What crowd funding cameras are there?

[Wayne Morellini]

What past and present crowd sourced video camera projects have their been, particularly of pro level?

I'm pretty desperate for a little cheap pro camera meeting my minimum spec (a little above the iPhone X). I've been waiting for the hydrogen, but want multipoint on a $600 camera. BM continues to stick to full HD on a pocket, and the little micro doesn't have a screen, and is still full HD. The light 16 doesn't offer much in the movie comparrment. Opencamera doesn't offer too much on phones. Z-cam 4/3rds lens mount action cinema camera is where? Axiom, is where? Craft camera disappeared. Arduino and Raspberry cameras are not much.

One of the biggest things with little projects, is there is not enough time, momentum, people or finances. But what about different people getting together from them. Some interesting stuff could be done. NVIDIA has a multi camera platform. Opencamera could do with some reprogramming. A camera based on a mobile, NVIDIA, Arduino, raspberry (or other) or ambarella chipset reprogrammed for pro level data rates, raw. The axiom people have opensourced their system, so there is another one. It doesn't have to be 4k to start with for a very small cam. There is larger sensors that can use 4 lenses, or a mobile phone multi lens system. A camera could be handheld, 3 inch phone like, action cam sized, pen sized etc.

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

get the z cam e1 for $199
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1203955-REG/z_camera_e1cam3a701_e1_mini_4k_video.html

 

[Elias Tejeda]

Jacek, what's the dynamic range on that thing ?

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

Jacek, what's the dynamic range on that thing ?

It has the GH4 sensor. Only 60MB/s recording so that's the limitation- compression... 1080 60p- that's what I want it for. The WiFi control from the phone works quite well, too...

 

[Dominik Muench]

this little thing here seems quite sexy, not available outside the US yet so I haven't had a chance to try :/

https://www.rylo.com

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

pretty awesome- 2 cameras in one. I've got to wrap my head around 360 imaging- seems perfect for family travels...in 4K at that

 

[Dominik Muench]

pretty awesome- 2 cameras in one. I've got to wrap my head around 360 imaging- seems perfect for family travels...in 4K at that

really interesting little thing, I wonder why they wont ship internationally.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

get the z cam e1 for $199
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1203955-REG/z_camera_e1cam3a701_e1_mini_4k_video.html

Yeah. It was crowdfunded. I don't know how that went. But they were going to do a cinema "C1", which had raw, but that didn't come out and they cancelled their forums before I could suggest they simply Raw out from the e1. I imagine it's based on a chipset With an adversion to do uncompressed out. But the release sensor is not the latest. These days we would expect a fair bit better sensors. I wonder if you can program a ambarella camera to do that?

If it had uncompressed out, you could buy a cheap recorder to put on it.

Unfortunately VR is the in thing now. Personally, I would love if I could hack off those lens put conventional lens and controls attached to it. You literally have a stereo camera in the rylo, which you could use 3D with folded optics. The camera industry Isa joke, with a wide seperation in what you can do and what you are given.

 

[Zack Birlew]

Just a thought, how about one of those Ribcage modded GoPro setups? GoPro 4 Black and up would do manual 4K just fine and give you C-mount lenses as an option. If not that then the only other low cost 4K cameras I could think of are the Panasonic G7, G85, and the good old GH4. Those, however, are not as small as the current HD-only options out there but maybe CES and NAB in 2018 will offer something. The Raspberry Pi looks like it would be a good DIY camera platform if someone would make a decent camera for it with 4K recording but that hasn’t happened yet despite many possible sensors being out there.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

It's hard to get certain things. Sony made a better sensor available for the Raspberry, but not really the one I would like.

That GoPro cage idea. I just saw one last night online. I thought it had lens attachment. That's nice. But the Yi 4k+ would be great, has better picture than I've seen at the GoPro store demo and ok datarate.

The thing is,. The cheapest 4k 4/3rds are probably better, but the datarates are not so good.

Re-edit:

It was actually this:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...one_gear_bbrcy4kc_ribcage_modified_yi_4k.html

I'm wondering if there will be an 6k or 8k version this year.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

get the z cam e1 for $199
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1203955-REG/z_camera_e1cam3a701_e1_mini_4k_video.html

Damn that's awesome. Why do people buy action cams when things like this exist?

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Have a look at this:

Market leading specs for a great price. Improving upon the already impressive Yi 4K camera, the 4K+ adds 4K recording at an amazing 60 fps! Also new is the astonishing 4000 x 3008 @ 30 fps video mode and recording bitrates up to 135Mbps. Other new features include full professional shutter speed control and ISO lock, voice control and live streaming support. Upgraded with our Ribcage Mod Kit it becomes even even more extraordinary!

https://www.back-bone.ca/product/ribcage-yi-4k-plus/

I wish I knew these were out. It doesn't seem to mention clean HDMI out like the GoPro for recording, but there is a sync cable there for the older version, which means you could try that for a 4k 3D setup. I haven't found out about crop factor, but it can use upto s16 lens (some restrictions apply) and have straight through lens adaptors for many still digital types, including 4/3rds. Just a shame it does have a proper dof adaptor for the bigger formats.

https://www.back-bone.ca/product/yi-4k-sync-cable/

Take a look at the sample video:

The price gets too close to the BMPCC though, without raw recording or the control it gives. But for an older Sony sensor, the picture is pretty good.

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

The 4k 60p is appealing no doubt.
These small sensors however have one issue that kills them for me- they always starve the light.
There is no going around that with tiny hi resolution sensors. For me that's the deal breaker here...

