Ikonoskop A-Cam dII starts to ship

The first Ikonoskop A-Cam dII digital film camera has been delivered to the Stockholm rental house, Ljud & Bildmedia (pictured receiving the camera).

At least five more cameras should be shipping this month. Ikonoskop has also sent a camera to the BBC for testing.

There is also some new Raw (Adobe Cinema DNG) and ProRes test footage to download for workflow testing (or pixel peeping) at www.ikonoskop.com/dii/footage/.

The big attraction of the A-Cam dII is its size (seriously small), price (about €7,000), its uncompressed tapeless recording, and its use of a single 2/3-inch CCD sensor (so none of the skew and rolling shutter problems typical of CMOS sensors).

For full details on the A-Cam dII have a look at our previous post.

By David Fox

Ikonoskop A-Cam dII finally ready

The tiny Ikonoskop A-Cam dII digital film camera is finally ready to ship, two years after being announced at IBC 2008. It can record uncompressed HD raw from its single 2/3-inch 1920x1080 (250-300 ISO) CCD sensor to a swappable 160GB card. It uses the Adobe Cinema DNG format that can be edited by Adobe or (soon) Avid software, and is also compatible with Iridas grading software, CineForm and MXF4Mac conversions tools, and will soon be supported by Da Vinci. As other camera manufacturers are adopting Cinema DNG (such as Indiecam with its 3D camera), other software should also support the format.

Daniel Jonsäter with A-Cam dII

The camera uses a standard Sony battery and can be fitted with PL-mount, C-mount, Leica M or IMS lenses. "16mm lenses are ideal, because they are available at very low cost," said founder, Daniel Jonsäter. The A-Cam dII will cost €6,950, plus between €550 to €750 for a lens mount. The memory cards, which were developed by Ikonoskop because it couldn't find one that was fast enough elsewhere (with a writing speed of 240MB per second), will cost €950. Each frame takes up 3.5Mbps and a card can hold 34 minutes at 25fps.

There will also be a memory card reader (which was shown in prototype), which will display rushes and has a USB 2.0 connection for loading into a computer. It takes about two hours to offload 30 minutes of video, so for serious shooting users would need at least four cards.

It can shoot at up to 30fps, fully variable, and its first use was for the title sequence of a Swedish feature film – the footage is viewable on its website, where there is also some uncompressed video (as well as ProRes and H.264) that can be downloaded to test the workflow. Development was delayed because "2009 was a really rough year financially. We lost all of our funding, so had to put down all development for some months," explained Jonsäter. Fortunately, "all problems are now solved," and it has more than 50 orders, with down payments – mostly from Sweden and the Netherlands. The first cameras should ship by the end of October.

The funding problems meant that development also had to stop on its 3D camcorder, although it will have a software option for the standard dII to sync two cameras to line level (a 200th of a frame) in master/slave mode. Jonsäter hopes to resume work on the integrated 3D camcorder, "but it's not a priority. It will probably be IBC next year."

In the meantime, Ikonoskop is also developing a refined version of its A-Cam SP16 compact 16mm film camera (often used as a crash camera on movies). It will have higher frame rates, improved electronics, and bug fixes, and should be available during 2011.

By David Fox

Panasonic SDT750 3D camcorder

A lot of people are expected to buy 3D TV sets this year, but what will they be watching on them? If Panasonic has its way, it could be their own 3D masterpieces.

Its new HDC-SDT750 is claimed to be the world's first 3D consumer camcorder (Fujifilm has a 3D stills camera that can shoot video, but it is much lower resolution). It comes with a 3D conversion attachment, which enables it to record right-eye and left-eye images simultaneously through its two lenses. The 960x1080 pixel images are recorded using the side-by-side method.

The 3D lens prevents the use of the camera's 12x optical zoom, and it apparently only works effectively in 3D for subjects that are between one and three metres away – mainly due to the short interaxial distance between the two lenses. However, having to get in close is not a bad thing - 3D does tend to look better when you get close to the subject. There was one tech blog that claimed that because the lenses weren't the same distance apart as human eyes, they couldn't give you true 3D, but that isn't the case. Those who produce 3D for a living use many different interaxial distances (from a few millimetres to a few metres), depending on how close they are going to be to the subject and what 3D effect they want to create.

