One of my silly stupid ideas,
Why not use a mechanical shutter somebody did it with a Dvcam once.
There are no rolling shutter artifacts, Kreins (??) I guess does it this way.

I have seen electric shutter out there, if anybody is worried about noise power consumption or reliability.


Maybe B&H is where I saw it.


With new cameras, like the Silicon Imagine Altasens one coming out, it is easy to get distracted about the possibilities. But, even if they could reduce the price of it to less than $5K, which size would you prefer to be using, as the Elphel could be combined with a small Origami tablet unit (or PDA or linux micro-controller board) looking like an Sharp view-cam)?:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3768/1172/1600/DSC_3238.jpg

The smaller JVCHD10 one is closer to the size volume that an Elphel unit can be made into ;)


Thanks

Wayne.

electric shutter have been used for decades,
no problem with reliability.
Noise either.
I only do mean,
if the immage comes out with no artifacts,
you dont have to hassle in post, each step in post will alter the image a bit. It takes time, a lot of and will be boring to do the dammed work
on each rush again, again and again.
I do know what I speek from.
Was working with Inferno, Maya, Quantel way to long,
stopped just before going totally mad.
Mad anyway Madhatter you can name me.

Wayne it was a long time ago we, you and me we found ephel at linuxdevices.com, do you remeber ??? Linux bahhh nobody was
talking friendly about it....

Yes.

(10 character post limit, don't they believe in short posts around here ;))

Question to Andrey Filippov
It is possible record compressed RAW (similar to CineformRAW) from smos direct-to-hdd with small modification of existing architecture of Elphel333 ?
I mean solution like mentioned by Rai Orz:
Take your brain free from all PC stuffs. The A/D Unit, inside (or outside the CMOS Sensor) have 10, 12 or more output pins (each pin is one BIT). The output rate is 33-66MHz. FPGAs can handle those data speeds in realtime. Shift or translation to 16Bit words are simple works. Next part is the Harddisk. Not a controller or interface, you can write direct to disk. A HDD needs words, not bytes. There are 16Pin (one pin = one byte) and you can connect it also direct to the FPGA or MC.
Also you can split the datas to more than one hdd. (First word to first HDD, second to second...)
But some sensor chip manufactors do the work for you. Most chips (2M pixel, or more) have two, or more output ports. Your FPGA can handle this and you can write to multiple HDD, without software logic. (First chip output go to first HDD, and so on)
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=242054&postcount=2071
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=275742&postcount=68

That's the Kineta way doing it

Question to Andrey Filippov
It is possible record compressed RAW (similar to CineformRAW) from smos direct-to-hdd with small modification of existing architecture of Elphel333 ?

No - that will be a major redesign - our cameras do not have a disk interface.

Thank you, Andrey for clarification. How much cost work to make a such solution camera:
Compressed RAW from CMOS direct-to-disk and streaming proxy (low 1/2 or 1/4 resolution) through GIGe ?

I think it would be out of the way for Andrey right now. he makes High resolution Network cameras mainly for security purposes. This thread is for tests done with his current design to make it possible for filmmaking. His design right now really really good quality. I should be getting my lenses in these few days. and ill show you what i mean.

Forrest (and others)

I got my camera a few days ago. I'm not able to do tests this week because I'm out of the country, but I'll follow this thread and post my results when I'm back.

heres a test with the new f1.3 computar varifocal lens:
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a162/vericetti/rexx5.jpg

sorry for the horrible lighting, i had the blown out areas because that paper is glossy and i was getting light reflected from through the windows from outside. and my back is basiaclly a wall of french doors, (glass doors) so they all are windows.

