Technical question about frame rates

[D Fuller]

A question for all the technical gurus it there: Why does the Komodo need to window its higher frame rates?

8 understand why earlier Red sensors needed to do this (of at least I think I do)—reading out fewer of the vertical rows in a rolling shutter camera takes less time. But with a global shutter, it would seem that readout is the same speed regardless of how much of the sensor is read out. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Komodo, so I’m curious. What is the constraint?

 

[Christopher A. Bell]

There’s a limitation somewhere in the chain that doesn’t allow it to transfer the higher amounts of data that are coupled to higher frame rates fast enough.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Global or rolling shutter doesn't impact the need to read out the rows one at a time...

Graeme

 

[John Brawley]

The window limitation is related to the whole of system clock speed / bandwidth, not the speed of reading the sensor itself which is only one component of the imaging chain.

JB

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

So great to see you post Graeme. Miss your face down in LA.

Cheers,

Peter

 

[Haven Cousins]

Modern high end cameras, especially any camera that shoots raw, is both moving and processing massive amounts of data, which are very computationally intensive tasks.

So, like any computer, its a balancing act between power consumption/heat, component cost and reliability. Hypothetically RED could have made a Komodo that shoots 6k 17:9 in high frame rates. This machine would have to a)be much larger to dissipate the heat generated. b)be the same size but likely far more expensive, or c)be the exact same form factor and price but it would crap out, crash, drop frames, corrupt data and/or burst into flames.

The temperature those CF cards come out should tell us how hard the thing is working lol.