Digital Cameras & Camcorders

An explosion of innovation overtook the conventional introduction ofnew camera systems at NAB.

Dalsa's anxiously anticipated and well-attended demonstrationof test footage from its Origin digital cinema camera--not yet a realproduct--left very few unimpressed (despite a state-of-the-art digitalcinema projector that couldn't match its resolution). Imagine the bestdigital stills you've seen, and then imagine them coming to life asmotion pictures.

As the only film camera manufacturer with its roots in film timecodeand electronic design, leave it to maverick Aaton to add aportable audio recorder to its product line. It's the Cantar-X(cantar means "to sing" in Spanish), and what a unique device it is: 24-bit,96KHz hard disk recording, a six-track mixer with linear faders, aFireWire bus, 18 simultaneous inputs, battery life up to 15 hours, anda large Nagra-style rotating knob for start-stop-test-record. It's evenBluetooth-enabled for remote function display and control using a PDA.And, as an extra bonus, it has a very high coolness factor. D.W.L

The Origin is a digital cinema camera like no other. At its heart isa single 35mm-sized, progressive-scan, 8-megapixel, frame-transfer CCD(frame-transfer means it requires a mechanical shutter like Thomson'sViper). Its large, light-sensitive pixels form a 4Kx2K array that'sfour times the resolution of HD.

There's more: native 2:1 aspect ratio; frame rates from 0fps to60fps; a huge 14-bit dynamic range per color; a spinning-mirror opticalviewfinder; a PL mount for conventional 35mm motion picture lenses; anda ghastly, unwieldy shape that will never see a shoulder or aSteadicam. Oh well. The first automobiles weren't streamlinedeither.

Did I mention that there's no prism behind the lens? Color is formedby an RGB color-matrix Bayer filter. Not terribly light efficient. As aresult, the Origin's effective exposure index appears to be about 100ISO (Dalsa predicts 400 ISO by next NAB). Oh, and never mind themassive data storage needed to capture its 1.2GBps output (15 minutes =1TB!). Dalsa--helpfully?--suggests the offline editing of lower-res 2Kproxy images.

In other words, whether Dalsa's Origin eventually takes thefilmmaking world by storm or not, it has changed the course of ourexpectations. Digital cinema has finally split off the evolutionarytree from component-based legacy video. Dalsa, a major machine-visionchip foundry and supplier of CCDs for Thomson's Spirit DataCine,promises a commercial product by NAB 2004.

Dalsa's Origin wasn't the only paradigm-busting departure atNAB:

• JVC JY-HD10U.

  Say what you will about plentiful MPEG-2 artifacts and dull colorrendition from a single, prism-less, Bayer color-filtered 1.18megapixel CCD, it's a hand-held HD camcorder for under $4K! OK,so it's 720/30p and relies on heavy ATSC-levels of MPEG-2 compressionrecorded on standard MiniDV tape-the JVC JY-HD10U also providesrealtime up- and downconversion among 1080i, 720p, 480/60p, and480/60i! Connectivity includes IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and dual XLRsfor audio. How will the competition respond?

• Sony PDW-510 DVCAM and PDW-530 MPEG IMX/DVCAM Optical DiscCamcorders.

  High-density, re-writable blue-laser (405 nm) discs record in aproprietary Sony disc format that abolishes tape, tracks, take-up,heads, clogs, rewinding, even drop-outs. And it's compression-agnostic:the PDW-530, for instance, is codec-switchable between DVCAM or MPEGIMX, the latter at 30, 40, or 50Mbps for maximum recordings of 75, 55,or 45 minutes. Using DVCAM at 25Mbps, the PDW-510 or -530 delivers 90minutes per disc plus low-res MPEG-4 proxy images of the same video for30x realtime transfer. That's 5 minutes of video in 10 seconds...

• Sony CineAlta HDC-F950 + HDCAM SR format.