Pardon my ignorance, but can this camera acquire motion video at more than 8 bits deep ?
Other than that, what are we gaining over a normal HD video camera , other than something to tinker with ?
It's good to see people trying out new devices! keep it up!
-Les

bonjour

as I did tell you,
have a mechanical shutter,
use a classical viewfinder

I lost this link
voila
here it goes
www.arri.de/entry/416.htm

nothing is dead, it is brand new

Pardon my ignorance, but can this camera acquire motion video at more than 8 bits deep ?
Other than that, what are we gaining over a normal HD video camera , other than something to tinker with ?
It's good to see people trying out new devices! keep it up!
-Les
a really good one, who knows??

direct to disc
a huge choice of lenses
and so on

Ronald, would you have any idea as to know how sync a 180 degree shutter to the Elphel's stream? It would be very cool in theroy, but i dont think id be able to build something that would cover the light at the right time inervals.

and after that was built, the viewfinder would go next.

Thank you for that link, i think i figured out what else i need to make the viefinder i was going to make. that pechan prism looks very handy.

http://home.teleport.com/~gdi/25pscha.htm
came up decades ago
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=25808&page=140

So
maybe an idiot one
but how to get sync out of this board??

The 3mp micron chip that the elphel uses is capable of running snapshots in global reset mode which means all the lines are exposed at the same time, but this requires a mechanical shutter to cut it off at the end (i assume exposure time becomes longer for the lower lines because they just keep exposing until readout gets to them or something). also the chip has the ability to recieve an external trigger that begins a frame. I assume that if you run in global reset mode with a mechanical shutter, you lose the ability to have much longer than 180degree shuttters, but rolling shutter artifacts would be totally removed. The question is whether or not elphel has support for these functions and if you can find a way to hook up a crystal to the camera and the shutter. WIthout this, i dont think a mechanical shutter would do much since the actual exposure period of the first and last rows, in many configurations, hardly even overlap at all, so youd just end up reducing the exposure of probably the first and last rows, basically darkening the tops and bottom of the frame.

Andrey,

Just curious, I downloaded the open source stuff and was picking through you FPGA code.

Since I'm not to familiar with Verilog (I'm coding in VHDL) I was wondering if you have any documentation to go with the compressor. Is all the compression done in the FPGA, I only took a quick look and its hard to tell from unfamiliar code, or do you have to do entropy encoding in the processor or something.

Since I'm not to familiar with Verilog (I'm coding in VHDL) I was wondering if you have any documentation to go with.

I'm pretty sure that their would be translation tools out there, from one to the other, if that would help you.

Ogg Theora Information (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=77314)

Andrey,

I have some good news, that I will be posting sometime over in my digital cinema technical thread.

I have reviewed the sensor information and things have changed quiet a bit. Kodak is supposed to have some 100K -ev well sensor chip, so I am interested in those Kodak options you mentioned.

Micron has got superwideVGA chip with multislope, so I am interested if any of their chips that you use in future have this excellent feature.

But the biggie, apart from some behinds the scenes doc I have on a new sensor people have been eagerly waiting for for years that is quiet an excellent choice for you (though not in price). Is that I have found a cheap Russian, alternative to the x3 Foveon. I will email you privately as I want some space to negotiate with them first, without non business/electronics professional people rushing them for information.


Thanks

Wayne.

Andrey,

I have some good news, that I will be posting sometime over in my digital cinema technical thread.



Wayne,

sorry for late reply - I'm just back from the linuxtag.org. I really appreciate information on the new sensors but I can not work with them myself (at least in near future) - there are so many current projects. So right now I can just provide some help to somebody who can work on them.

Andrey

Funny you dismissed me like more than a year ago when I asked you about using your camera for High Definition stuff.
Now I see you here....

Funny you dismissed me like more than a year ago when I asked you about using your camera for High Definition stuff.
Now I see you here....
It is not my speciality :-) , and this application of our cameras is community-driven.

Wayne,

sorry for late reply - I'm just back from the linuxtag.org. I really appreciate information on the new sensors but I can not work with them myself (at least in near future) - there are so many current projects. So right now I can just provide some help to somebody who can work on them.

Andrey

That's OK, but I know that you work with micron and mentioned Kodaks. Do any of the Microns that you are using, are planing to, use the dual/multislope. You were talking about the Kodak, are you planning on using the 100K -ev ones, or the 65K -ev ones?

Thanks

Wayne.

Forrest (and others)

I got my camera a few days ago. I'm not able to do tests this week because I'm out of the country, but I'll follow this thread and post my results when I'm back.

