Personal View site logo
Digital Bolex raw camera, no longer made
  • 1130 Replies sorted by
  • Now I know there's probably 20,000 watts of light being bounced around on the pro clips...

    No, there's not. No film lights as I stated. Read up on both The Tree of Life and To the Wonder. These are available light and practicals only features, basically high end Dogme, shot on a mixture of 35mm, 65mm and digital.

    Yes, some of them have minor details visible, when the camera and subject are within mere inches or a few feet away from the windows, as I said. Inverse square falloff of light at work, maximum potential for bounce in hand. Look at the ones where subject and/or camera are a room's distance+ from the window/door. Nothing. C'mon man. And that's with two and a half stops of more DR at most, yet you still get blown highlights and edges.

    My point is, it's unfair to expect this, or the BMD cameras, or most cameras to do better or even equal to what you can do with film when you're shooting available light interiors. Maybe if it was an Alexa. But the fact of areas of over exposure and underexposure do not equate to either a bad camera or bad photography if the image as a whole works in context (whether or not it's necessarily "pleasing" in a classical sense).

    Too often these test clips get reviewed without any sort of proper context or evaluation of what the clip ultimately represents. Some arbitrary, idealized standard is projected onto everything that has very little correspondence to real work in actual films. What someone can do in a "lab" situation is both irrelevant and boring. To me at least. I want to see what these cameras do in real situations, especially those with which it was supposedly designed for.

  • @BurnetRhoades I'm afraid to make this comment and derail the thread but most of those examples of the blown out window are not a good comparison to the Bolex clip. I can see some outside detail in all your examples but in the Bolex clip, it's completely blown. Nothing. Now I know there's probably 20,000 watts of light being bounced around on the pro clips and who knows, maybe the outside it fake on some of the examples but I've always been able to save a little bit of the outside when I have light on any kind on the inside, even house lights, with my BM cameras.

    Once again, I get it, many variables but I think the blown highlights are litter harsher in the Bolex clips than what we're used to with some of these newer cameras.

  • @endotoxic Are we really still at this level of discourse? There's plenty to criticise about the camera and footage without resorting to name calling.

  • camera fantasy. Its all i can say for this hipsters.

  • @cantsin

    a Bolex RX lens (which should never be used in front of any other camera than a true 16mm reflex Bolex because its optics are engineered for the camera's internal beam-splitting prism).

    Where did you learn about this? I have always used non-reflex Bolexes with lenses straight off the reflex versions (mainly Switar) and never noticed any problem, although what you say sounds plausible.

  • DR definitely is much better with the Blackmagics.

    No argument there. I'm far more inclined to go BMD for both its extra stop of DR as well as sensitivity, not to mention price and amazing new Speed Booster options. Even if they were equal in these respects, I would have a hard time buying the Bolex simply because it looks like a bulky, Flash Gordon era ray gun.

    Here's some film for you though, that nobody in their right mind can claim was shot poorly on the windows thing, from To the Wonder...

    http://images.contactmusic.com/images/m4vstill/to-the-wonder-olga-kurylenko-640.jpg http://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/8485_4.jpg http://images2.static-bluray.com/reviews/8485_1.jpg http://images4.static-bluray.com/reviews/8485_25.jpg

    ...and here, even though they're right up next to the window, allowing generous use of bounce (no movie lighting used at all), it's still quite over exposed just not completely blown, save for the highlight edges on the window frame and sheer drapery... http://images3.static-bluray.com/reviews/8485_13.jpg

    ...there are similar examples in Tree of Life. Just putting this shooting scenario into some cinematic perspective...

    http://jto.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ff20110812a1a.jpg http://ckckred.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/the-tree-of-life-movie_75137-1920x1200.jpg http://filmint.nu/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/2011_the_tree_of_life_003.jpg

    ...another notable film using mostly available light would be Harris Savides work in Gus Van Sant's Elephant or Last Days. Beautiful, natural images where sometimes the foreground subject's needs means background stuff goes "technically" wrong even with 14.5-15 stops of DR with something like Kodak Vision3.

  • No, likely a vintage c-mount lens, I agree with Burnet. In the worst case, even a Bolex RX lens (which should never be used in front of any other camera than a true 16mm reflex Bolex because its optics are engineered for the camera's internal beam-splitting prism).

    If that was the case, then the test footage would be pretty worthless - except for confirming pleasing color rendering, good sound and strong chroma noise.

    But I stand by statement about dynamic range, just having worked in Resolve on a video shot with the BMPC that contained a similar scene, and another one shot directly against the sun before sunset. DR definitely is much better with the Blackmagics.

  • I thought it was a filter of some sort. Some sort of pro mist or something? Any links?

  • Without heavy supplementary movie lights there would be no way to not have blown, clipped windows in the above scenario, even on film. If it was a Sony sensor it would look a lot worse.

    It's easy enough to see this is a soft lens by how it's handling the massive delta between exterior and interior lighting. Look at the amount of bloom and contamination into all occluding people as they pass in front of the lens. It doesn't have the same quality as what you get with a diffusion filter (which also triggers my gag reflex) but that's definitely a soft lens.

  • This would be an amazing thing if it was somewhere in 400-600$ range, no XLR's, no Raw or anything, just plain simple Bolex. Only digital.

