Hello, all you lovely people!
What I have here is nothing urgent or anything you need to concern yourselves with right away. This, as it's priority tag suggests, is a mere wishlist.
I won't be the first to admit that I was seriously stoked when I heard about this project; open-source cinema camera, where we could change anything we didn't like until it was perfect? Count me in!
And now, I've come to you all today with a simple list of the things I want in a custom Apertus camera. I'm going to tell you all right now that I am in no way a camera expert; I really don't know about every facet and fun detail about image capturing, processing, input, output, or all that other fun stuff. All I know is what I want, and **THIS** is what I want in a camera:
**1. Full-Frame 16:9 Crop Sensor at a Resolution of 3840x2160;** Honestly, resolution is not a big thing for me. I would gladly take an 8.3 MP full-frame sensor simply for the low-noise and excellent light sensitivity. I would want it to be able to shoot in certain resolutions, namely 3840x2160, 3840x2076, and 3840x1600, achieved by windowing of the pixels on the sensor. I would also want the sensor to capture the 1920 equivalents of those resolutions (1920x1080; 1920x1038; 1920x800) via either pixel binning to make use of the entire sensor or electronic sensor cropping.
**2. A Number of Recording Formats at a Number of Recording Rates;** So, there'd be RAW recording to Cinema DNGs just to say it has it, and then compressed formats, including: ProRes 444XQ, 444, 442 HQ, 442, 442 Lite, 422 Proxy, DNxHD, and AVCHD at a user-adjustable constant bit-rate from 50 to 550Mbps. All formats should be able to shoot from 1-240 frames per second. For the Compressed Recording Formats, there will be three picture profile formats: A Log format, a Rec.709 format, and finally, a special format: This format would be modeled after VisionColor's CineLook picture style for Canon HDSLRs, if not made by VisionColor themselves (trust me, I'll ask them about it someday in the future), except optimized for use within a much-higher end codec with a much more high quality color space. In all instances, though, I'd want it to have the most filmic color science as possible, comparable to the Arri Alexa and/or the Blackmagic Cinema Camera.
**3. 15 stops of //visible// dynamic range, even in the compressed formats;** This is a big one. It might already be assured with the pixel density given how low a resolution the sensor is at, but this is something I absolutely want, straight out of camera without any "knee-capping" or whatever; just simply a good amount of visible dynamic range straight out of camera with a beautiful, smooth highlight rolloff, even when shooting in compressed formats with a the Rec.709 or VisionColor CineLook gamma; I want to have to //actively try// to clip my highlights before they even //think// about clipping.
**4. 4TB of Internal/Built-In Storage;** Just 'cause I'm not really interested in buying other media that might or might not be so reliable for recording my video. I'd also like USB 3.0 and FireWire ports and cables for connecting with computers.
So... That's all I can think of in terms of the major features I'm looking for! There are certainly a lot of minor features I'm looking for, but most of you will probably be able to point out what they probably are, so I see no need in going on and on about what they are.
Trust me when I say, that anything with these kinds of specs, even if it is open-source, is beyond my price range. Just being a wishful, digital cinema camera enthusiast.
Thanks for dropping by!
-Adam