Oscar,
Any luck using this camera???

I'm sorry it took so long.... I had a lot of trouble finding a way to capture the footage. I now have figured out a stupid work around, so that's OK for now.

I had luck finding a very (as far as I can tell from my first tests) good C - mount lens on an 'antique' 16mm film camera. here are some tests shots I made with the camera and the lens:
http://bosshogg.logjam.com/oscar/Elphel/rez.jpeg
http://bosshogg.logjam.com/oscar/Elphel/rose.jpg
http://bosshogg.logjam.com/oscar/Elphel/rose1.jpg
http://bosshogg.logjam.com/oscar/Elphel/rose(de-artifact).jpg

Two of the shots with the rose (shot through a dirty window) are toughed up in AE. One of them 'rose(de-artifact) ' has some enhancements (de-artifact and 0,5 box-blur) to reduce the compression distortions of the Elphel camera.

One of the big problems I still have is the rolling shutter effect on quick moves.

I'm also working on the wax adapter.

do a green screen test to see how the color compression is

Oscar, those rose grabs where at about 1700 by 800. what fps where you able to capture that at? or where they more for still test purposes.

No, it's a real frame-grab from a clip I shot at 24 fps (1728 x 896)
I'm very glad and surprised that my 1.5 GHZ Intel celeron (!) laptop can capture at that resolution. When I make a battery pack of some sort for the camera I'm very mobile already...only one cable between the laptop and the camera.
How are you doing with you Elphel Forrest?

Theres no surprise, you are getting from 30-70mbs (from what I seem to understand) which is upto around 9MBytes second, next to nothing and a number of drives can handle that now days.

Forrest or Oscar,
Have you tried playing with higher frame rates for slow motion shots? 640 X360 would be like letterboxed standard def, and you could get framerates up to probably over 100fps. It may not look very good at that low resolution, Then again, until the recent HD cams, SD was just fine. In conjuction with a 35mm adapter to make the subject pop, you'll be able to do some really cool slow motion.

Also, does the camera do windowing or sub-sampling for lower res?

Overall I really like this experiment that Forrest and Oscar are trying, the heavy compression keeps it from being a real professional camera, but it's affordable, has a manageable data rate, and can do real slow motion (I hope).

There should be a whole host of new Gig-E and firewire B standard industrial cameras coming out soon that will be the subject of much experimentation, which is great.

Thanks guys, neat thread here...

Which new cameras are those? You know there are already thousands of industrial cameras.

Which new cameras are those? You know there are already thousands of industrial cameras.

I said "should" and "whole host"
not "know" and "thousands".

Rob at Graftek (http://www.graftek.com) discussed it with me. He said that "when new faster connectivity standards come out so do new devices that can take take advantage of the extra bandwidth; ; so expect a whole host of new industrial cameras in a few months." Made sense to me, so I thought I'd voice my enthusiasm.

Which new cameras are those? You know there are already thousands of industrial cameras.

double post, oops

Wayne -- RE GigE camera heads: I found through Google the "GE" series by Prosilica. The best is the GE-1600 which is a 2 megapixel Sony CCD camera, 1600 x 1220 x 15 fps (but can ROI to get you back up to 24 fps), progressive scan, 12-bit digitising, global shutter (hey!), can use cheap 100 meter long network cable, C-mount for lens, includes an SDK (not clear about the out-of-box software). Their previous similar spec Firewire cameras were $2k - $3k, so this one probably at least that much (have not contacted them for a quote). Wonder if there will be cheaper ones coming along -- GigE PCI cards for a desktop are cheap, and more notebooks are including GigE ports as well (just need cheap cameras now!).

Their website:
www.prosilica.com

Regards,
John.

15fps at 1600x1220. how can it do 24 at that resolution if it can only do 15? isnt the ROI like a windowing function?

I said "should" and "whole host"
not "know" and "thousands".

Rob at Graftek (http://www.graftek.com) discussed it with me. He said that "when new faster connectivity standards come out so do new devices that can take take advantage of the extra bandwidth; ; so expect a whole host of new industrial cameras in a few months." Made sense to me, so I thought I'd voice my enthusiasm.
I was asking which, and letting you know that there already were. Thanks for the follow up.


