Digital Bolex rebuild project from David Bross is farther along

[Clark Nikolai]

The recreation of the Digital Bolex that David Bross (of the Digilog camera app) has been working on is now functioning. He's got help from Joe Rubinstein from the original Digital Bolex company. It sounds like he'll have two of them to be used by filmmakers to test it out.

https://www.cined.com/david-bross-digital-bolex-rebuild-reaches-working-prototype-kodak-ccd-raspberry-pi-5-free-loaner-units-planned/

 

[eatstoomuchjam]

The article said he got a total of 4 sensors.  I think he's planning less on having two for other filmmakers to test it and more for having two to lend to other filmmakers to use.  Unless I misread things, he's not planning to make it a product to sell.  Sounds like he's going to make 3 or 4 cameras total.

(Which is extremely cool, I love when people do something for reasons other than commercial interest)

[Clark Nikolai]

3 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

The article said he got a total of 4 sensors.  I think he's planning less on having two for other filmmakers to test it and more for having two to lend to other filmmakers to use.  Unless I misread things, he's not planning to make it a product to sell.  Sounds like he's going to make 3 or 4 cameras total.

(Which is extremely cool, I love when people do something for reasons other than commercial interest)

Yeah, it's pretty cool. The fact that Joe Rubinstein was involved is telling. Maybe Joe is thinking of this as an alternative way to have the camera made again. (Just speculation.)

The situation is different now than when it was first worked on. Now there are many very good cameras that are affordable for aspiring filmmakers on a budget. (Most don't have the same nice colour and tonality of the Digital Bolex though.)

[BTM_Pix]

For anyone looking to do something similar a suitable harvesting product is this Allied Vision industrial camera that uses the same Kodak CCD.

They are also long since defunct of course but are available on eBay.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284133056331

I think the price seemingly on the high side is probably reflective of people looking to do a DIY Digital Bolex too but when you consider that a used D16 is not easy to come by and is well north of £5K then for someone determined enough this route is something of a relative bargain.

Pi 5 and its eco-system have now matured sufficiently to be able to handle the Allied Vision software in the intervening years so it’s definitely viable as a DIY project.

Not trivial of course but viable.

[Clark Nikolai]

11 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

For anyone looking to do something similar a suitable harvesting product is this Allied Vision industrial camera that uses the same Kodak CCD.

They are also long since defunct of course but are available on eBay.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284133056331

I think the price seemingly on the high side is probably reflective of people looking to do a DIY Digital Bolex too but when you consider that a used D16 is not easy to come by and is well north of £5K then for someone determined enough this route is something of a relative bargain.

Pi 5 and its eco-system have now matured sufficiently to be able to handle the Allied Vision software in the intervening years so it’s definitely viable as a DIY project.

Not trivial of course but viable.

Yeah, they're not cheap even though they're only 2K and getting almost 15 years old or older now. The monochrome ones (using the same chip) are much cheaper meaning it could be worth it to roll your own monochrome cinema camera for those times when shooting black and white.

[eatstoomuchjam]

If the monochrome version is also 2K, it'd be a lot closer to a 2.8K bayer pattern camera in actual resolution - better in low light too.  That'd be a really fun camera to have.

[Clark Nikolai]

12 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

If the monochrome version is also 2K, it'd be a lot closer to a 2.8K bayer pattern camera in actual resolution - better in low light too.  That'd be a really fun camera to have.

The Digital Bolex uses a Kodak KAI-04050 sensor. The sensor is available in colour and monochrome models. (BTW, the colour ones use a TrueSense filter, not a Bayer filter. )

So presumably there would be better resolution with the monochrome ones than the ones with the TrueSense filter.

Here's the spec sheet. https://www.imperx.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/KAI-04050-D.pdf

I played around with footage from my colour Digital Bolex, using a monochrome plug in that allows you to assign a grey level to any colour tone with a lot of customization. It looked really nice. But probably shooting black and white with a dedicated monochrome camera might be better somehow.

 

There are a few example videos online shot with the monochrome version. The story is that so many people had been requesting custom builds using the monochrome sensor that they decided to just come out with a monochrome model.