.
 
Pierre Gresil said:
"I can't believe I can carry an uncompressed 1080P camera, memory cards, batteries, zoom, 9mm prime and filters in a backpack", says Nick Paton.
Click to expand...

"I still can't believe I can carry an uncompressed 4.5k digital cinema camera, memory cards, batteries, Zeiss 28/50/85/135 primes (and doubler), a 10-20mm zoom, a Lensbaby and a Rycote/Sennheiser combo, and a proper LCD screen, plus a lab (i.e. MBP 15 in.) in a backpack", says Martin Weiss.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=485217#post485217
 
Martin Weiss said:
"I still can't believe I can carry an uncompressed 4.5k digital cinema camera, memory cards, batteries, Zeiss 28/50/85/135 primes (and doubler), a 10-20mm zoom, a Lensbaby and a Rycote/Sennheiser combo, and a proper LCD screen, plus a lab (i.e. MBP 15 in.) in a backpack", says Martin Weiss.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=485217#post485217
Click to expand...

Well, R1 is considerably larger.

Scarlet will be a lot better in that matter.

We'll be able to carry it on a fanny pack... Not sure I want to though.

laughl.gif
 
Joe G. said:
I like the look, better than the 5d/7d stuff around here. But, no low light samples ... is there a reason?
Click to expand...

The 7D's sensor is larger already, S16 vs ~S35. The 5D's FF35 sensor is even bigger.

Then if their sensor technology is not as good as Canon's, which is fair to expect (how close is the question, right?), then you would expect it to be a bad thing to bring up on their part. Better stick to showing the clean well exposed images and you would have lots of people drooling like we are already.

Obviously all of this is pure speculation, but would it be fair to say that clean ~ISO500 is the highest plausible to be expected from a S16 sensor? Am I way off?
 
I had a reservation for this camera, it was suppose to have come out ages ago but seems they got stuck financially and now they are sending me emails to invest in there stock options so they can finish development in the next they hope...I know its not a scam, but it started to feel that way.
 
I'm pretty shocked by the low quality of the images -

The images are rife with globby little pools of strange sharpening artifacts, plus some chromatic abberations (even with this nice glass), the framerate doesn't look particularly filmic...

Thankfully free of moire issues... but not the creamy sharp (but not sharpened) look we get from a 1080p RED or EX3 output....

I'm not a fan at all at this point... really wanted to be though...
 
RAW+Software=LOOK

RAW+Software=LOOK

Matthew Bennett said:
I'm pretty shocked by the low quality of the images -

The images are rife with globby little pools of strange sharpening artifacts, plus some chromatic abberations (even with this nice glass), the framerate doesn't look particularly filmic...

Thankfully free of moire issues... but not the creamy sharp (but not sharpened) look we get from a 1080p RED or EX3 output....

I'm not a fan at all at this point... really wanted to be though...
Click to expand...

I think it has more to do with the software they are using for their Post, the camera and sensor have something to do with the framerate part of the look and general sensor artifacts, but the other 60% or so of the look is the software used to de-mosaic (de-Bayer) and process the color grading.

I think they are using the Adobe free software (desigined for snapshot cameras?), does anyone know their whole workflow, and what programs they are using?

I am working on my own de-Bayer program for true RAW cameras and plan on looking into supporting DNG files, by extracting the true RAW data from the DNG file and ignoring the DNG settings that give the images an "un-film-like" burned in look.

I am going for a more film-like result. With a true RAW camera you can get 1000+ looks since most of the result is not due to the sensor but the OLPF, LENS, and de-Bayer. In a compressed camera like the RED ONE some of the look is "burned in" by the pre-compression low pass filtering in the camera, so you are doing a de-Bayer on altered sensor data that has been turned into wavelets. In the Acam dII the global shutter that people think they want is not like a movie camera shutter since it snaps the whole image at once, a movie camera have some time difference in the blur that give a motion clue in addition to the motion blur while open.

Did they say what shutter angle they were using, it should be 180 for daylight shots. Because you cannot stop down past like f/6.3 for a 2/3" sensor you have to use ND or reduce the shutter angle to avoid overexposure, so they should be using ND+IR rather than reducing the shutter angle and getting the cheep camcorder "Gladiatior" type stutter.

Has anyone been able to open their sample DNG files, if so were you able to get some control over the look of the frames?
 
Adobe Lightroom (tm)

Adobe Lightroom (tm)

Does anyone know of a freeware that can replace Adobe Lightroom (tm) in the Acam dII (tm) workflow. It looks like the Adobe (tm) DNG to TIF conversion is for some snapshot type camera rather than Digital Cinema use, not much filmlike in its look, the RED ONE (tm) de-Bayer seems to try to look more like ECN, perhaps.

I asked for some help extracting the RAW data from Acam dII DNG files from Acam, but so far they have not been able to answer some simple questions.

