Fully digital HD movie camera to invigorate the market

June 20, 2006 Digital technology is invading the world and one of the most exciting areas we forsee in the coming years is that of film-making. Silicon Imaging, Cineform, Inspired Minority Pictures and Atomic-VFX are busy at the moment shooting a feature film, entitled “Spoon”, on a HD camera that is implementing a system never before used. The SI-1920HDVR combines a digital cinema class 1920x1080P camera with CineForm's revolutionary Visually Perfect CineForm RAW codec in an embedded PC architecture under Microsoft Windows XP. The camera is connected directly to the computer, so expensive tape stock is no longer an issue. It is also possible to attach a 160GB notebook hard drive to the camera for up to 4 hours of free-roaming shooting. The camera uses modern cinema PL mount lenses, as well as affordable F and compact C mount lenses that is connected to a single large format 2/3” CMOS sensor with an on-chip 12-bit A/D converter. This is then fed through wire into a Wafian box and into the PC. Originally developed for the independent film maker, the camera provides superb image quality at a low cost. With release during the third quarter of the year the SI-1920HDVR camera will cost around US$20,000 (that’s right – there are only four zeroes in that figure). Still in the Beta phase of development, but already exceeding everyone’s expectations, the SI-1920HDVR looks to be a landmark development in HD filming and could potentially invigorate the medium globally. At very least we’re certain it’ll be on every film-maker’s wishlist. Links to all major sources inside and an excellent image library.

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