Digital Bolex and Blackmagic Design built a fully functional retail product where Apertus beta camera is closer to a developers kit. While it could be used to make films there are better, cheaper, and easier to use alternatives out there. The crowd funding was more about expanding their community of developers than building a retail product.

The Axiom Gamma (next stage of development) is intended to be that type of device.

Apertus has been many years now and their first attempts at creating an open source cinema camera were with the Elphel. I don't know/understand all the specifics as to why the abandoned it but their website does go into detail on why the Elphel was not right for this project.

I think you are confused about what they are actually producing... The beta camera was never meant to be a fully functional cinema camera and should be treated more as a developers kit than a retail product.

Apertus has already completed the first stage of development by building a prototype (see Axiom Alpha) capable of producing images.. The purpose of the crowd funding was to raise capital so the core team could take their current prototype and create a developers kit to expand their community of developers. The 350 euro donation let's Apertus know that not only do you want to support this project but also want to actively participate in future development by purchasing a developers kit for an additional 1900-2300 euro. Apertus is saying thank you by assembling these kits for only the cost of parts which I assume is why it seems unreasonable to produce a camera of these specs for so cheap.

I seriously doubt many will purchase the beta model at retail when it's completed because it's not really intended to be a product. Sure, you could use it to film a movie but there are better and cheaper solutions out there. I think your comments are more geared towards the Axiom Gamma stage which is what the crowd funding/beta is the first step in.

The Axiom team has stated they intend to eventually enable this functionality but just not for the crowd funding beta version. However, I'm not sure if the lens mount has the interface but there is no plans to enable it for the beta or if you'll need to replace the mount later if you want that feature.

Phone camera sensors are generally not a good choice for filmmakers. They're small so shallow depth of field is not really possible and they are very noisy in low light conditions.

The Axom project is trying to provide module hardware to support the widest range of requirements filmmakers might have. Making it open source allows a community of developers to implement more features than would typically be possible at their price point as well as allowing for upgradability you don't see in a typical camera. If somebody invents a faster autofocus algorithm then the community can implement it on your existing hardware. Generally camera manufactures don't add new features after they release the product not because they can't but because there is no real incentive to do so. Every feature they choose to add is making the decision to not add another on a future product.

A closed source camera has limited resources but an open source camera has as much support as the community decides to give it and it doesn't take that many dedicated people to surpass the man power of even the biggest camera manufactures. So while it might not have everything you typically want out of the box there is a good chance it won't be that way for long.

They are releasing all the information, plans, and specs for how to purchase, manufacture, and assemble the hardware and software.

Think of it like building a PC. The vast majority of the parts standardize and readily available. However, the water cooling system doesn't mount on the motherboard so you need an adapter they designed. They released a CAD document for this adapter that lets you have it produced by any company who can machine the adapter based on the specs.

I feel like this is one area they probably decided wasn't worth tackling up front as each mount probably has their own distinct requirements and challenges to get working. This is probably a task that could be best taken on by the users rather than the core developers and while most consumer level cameras/prosumer level glass might have electronic control there is still an abundance of purely manual glass and in the film work it's usually preferred.

Quicktime provides a decoding of ProRes on Windows. Also, ffmpeg can encode and decode ProRes and all it's variants (proxy, lite, HQ,and 4444).

You might find Mythbusters for the Impatient useful. It is a Youtube channel that edits each episode down to about four minutes.

Nope.. 20% are just all telemarketers.

Are you aware of any games with fixed set of rules/movements that can't use an IBM like strategy (looking up known games combined with brute force) to beat a human? What about games that have rules that can evolve while you play? I assume adding a random element, like having to roll dice, can lead to no win situations for some pretty simply games though.

They should probably bump it up to a $20,000 donation then.

Several years back Netflix scammed me into paying more for their service. The rising costs of fuel just made sense they had to do it but I was upset with the tactic they used and wish they were just honest about it. Their service was still way cheaper than renting locally and they had started to add more value with the streaming content. I'm sure somebody crunched the numbers and made a decision that deception was probably result in retaining more costumers but it still doesn't sit well with me.

About five years ago now they started putting up ads to upgrade your plan for a really low rate. If I remember correctly it was under $1 to upgrade my 4-disc plan to 5-disc. It turns out the rate change listed was the cost for the only remainder of the billing period and the actual cost of the upgrade was closer to $10. However, this information wasn't given to you until AFTER you finalized the upgrade. I didn't want to pay that much for just one disc so I downgraded back to my 4-disc plan but the current 4-disc rate was more expensive (around $5 more) than what I was paying currently paying. I contacted them about this and was told I could not get my old rate back.

I didn't press the issue and maybe I could have gotten them to cave if I threatened to cancel since I had been a subscriber for nearly 10 years at this point. However, I was also guilty of kinda scamming them too... Their mail service was significantly slower when it first started and it wasn't uncommon to send a disc back and have to wait more than four days to have it marked received in order for your next queue item to ship taking another 3+ days to finally get the disc. I learned you could just click the "sent back already" button (any time after they marked a disc as shipped) which would cause the next movie in the queue to ship. At first I would do it just when it was taking unusually long but I admit a few times I didn't want to wait and clicked it the same day they shipped discs allowing me to have 8 discs out on my 4 disc plan. It took them a year to prevent you from taking advantage of this little trick. In the end I called it even and downgraded to a 2-disc plan and am still a Netflix customer and their service is still valuable to me. I can justify paying a little more for and increased streaming library and original content.

Interesting point of view. Why can't/doesn't a government can't care? Also US homeless are still selling you something. Perhaps in the US a sob story is more appealing/profitable than other products?

This reminds me of a video where they use soapy water to solve Motorway/Steiner problem. Anybody else know of any other problems that can be solved using physics rather than computation?