Given that the illusion of 3D is essentially created by differences in the horizontal space, halving that space (as the SDT750 does) is not necessarily a good thing - although the initial reaction to the results at the launch press conference was positive. The images are then stretched to be watched in HD. As it records to a single sensor block, there is no risk of shots getting out of synch, failing to line up, or of the two images having different exposure, colour or other settings. The 3D images also benefit from the camera's optical image stabiliser, which will be important to stop hand-held 3D shots from being upsetting to watch. All of which means that ordinary users should be able to shoot acceptable 3D without having to worry about doing lots of post processing.  

It also does HD...

The 3MOS camcorder is basically an SD700, probably the most advanced of Panasonic's consumer models. When the 3D conversion lens is taken off, it can record full 1920x1080 (50/60p) HD in AVCHD (at 28Mbps), to an SD card, and has an F1.5-F2.8 35-420mm Leica Dicomar lens. The 3D lens pushes the aperture up to F3.2, changes the focal length to 58mm (35mm equivalent), and shifts the minimum illumination from 1.6 lux to 28 lux (for the US 60p version).

Other features include: Time Lapse Recording (one, ten or 30 seconds, one or two minutes), which works in 3D; and 5.1-channel audio recording using five highly-directional microphones.

The camera has manual controls for focus, zoom, iris, shutter speed and white balance settings – although only white balance is available when the 3D conversion lens is attached.

It should be available by October for less than $1,400, and will work with any 3D TV, plugging in via HDMI.

Panasonic has already launched a professional integrated 3D camcorder, the AG-3DA1, that will also be available next month, although it records AVCHD at the lower rate of 24Mbps. Sony and Ikonoskop have also developed similar camcorders.

Interchangeable 3D lens

At the same Tokyo press conference, Panasonic also announced what it claims is the first interchangeable 3D lens – for its Lumix Micro Four Thirds still cameras (they also record video), such as the GH1.

The compact 3D lens houses twin lenses within the diameter of the lens mount, and should work in a similar way to the lens attachment on the HDC-SDT750.

It should be available before the end of the year, although no price was revealed.

Related posts: Hands on with the new AG-3DA1, Panasonic 3D camcorder gets AVCHD, Panasonic unveils HD 3D camcorder and Panasonic does 1080 50p on a budget

By David Fox

3Ality check for 3D camcorders

We've written before about the upcoming release of small, integrated 3D camcorders from Panasonic, Sony and Ikonoskop, but are they really good enough for 3D productions? We interviewed the effervescent 3Ality Digital Systems' CEO, Steve Schklair about them, and anyone interested in buying one of these camcorders will want to hear what he had to say....

Schklair was one of the keynote speakers at TVB Europe magazine's 3D Masters 2010 conference, which was held at BAFTA, in London, and organised by TVB Europe magazine.

Related posts: Mastering 3D - from lens to screen, The 3D skills shortage, The 3Ality of the HD to 3D transition, BSkyB prepares for 3D launch and Sky 3D - setting the standards.

Ikonoskop goes stereo with 3D A-Cam

Ikonoskop has created a 3D version of its tiny A-Cam dII uncompressed HD camera. The Stockholm-based manufacturer already has several clients lined up who want to shoot with the new camera, which will be built to order and could be five or six times the cost of the standard version. Both versions of the a-cam should be available by the Summer – the A-Cam dII at the new, lower price of 5,000 Euros.

The A-Cam3D will record 1920x1080 at 25 or 30 frames per second, uncompressed, at 12-bits, using Adobe's Cinema DNG RAW format. The video signals from each lens will be captured to two separate, timecode-locked 80GB memory cartridges.

The initial version (pictured) has been designed for action use, with a distance between optical axes of 91.5mm, and would weigh about 2.8kg including battery and memory cards. However, models could come with different fronts, to allow for the use of different lenses or lens positioning. This is one of several aspects that will have to be worked out in conjunction with the initial users, according to Ikonoscop's creative director, Göran Olsson.

"What's great about our camera in 3D work is that we work in uncompressed RAW. It's a very good thing for compositing," he said. "Also, for action, it is very compact. You can mount it easily and put it in tight situations." The only other twin lens 3D camcorder yet announced is Panasonic's $21,000 unit, which will record a compressed signal. There are compact 3D rigs for small cameras from several makers, but these won't be as simple to set up.

"We can provide our clients with something they can't find anywhere else," he said.

By David Fox