John,

There is at least dozens of manufactures of box cameras out there, too many to check, and there are many USB, GIGE and Firewire models. Just remember USB2.0 gets performance problems because the processor is forced to divide more time to run the interface.

My technical thread has a number of links through it to lists of manufacturers of cameras and sensors etc, and to cameras themselves, so you can find most of them.

Lots of these manufacturers are quiet expensive for what you get, and probably don't ship with software to record to disk in a pro video fashion (so be careful to find out).

Well, I am here to let you know I am wrapping up on the DIY cameras, and have posted some lengthy informative project summary posts in my "Home Made HD Cinema Cameras - Technical Discussion" thread. I am just dropping by to let you know they are there, and are well worth the read. The thread itself, probably lists half of what you need to know there from this site. If the two posts suddenly disappear, please ask the moderators to restore them.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=488581&postcount=470
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=488582&postcount=471

The Technical Discussion thread itself:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=28781

Forrest -- sorry I didn't make it clear; yes, when you ROI a smaller frame size within the max frame size (to get faster fps) obviously the frame size is smaller (usual trade-off); I simply meant that this camera has the ROI ability to give you the faster fps.

Wayne -- all the best: you gave a great impetus to many (including me) who have this crazy idea they want to modify cameras to make movies...

Regards,
John.

thanks John, I got ya.

As far as I can see in my tests: with the camera set on 85% quality or more, most of the 'bad' compression artifacts are minimized.
What is left is a small grid pattern and much larger blocks. Both of those can be minimized too when you put a box-blur of 0,4 or 0,5 on the image. The image itself will hardly loose detail ánd you can now put a bit of an unsharp-mask on it without sharpening the compression effects.
Here (http://bosshogg.logjam.com/oscar/Elphel/compressiontest.jpg) is a test (on the right has the box-blur filter). You have to save the image and zoom in to notice the difference.
(Note that the images are a just fraction of the whole image, so the grain you see is just 'normal' grain, not compression noise)
I'll do some better tests soon, but I'm very busy this week...so..

[QUOTE=Oscar Spier]As far as I can see in my tests: with the camera set on 85% quality or more, most of the 'bad' compression artifacts are minimized.......QUOTE]

Oscar or Forrest,
Any luck trying higher frame rates. Check page 9 for my question posted if you missed it.

Thanks.

Wayne,
I mis-read your response last time. Need to read more slowly. thanks.

Donnie. i have done the slo-mo tests. upto 120 fps i think. and the slo-mo is there, and looks good. But when you window it that small, the resolution isnt all that great. i think it is even sub-sd at 640 x 480. Its alot harder to make everything in this package work for you than i had first invisioned.

I've found a link to a list of firewire camera on the market
http://damien.douxchamps.net/ieee1394/cameras/index.php

maybe is usefull for you!
Matteo

what do you think about the
Marlin F-131 http://www.alliedvisiontec.com/produktinfos.html?t=produktinfos&o=18&a=selectid
990 euros!

what do you think about the
Marlin F-131 http://www.alliedvisiontec.com/produktinfos.html?t=produktinfos&o=18&a=selectid
990 euros!

Looks like IBIS sensor based camera. You can find a lot info about this cmos sensor in treads like this:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=25808
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=28781
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=35227

and especially in tread dedicated to Drake camera:
"Rai & Markus' "Drake" HD camera"
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=34339

many thanks
Matteo Pozzi

Hi to all sorry for my prevews post ...wrong place!
I want to know if it is possible to use the elphel camera under win xp or only under linux and about the camera hardware :
how many f-stop dynamic range have the elphel 333?
comparing the images to the image of the SI-1920hdvr camera that have 10 f-stop dynamic range the image looks washed out, is that a wrong setup or not?
many thanks Matteo Pozzi

It could be the lens quality, even the setup or codec/processing, but yes you are right. I noticed this from the beginning and it is severe.

Yes, I am still subscribed, waiting till the 433 comes ;).