If they offer true RAW files rather than DNG the shot length you can record would be longer for a given disk space since the header would not be needed for each frame.

Anyway, if anyone knows of a program that can open the DNG from Acam please let me know what that one is other than Adobe Lightroom (tm). I know DCRAW (tm) will open DNG from Kinor-2K but did not like the Acam files for some reason, I asked but did not get any feedback from Acam about what they are doing different in the DNG header.

I updated my workflow for the Acam to show Adobe Lightroom, but would like to mention other (free) options as well,

http://www.dancad3d.com/S0620300.HTM
 
dng_validate for free DNG to TIF conversions

dng_validate for free DNG to TIF conversions

Lars Borg of Adobe posted in answer to my question on CML about a free option for conversion of the Acam dII frames to TIF for use in my and other editing systems,

Quote:[There is, from Adobe. :-)
Use dng_validate to convert DNG to TIFF. It's part of the DNG SDK at http://www.adobe.com/dng
Use option -3 to convert DNG to unrendered, linearized TIFF files in the camera's RGB space.
For non-DNG raw files, first convert them to DNG using the free Adobe DNG Converter.

Example:
: /Applications/dng_validate -3 3 -16 /Users/larsborg/Downloads/Nick\ Paton\ -\ A-cam\ dII\ -\ 01100015.DNG
Validating "/Users/larsborg/Downloads/Nick Paton - A-cam dII - 01100015.DNG"...
*** Warning: Neither AsShotNeutral nor AsShotWhiteXY included (legal but not recommended) ***
Raw image read time: 0.201 sec
Linearization time: 0.012 sec
Interpolate time: 0.159 sec
Validation complete

Lars Borg
Principal Scientist
Adobe Systems]

Thanks to Lars for the info about using dng_validate as a free DNG to TIF converter.

It seems that the latest Irfanview can convert the Acam dII DNG into TIF also, but the highlights go pink so the white clip is not working there, and the results are not very useful.

Older DCRAW do not open the Acam dII DNG, maybe a newer one does, but since DCRAW ignores the DNG header it seems, it may also show the off color highlights, if someone gets it to work they can comment about the quality vs. dng_validate?

The de-Bayer software I am working will have some lens aberration corrections built in, and have extensive manual adjustments for digital cinema frame conversion use.

In the example DNG up on the Acam site you can see heavy blue/yellow lateral chromatic aberration, and there are star patterns from the lens iris as well as the vertical smear from the sensor.

In their sample shots they should use better lenses, like a PL to C mount adapter and Zeiss lenses, or try the 5 megapixel Fujinon C mount lenses for 2/3". The lens used does not seem to cover well. Also to get full resolution the lens should be between f/3.5 and f/6.3 if it is a good one, larger or smaller stops will not resolve to the sensor limit for the most part. Some of the Schneider C mount lenses are good also even though they do not rate 5 Megapixel. An IR/UV cut filter or XB29 filter can cut off some of the out-of-focus rays at the limits of the bandpass. ND+IR/UV is needed to keep the lens at prime stop in daylight. You cannot stop the shutter angle down like you would in a video camera and shoot Digital Cinema, it looks un-film-like.
 
Not exactly sure what you ask for, but I opened one of the DNG A-cam pixs fine in RawTherapee V2.4.1 and converted it to TIFF (pink blotches and all).

Opened the TIFF in CS4 and Canon's DPP to check.

Raw Therapee is free, and a very good RAW converter.

Hope it helps.
 
Pink highlights

Pink highlights

Iannis Holwech said:
RawTherapee V2.4.1 and converted it to TIFF (pink blotches and all).
Click to expand...

Someone from Europe emailed me and said xnview did a conversion, but I did not see the result.

Thanks for the info. I saw a conversion of the Acam dII DNG to TIF made with the current update for Irfanview and it had pink highlights that look very bad, on the shots with the headlights the burned out parts of the head lights are very pink and off color.

DNG files are RAW data with some MetaData in the header. Since you cannot override the MetaData easily it ends up making a "burned in" look to the de-bayered RGB images.

Its odd that the RAW converters are not producing the same results, that means that somehow the MetaData in the DNG are not controling the de-Bayer process the same way in each program.

In the software I am working on for RAW to TIF the process will not use any of the metadata and so will be free of any miss adjustments that it might cause, rather the software will use a sensor profile that guides the de-Bayer process based on the sensor calibrations rather than those of the camera's maker (and have overrides).

The whole subject of RAW digital cinema is complicated by in the end, by maybe only the software the manfacture recomends or supplies being useful for conversion, so, so far there is not a range of Digital Cinema RAW to TIF software you can use to control the look of the end result so that it does not have that overprocessed "snap shot" look (you can get more than one end result, but pink highlights is not a useful end result, is it?)

If anyone finds a good DNG to TIF process other than Adobe please post a 1K JPG version here for us to look at and or a link to the TIF produced, thanks.
 
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