Stealth camera...

[Dan Hudgins]

If people are not stunned by the specs and design, I will retire... truly.
Jim

Are you going to have an optical viewfinder? If so is it going to be Pellicle Beamsplitter?

A Pellicle Beamsplitter needs a thin coverglass window to keep the dust off since they are very hard to clean. Maybe a snap in replacement module?

Also is your camera not going to use a curtian shutter. Curtian shutters shed dust onto the sensor and break after about 100,000 exposures, as does the returning mirror.

We are using a Canon XTi (tm) as a temp camera in our film scanner, but the curtian shutter makes too much dust, and it will break after scanning only a few thousand feet of film.

What I would like is a DSLR like Digital Cinema camera that can take a M42 (PU) mount adapter like the Canon, does not have a mechanical shutter or mirror, and shoots at exactly 24fps (not NTSC 23.976), records 4 minutes or more on a memory card RAW, and has a BEEP/FLASH circuit for sync sound on an external WAV recorder (beeper sonic on/off with beep audio line/mic output jack) so that I do not need to use a slate all the time.

That would make a great Stealth camera for shooting outdoors, where a RED ONE (tm) et al. would draw too much attention, and would be light weight for nature and remote shooting of motion pictures from a small tripod.

A lock in BNCR/OCT-19/PL mount in addition to DSLR lenses would also be great, i.e. shoot 3K movie size on the 6K vista vision size sensor.

But have it fit a neck strap like a DSLR, with a screen on the back. If there is no optical finder, then have a plug in (or IR/RF) pair of high resolution video glasses that you can use in daylight to see, with a 1:1 zoom button next to the shutter release. Also have the shutter release toggle so you do not need to hold it down (tap, beep+shoot, tap, stop). With all manual exposure to RAW 16bit TIF RGB frame files... under $5000?

 

[Shawn Nelson]

mmm, guerilla shooters piece of heaven

Hey, this would become the weapon of choice for the paparazzi :-D

 

[Peter Majtan]

Would not that be an irony if RED developed in the process the ultimate film scanner as a by-product...? I already thought about it with Epic...

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Dynamic range, aliasing... "true" RAW mode...

Dynamic range, aliasing... "true" RAW mode...

Would not that be an irony if RED developed in the process the ultimate film scanner as a by-product...? I already thought about it with Epic...

I've been using the XTi (tm) since it has good dynamic range and aliasing. Its color is not very good, but shooting through 70,98,99 filters for making color seperations the results with three exposures +/- 1 stop for each color are adequate. For shooting black and white film, three expsoures per frame with white light works, but the noise is lower with 9 exposures.

If the RED DSLR does not have a RAW raw mode, just "REDCODE" it would be an issue scanning film since the compression would make the grain block into groups of blobs, we shoot RAW, or will what passes for raw on the Canon...

So for single frame mode you should be able to shoot "true" RAW mode...

 

[Peter Majtan]

I expect nothing less...

 

[Mitch Gross]

People have already repurposed the Phantom 65 as the camera head to an excellent film scanner system. Since it can shoot 145fps at 4096x2440 and record uncompressed RAW (or 90fps if doing the same to a CineMag), this means that the film transport is now the limiting factor for the speed of the system. For those who have worked with scanners that is pretty insanely amazing.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

9 exposures per frame...

9 exposures per frame...

People have already repurposed the Phantom 65 as the camera head to an excellent film scanner system. Since it can shoot 145fps at 4096x2440 and record uncompressed RAW (or 90fps if doing the same to a CineMag), this means that the film transport is now the limiting factor for the speed of the system. For those who have worked with scanners that is pretty insanely amazing.

If you use a LED light house you can switch colors faster than using a filter Wheel, so,

145fps/9= 16fps

That gives you high-mid-low exposures for each seperation, which gives you less noise and digital artifacts in the fused 16bit TIF RGB file.

If you use a Mitchell background projector movement, you might be able to "twitch" the pull-down, but there would need to be a pause of 1/4 to 1/10 second between frame advances, so you might get 10fps in a real scanner if the camera can single frame that fast, which it can probably not. You could run an "I" shuttle non-stop and just throw out the exposures that happen while the film is moving, so you would shoot like 60 exposures per frame cycle and keep the 27 good ones for the 9xRGB exposures. An "I" shuttle can run 24fps if it has lightening holes in it, I have seen a 2704 movement go 24fps before, at 28fps the load goes way up though so that is about the limit. The dwell would be maybe 140 degrees of useful time for the "good" exposures...

When you single frame many sensors need a "clear" readout (no global clear) so that means you need to read twice in single frame mode. With that the 145fps camera can do maybe 5 to 8fps in a good scanner that makes HDR color separations. Still much better than a minute or more per frame I am getting now. You would not need to single frame if you run the camera non-stop and lose the exposures during pull-down.

My tests with the XTi (tm) show marked improvement in the image quality from making HDR seperation exposures with 27 exposures per frame giving slightly better results than 9 exposures, i.e. 9 per color rather than just 3 per color. Above that does not see worth the extra scan time.

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With regard to the new DSLR Digital Cinema camera, if it has an optical finder it would be best if it could have a 45 degree diagonal split prism on the focus screen in the center surrounded by a micro prism circle, that kind is easiest to focus on, you can see the split line on H and V edges even in dark places, I think Zeiss used those on some of their cameras. The focus screen should have three small set screws to adjust its Flange to Focal distance through the lens port like the old Pentax Pro cameras, much easer to keep the viewfinder right on the mark. The optical finder in some new DSLR are useless for focus, I hope REDs is useful.

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The name for the "Stealth" DSLR could be "OCTOBER" , like RED OCTOBER, i.e. you are under the radar... or RED ROBIN, a play on words because you will be "stealing" shots... someone else probably has better ideas?