 

[Nick Gardner]

I have the z-cam and when you need it, it's awesome. It's a great little camera

Nick

 

[Wayne Morellini]

The 4k 60p is appealing no doubt.
These small sensors however have one issue that kills them for me- they always starve the light.
There is no going around that with tiny hi resolution sensors. For me that's the deal breaker here...

We'll, there actually is newer Sony small sensors that will work by starlight, and they do produce a reasonable image (for a small sensor) in human visible light. I did want to do a what is now called a speed booster, around 12+ years ago, using a larger medium format, or large format lens (impractical) for night shots. But the same can be done here. So, the situation has improved anyway recently.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I'm resurrecting an old idea of mine to do cheap 4k and 8k cameras. I'll look at posting a thread on it.

I would like to sidestep the crowdfunded camera subject temporarily, to look at these mods. Frankly, I was about to look for cheap oversease 4k phones to experiment with. Most of these cameras are double the price I would like with no real control and no HDMI precompression clean image output to record. But I've come across some interesting stuff. The ability the ribcage site says, to lock various things and then use manual controls is interesting. But the reality is that to do a heavy commercial film, I don't want this, I want something like the pocket, hydrogen module or better. But fun to carry around and for personal use, which that datarate is practically meant for, and unpreferably tight for pro use. But if I was a kid, wanting to learn how to shoot my own little productions, it would be a good fit. That rib cage on the Yi 4k+ (the better version) is marvelous. But the reality is that you could put a little multifocal lens barely bigger than the one in there, and you can swap out the existing lens really easily I found out. But, the reality is it's a great opportunity to replace the lens with a speed booster, or booster mount (optically it might not be practical) and have second parts connected to different types of lens, so you just attach and leave on the lenses. Still, it just comes to mind a way to do a universal reconfigurable speed booster with maybe no optical problems. But the reality is that you could probably order higher grade cameras than this with custom physical parts by the 1000, like you used to be able to 10 years ago. I keep thinking of how to design something brilliant, even
if lower grade (like my finger sized cinema camera) I've forgotten the easy solutions. The problem with the easy solutions, competition can outdate them pretty quickly. Like my optical adaptor I wanted to do, film in dimly lit rooms at night to standing next to the sun and moon with both of them in dynamic range along with stars in a blue sky. But the upcoming sensors were going to outdate that after it was released. So, it was pointless, but I didn't know how much the industry would put the breaks on hdr. However, such pictures in day time had been done X years latter.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I have the z-cam and when you need it, it's awesome. It's a great little camera

Nick

Nick. I'm trying to contact zcam at the moment with a few ideas, so I don't want to say much. But 60 mb/s no recordable HDMI 4k, don't you wish for a newer version (even with the ex-aptina 14 stop 4kp50/60 4/3rds (10 bits or maybe more I think) sensors, like the more lower version used in the BM Micro Studio, and something at least as good as the Ambarella chipset used in the Yi 4k+ that can do 10 bit and over 170mb/s? I'm not very happy that companies haven't been taking advantage of the aptina sensor, at least that is a minimum spec. 16 stop should be out there too.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Ok, on a temporary side step into the camera mods, mentioned above:

Now, here is installing the cage on a GoPro:

https://www.back-bone.ca

Here is replacing the lens on a Yi 4k

(please note, there are similar lens tools for at least some other makes, including GoPro by the looks of it, do why make the mod so complicated, can't they speed boost it and save people potentially 20 min+?).

https://pixaero.pro

Check out this mod (the sort of thing I didn't want to do to an perfectly good $400 camera:

Now, of course we want one of these Red ones:

So,going on from the post above. It should be possible to mount a good multifocal lens internally speed boosted down from a larger format, or a speed booster. So, s8 to s16 should be reasonable. 4/3rds and above are doable, but the lens is going be so big compared to this little tiny camera. However, it s possible to do such a thing in a very small profile. It's a bigger business opportunity.

 

[David Peterson]

get the z cam e1 for $199
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1203955-REG/z_camera_e1cam3a701_e1_mini_4k_video.html

I ordered it! As the $199 price for 4K with the GH4 sensor is too good to resist.

But the price has leaped back up to five hundred now (seven hundred for the "gift" version!).

Damn that's awesome. Why do people buy action cams when things like this exist?

Because I think the waterproof cage for the E1 never came out?

Also as tiny as the E1 with a pancake lens is, a GoPro is still going to be tinier!

The Raspberry Pi looks like it would be a good DIY camera platform if someone would make a decent camera for it with 4K recording but that hasn’t happened yet despite many possible sensors being out there.

I was tempted buy the Raspberry Pi too, especially when the $5 Nano came out! Because then it was tempting the VR possibilities using dozens of them in an array. But never did this, as waited and waited too long before finally the Raspberry Pi Nanos showed up commonly in stock and easy to obtain. As for a very long time they were just being sold out everywhere in seconds.

1080 60p- that's what I want it for. The WiFi control from the phone works quite well, too...

240fps HD has a sexy low budget slow motion appeal too for me.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

David. I encourage you. If they ever release a descent 4k video sensor fir the raspberry, that would make a descent array.

They have open development and forums for the E1. If only they could upgrade the sensor to a more modern 14 stop+ 10-12 bit (hopefully 50fps) UHD sensor and the 200mb/s+ h264 hdr rec2020, it would be pretty good. That's an upper end ambarella chipset, and an old aptina sensor.