Where can I get a custom prism made or guide, & multi-spectral em-ccd cams, cheap?

[Wayne Morellini]

Where can I get a custom prism made or guide, & multi-spectral em-ccd cams, cheap?

Where can I get a custom prism made, or guide to making, & multi-spectral em-ccd cams, cheap?

I am interested in setting up a multi-spectral camera system. This is a camera that see's more spectrum banblds than red green band blue, such as IR and UV.

One way is to see if you can buy an expensive multi spectral camera which is unlikely to have a extemely sensitive sensor, like em-ccd, which can register single photons with extremely low noise. Another methord would be to make a custom prism with a sensor available for each band.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Phil Holland]

I've had stuff custom made by Edmunds Optics before. Pretty straight forward process. Explain to them what you need and they'll give you a quote.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Thanks Phil. What sort of price do they do.

 

[Phil Holland]

Thanks Phil. What sort of price do they do.

100% depends on what you order and also how much of it. I've made one offs that cost $500, I've also made some stuff that cost significantly more. You'll need to contact them for a quote on the specific prism design, size, and material.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Good, it's not $2k-5k. I'm going through their parts, and have got dozens of pages still open. Wide range of cameras there. I might try a hand construction first.

 

[Robert Hart]

There used to be an outfit in Australia which used to make custom prisms. I had a small batch of right-angle prisms done for AGUS35 adaptors way back in the day about year 3BR ( before RED ). I don't remember the name now and might not be able to dig it out as the original email computer is long gone.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Thanks Rob. Still thinking, about a 360 degree camera with relay image and different design.

 

[Robert Hart]

Wayne. I am assuming you are considering a right-angle prism and CCD or fast global CMOS. For a 35mm image it would need to be large, ballpark 70mm hypotenuse minimum to avoid margin fogging or vigette. It might be worthwhile if you are prototyping to enquire with Hien Le at LETUS to see if they have any left-over large prisms from their Letus Extreme/Elite/Ultimate series 35mm adaptor production run.


Their compound prism for the erecting image path was from memory made up from two small and one large right-angle prisms assembled with UV-cure optical cement. They may have ordered separate prisms and assembled in-house. If they were jobbing the optical assembly out, then separate large prisms may not exist in any stock they may have.


Who knows, they might even like to do a design deal with you. You might be able to achieve the same objective witrh a 45degree surface-coated mirror which would be easier, lighter and required less countermass. Getting all those optical paths to register with the required high frame rate/shutter speed will be a mission but sensor speeds are fast enough these days for say up to ISO320 I would think.


Dennis Woods at Cinevate and Wayne Kinney ( Shoot 35?? ) may also have some left-over stock.


If you are going the opposed right-angle prism pair one static/one agile route, I think you will hit a cost and resolution wall with the fisheye optic and some very serious micro-engineering axial alignment challenges. The axial alignment image-shift issue might be met by post-production or in-camera image processing which would also incorporate the frame stitching process.

I'm only guessing here but those would be my approaches. Am I getting warm? The trolls have probably got the patents and a generic registered designs already stitched up. If not, you'd better get on it.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I am starting to consider approaching a camera company to do a 5 chip scientific camera , or one of my siecisl multi-soecyral designs. Some tricky things to work out, but a revolutionary approach. Might like to try to make a prototype. I know people have made their own prisms. Could test out that way with different configurations. I could do a first order mirror system on a rig, but don't know how filters would act on that. But now I consider it, I could avoid contamination by filling it with a dry inert gas. Seems I might he answering my own question.

Large format sizes or high resolution, are not needed. I'm looking at electron multiplier CCD's use in Astro astronomy to pickup even single photons for investigation. I can use S-cmos like technology, like Red probably uses, but that is a lot less than s-cmos (and in price aswell). If I go for large resolution, it would likely be 100mp on a big sensor.

I could approach Red, but it is not really their field, and maybe only 100k cameras will be made in 10 years. Any suggestions on who I could approach?

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Ultimately such a camera is an excellent cinema camera for undisclosed reasons.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Actually, it should be able to hit 100k-1m sakes a year at $10k a pop for many sales. It is potentially a viable product. Now i'm just crossing it over with another innovation in my head, that makes it much more viable. Another cross over now, makes it more usefulm again, and at a potential level of 100m sales a year. Now it is at a level it woyld be better to fund it all myself, rather thsn do a sweet heart deal at 20%. This actually covers a big area I have wanted to cover and needs a team to work out the details.