The new Cinematographer's UBER-Toy

MrBishop

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
Dalsa stunned the digital cinema world at with its introduction of Origin, a new high resolution digital cinema camera a few months ago at NAB 2003. DMN's Jack Lloyd takes a closer look at the budding behemoth, talking with Dalsa Origin's creators and finding out more about this promising new development. Will this be the defining technology of digital cinema?

Despite the fact the camera (see photo) was little more than a work in progress and that its output wasn't seen on a monitor that could do it full justice, inside was a brand new sensor Dalsa has developed that was capable of eight million pixel resolution, capturing images at 4K x 2K (actually 4046 H x 2048 V), or four times the resolution of HDTV in pixel count.


OK...Me stepping in. This very camera is undergoing it's real-time run downstairs, with 7 cinematographers checking it out.,,,as I type this. I've found some info online about this new camera, but I have open access to the tech-manuals...which are now sitting on my desk. I can read them., but not copy them :(

Oh...what a joy to be able to see this camera in action.
 
Well I can say this about the product... It finally gives drive manufactuers a reason to go beyond current (what is it 300GB max. now) capacity drives. I did some calculations based on there web site facts it would take 10 Terrabytes to hold a normal 2 1/2 hour uncompressed movie. That doesn't include the extras either. ::sits in awe::
 
i wanna see a pic of the camera.... and bish send me those files. ill open them and read em for ya :evil:
 
What an incredible tool for filmmakers. The director/writer/film editor Robert Rodriguez does a very interesting piece on digital cinematography in the Special Features on the "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" DVD. Very much worth watching. The movie was pretty good, too.
 
:confused: What good is it if even HDTV is going to reduce the resolution to a quarter of the original? I understand that its a great leap but if you can't see it at that resolution...:eek6:
 
Squiggy said:
:confused: What good is it if even HDTV is going to reduce the resolution to a quarter of the original? I understand that its a great leap but if you can't see it at that resolution...:eek6:
Click to expand...
you can crop out a lot of stuff?
 
drkavnger99 said:
Well I can say this about the product... It finally gives drive manufactuers a reason to go beyond current (what is it 300GB max. now) capacity drives. I did some calculations based on there web site facts it would take 10 Terrabytes to hold a normal 2 1/2 hour uncompressed movie. That doesn't include the extras either. ::sits in awe::
Click to expand...

I saw the layout during the shoot. They've got a wire going from the camera to a truck parked off-screen. The truck is a rolling Server-farm. :)

The ten terabytes would be uncompressed...the article that I found on it was talking about MPeG4 compression to start and perhaps better compression software will come out.

Now...close your eyes for a second and think of a DVD the size of a LP record, except that it's not a DVD, it's a fluorescent media disk (FMD). That is, a transparent disk with multiple layers holding suspended metal particles. A CD-sized disk (prototype by a company called Constellation 3D) can hold up to 140GB of information. LP-sized...we'd be talking about 1/2 Terrabyte of info. :)

BTW...here's the picture

Origin_cutaway.jpg
 
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