  Upstaged last year by Thomson's introduction of its RGB 4:4:4 ViperFilmStream camera, Sony roared back this year with its own RGB 4:4:4camera, as well as a new line of higher-speed VTRs and a new tapeformat. The HDC-F950 portable camera (not a camcorder) incorporates allbasic capture rates--23.98p, 24p, 25p, 29.97p, 50i, 59.94i--plusunder-cranking for additional rates of 1fps to 24fps progressive. Adual HD-SDI connection provides the link to the new HDCAM SR SRW-1field recorder or SRW-5000 studio recorder. These are a new breed: bothcan record either RGB 4:4:4--no pre-filtering or sub-sampling, onlymild, lossless MPEG-4 compression--or component 4:2:2 high-definitionvideo. A far cry from the original HDCAM.

• Panasonic AJ-SDX900.

  A Swiss Army Knife, the versatile Panasonic AJ-SDX900 delivers onthe promise of 24p in a standard-def 2/3in. camcorder, as well as 30pand 60i. Its native 16:9 520K-pixel CCDs readily switch between 16:9and 4:3, as well as progressive and interlace scanning, while itsDVCPRO bit-rate is selectable between 25Mbps and 50Mbps.

Panasonic also displayed a mock-up of a breathtaking concept ithopes to introduce next NAB as a working product: an ENG-style DVCPROcamcorder that uses solid-state memory cards based on consumerSD cards instead of tape. In other words, there are no moving parts andno maintenance. It's a 100% solid-state professional camcorder. Productdevelopment agreements were announced with CBS and Fox, amongothers.

• Rockwell Scientific ProCamHD CMOS sensors.

  These 2/3in., 2.2-megapixel "system-on-a-chip" alternatives tocostlier CCDs appeared for the first time in two small three-chip boxcameras at NAB. Ikegami showcased a CMOS version of its HDL-40 with12-bit A/D (a CCD version also exists) and JVC "previewed theintroduction" of a similar but unnamed camera. While the JVC camera is1080i only, the Ikegami camera takes advantage of the uniqueassignability of individual CMOS pixels to capture "native" 1080i,1080p/30, and 720p, or switch between 4:3 and 16:9 directly on thechip. ProCamHD CMOS sensors consume 20% of the power of comparable CCDsyet deliver, Rockwell claims, better response across the color spectrumthan CCDs.

• Electronic color HD viewfinders. It's about time!Sony's

  new HDVF-C30W high-res color LCD viewfinder uses a 2.7in. (measureddiagonally) display with a special digital zoom mode for fine focusingand a unique grayscale display to inform exposure and lightingdecisions. In Band Pro's booth, Alfred Chroziel demonstrated amodified version that avoids Sony's standard L-shape, which isconventionally attached to the front of the camera. Chroziel added alarge diopter lens for direct viewing, freed the finder from the camerabody, and mounted it on a simple metal rod to form the equivalent of anextended viewfinder. Whichever configuration is used, Sony's HD colorfinder image is LCD-like in saturation and contrast, yet surprisinglysharp, with first-rate peaking control. A Scottish company,AccuScene, showed a 1280x1024-pixel color HD viewfinder based onferro-electric liquid-crystal-on-silicon technology that has to be seento be believed: clear, colorful, sharp, lifelike. Unfortunately, bothcolor viewfinder systems are priced well over $10K.

• Tape alternatives.

  Baytech Cinema introduced its CineRAM digital cinematographyrecorder, a boxy device, but slimmer than a Betacam "brick" battery,that sandwiches onto an SD or HD camcorder between the camera body andbattery. What's it do? Simply captures various modes of uncompressedimages directly to RAM. Meanwhile, Pocket-sized FireWire/USB-based harddisk recorders proliferated. Sony (the product's called Giga Vault),and Shining Technology (called CitiDISK DV Pro) were among themanufacturers showing them. To address the needs of RGB 4:4:4 and 2Kimage acquisition, a new company, S.two, introduced its D.MAG family ofbulky but portable digital disk recorders designed for instantchangeover in the field. D.MAGs support six-channel audio recording,timecode, and analog audio and video monitoring.