  • Loaded the frames into Lightroom. Default color is very pleasing out of the box - indeed more "organic" than Blackmagic Cameras with default LUT. The image is soft, which might add to the "pleasing" look. Blues are richer than with Blackmagic cameras (where the blue channel seems to be the weak spot), reds seem to be weaker/tending towards purple.

    But the real drawbacks:

    • Dynamic range is very limited. Highlights clip hard, although the picture wasn't overexposed - shadows clip, too. With Blackmagic cameras (and negative film stock, for that matter) you'd definitely not get this; I'd say they have 2-3 more f-stops in the highlights with similar exposure.

    • Chroma noise is very pronounced, and looks ugly. It's not the fine-grained noise you get with the Blackmagics, but chroma blotches that span several pixels. Noise filtering seems a must (bad news for people working with Resolve Light).

    • Unless Bloom worked with a bad or really vintage lens, detail resolution (such as hair) is weak, and the camera probably doesn't resolve true 2K.

    Despite the above, this camera might be better suited for non-colorists and amateur/DIY filmmakers than BM because of the default out-of-the-cam 1970s-style 'beauty shot' aesthetic. Sound is quite good, too, except that it's only mono in Bloom's footage.

    BLX-0138-20131225-0000036.jpg
    2048 x 1152 - 2M
  • Given that this is a "cinema" camera I'd just like to point out that all of the criticisms just levied can be found regularly in a majority of films. Burning edge highlights, blown windows, etc. these are all regularly found in natural light interior situations, regardless of camera and would be the same with film origination.

  • Now found the download URL for Bloom's raw footage: https://philipbloom.wetransfer.com/downloads/a2361ca610eb3bc6182af7fea9838d5420131228180425/df0c2f (1.74 GB). Am curious to play with it Resolve.

  • Yeah, I get Bloom is trying to get some footage out there but it's pretty soft and doesn't handle highlights well. Not sure the pocket would have down better though.

  • I don't find the clip particularly nice - smeared motion, blown-out highlights on the forehead... But we need to see original DNGs from the camera.

  • Most of what makes that clip look filmic has more to do with the lens than anything. They've used a LUT that works well with the mix of natural and electric light but the combination of focal length, framing and use of a big stop are what sells it. Lens + technique are most of what make this clip nice, though the chip in the Bolex does seem to have a pleasing response to light.

  • more footage? anyone? Bueller?

  • It's just a camera aint it((?) landing in a world of super 8 enthusiasts, as are a lot of cameras now - not a bad thing is it? loads of us about wether we describe ourselves thus or no - viewing blind looks a bit mushy - compared to what's potentially out now, or shortly - slightly less enthusing than a current AP shooting GV's on a 5 year old camcorder, looking at published files ...(bizarrely which were not vetted and fed into some kind of PR suit room- terrible launch footage ?) - compared to what's probably coming next year - 2 years too late? As always only a box, fuck all to do with creativity - raw 4:2:2 etc won't save you if you can't shoot on whatever is in your hand.
    Soz as ever bit tiddly just make stuff and wonder how a 3 page conversation can emerge from the teeth included on a "cine" Samyang lens lol - get out and do summat - no-one cares until someone cares.

    EDIT as always a bit pissed, just bored of conjecture of real life delivery and online dreaming - nothing wrong with being trusted by multi million endowed producers to deliver their job - do it daily - can you make channel 4, BBC ABC HBO etc millions of new viewers? Good yes then carry on - No? then carry on posting posting in Voldermorts back-slap forum - why not just not go do it? No dis to new guys, but ignore everyone, including this - go fucking make it good because the industry needs you - EosHD knows fook all, hence his arty farty diatribe against - doing "well" , but hey we know fook all - it's all yours - go make some shit and forget the silly bastards not doing anything telling you what to do - dont let them fuck you up as its easy to do !

  • Sensor swap from CCD to CMOS is impossible without reengineering the entire camera - it would require completely new signal processing. Seems to me as if the company has cornered itself in the CCD niche.

  • I would be interested in the cam if the swapped out the sensor for the Panasonic 4K sensor. Maybe they will offer that down the line. Should be an interesting year for higher resolution cams. I hope someone will make a ten terabyte drive as well.

  • I don't think the highlights compare favorably to film and it doesn't look like it digs cleanly enough into the shadows to get away with underexposing.

  • Not sure why I don't want to like this camera. Maybe its because I do like the feature set, but I don't want to pay the price they are offering it at.

    I rationalize not seriously considering the D16 by telling myself I will wait for NAB to see if there is a global shutter version of the BMPCC or similar with higher res so I can stabilize and/or crop in post and still deliver HD.

    But that's really not fair because I already have a BMPCC. If I did not have a camera, I would seriously consider getting a D16, though the price would still be an obstacle, I would probably find a way to make it work, if I continue to like the footage.

    Congratulations Digital Bolex! You really did deliver and I am pleasantly surprised. I hope you surprise us again at NAB, as I will be ready to commit to purchasing a new 1" sensor camera then.

  • I'm going to mark this as the date where I heard that ccd was more film like. Shit, the last 20+ years have been a waste.

    The Joe Marine footage could have been shot with my gh3, as far as motion/shake is concerned. I'm still waiting for that wow ftg moment.