The Lessons of DALSA Digital Cinema

[Peter.G]

They forgot about accessibility !!!

 

[Peter Moretti]

Lesson from Dalsa: Make a product that people will buy at a price they can afford. Any lesson beyond that is window-dressing.

Graeme

I'd humbly add to that that size does matter.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I always felt that Dalsa's cinema camera division was under-capitalized, that's the only explanation I can think for for taking a nice sensor and putting it into such a bulky body with big circuit boards... they didn't have to money, or connections, or whatever, to get that aspect (electronics, processors, etc.) properly designed and built, which in turn created a big, boxy camera to house what looked like homemade electronics.

It seemed to me that they were hoping to see some influx of capital investment after the prototype was built, from which they'd create a proper camera from the ground up.

The other problem was not figuring out a way to compress 4K RAW so that it could be handled more easily by a typical filmmaker.

 

[Deanan]

I always felt that Dalsa's cinema camera division was under-capitalized, that's the only explanation I can think for for taking a nice sensor and putting it into such a bulky body with big circuit boards... they didn't have to money, or connections, or whatever, to get that aspect (electronics, processors, etc.) properly designed and built, which in turn created a big, boxy camera to house what looked like homemade electronics.

It seemed to me that they were hoping to see some influx of capital investment after the prototype was built, from which they'd create a proper camera from the ground up.

The other problem was not figuring out a way to compress 4K RAW so that it could be handled more easily by a typical filmmaker.

You can actually figure out what they spent by looking at the quarterly reports.
They were pretty well capitalized for what they needed to do but the money doesn't always go to the right things.
Money wasn't and issue but leadership and vision was.

 

[David Battistella]

Money wasn't and issue but leadership and vision was.

Isn't is too often the case when people can not or refuse to see and embrace?

So many things die just because of a lack of leadership and vision.

And then you get things like RED.


David

 

[Mike Prevette]

1) Dalsa's recording options weren't realistic.

2) it was the size of a small refrigerator, and equally as well designed.

At the time it's main competitor seemed to be the Viper, a 2/3 inch camera with lower resolution that was plagued with it's own problems, but it dominated the "Digital Cinema" world because of from factor.

 

[Will Wernick]

interesting article. Thanks for posting!

 

[Eric Lange]

Lesson from Dalsa: Make a product that people will buy at a price they can afford. Any lesson beyond that is window-dressing.

Graeme

That is key… the Dalsa system was ludicrously expensive, and dare I say rather under developed. Shame really, no point crying about it.

Eric