Thank you for your insightful thoughts and for the info

Oh good to know top grade Canon lenses have a mechanical link even if the throw is short

I do own a Canon EOS 3, a film camera with 45 focusing points and eye control to choose from them (though I haven't used it for a long time now..). It might be that it's just the implementation on EOS 3 that wasn't right but this solution didn't work for me. I tried using eye tracking to choose the focusing point a few times and then switched it off toggling focus points manually.

It will indeed be interesting to see if that happens. If I was to bet on it I would say that it's not going to happen in cinematography. Indeed moving focus through the scene is one of the tool that a cinematographer uses to achieve the desired artistic effect. It is hard to imagine that a computer algorithm would be able to predict how fast or slowly we want to bring objects in/out of focus and how much smoothness we want in these transitions.

Further if wikipedia can be trusted the best film scanners go as high as 8K resolution. And if the precision of manual focus pulling was enough to shoot all of the movies we've watched and enjoyed so much on the big screens it should surely remain sufficient to shoot future films which are to be projected to the same screens. Don't think even IMAX films were shot with autofocus which means that manual focus was sufficient even for that vastly superior resolution.

And why wouldn't manual pulling be precise enough in a cinema setting? The scene is planned in advance, everybody knows exactly where each actor and object is going to be, marks are made (or stops set) before shooting begins for real. I heard even tape measuring is still common. Can autofocus beat the precision of a measuring tape? And failing that with digital you always have the option of zooming in to individual pixel levels to ensure your pencil mark on the follow focus device is correct. Lastly focus depth even though sometimes shallow isn't nil in most circumstances so small focusing errors might not have an adverse negative effect on the result.

Chances are you've got the experience here while I certainly don't. However my impression so far was that what you're saying is true but not to such an extreme extent. People do use old lenses including those which are much older than a decade on modern still cameras and the results they're getting certainly don't look like they were shot with resolution of about 1/3 mega pixel provided by 720p video. I think the truth must be somewhere in between and the old glass must still be a valuable tool. After all if that glass was indeed that bad why wouldn't the prices not be nil today? Some of these lenses still command amounts of money which one on a budget would think twice before spending.

Here I do agree unconditionally. Groundwork needs to be there. I'm not on the project team but I understand this is precisely what is happening. If you look at the current plans of Axiom Beta design you will notice that the lens mount is attached with 4 screws to the camera body. This is done precisely so that a different mount can be easily fitted instead. And that definitely includes a powered mount. I'm also sure that the guys are planning forward so that this power mount has got some way to communicate with the camera.

Indeed at the heart of Axiom cameras there will be one of the Xilinx 7000 devices. Xilinx 7000 is a combination of 2 ARM cores with an FPGA. These little guys have got hundreds of IO pins. These pins are going to be used to communicate with the image sensor (about 60 pairs of signal wires) to the future SSD RAID (20 or 40 signal pairs if I'm not mistaken) and to the so called "IO shields". An IO shield is a small replaceable printed circuit board which bears external connectors (like HDMI) and the necessary electronics to interface them to the main board. I'm sure that among all these connections a signal pair of wires or two will be reserved for the powered lens mount. All the necessary logic for communicating with the lens will be I believe implemented either on the ARM-s or via the FPGA.

In summary there is no need to worry about this - the foundations for future power mounts are being laid down right now.

Thanks mate. Indeed my English is a disaster :)

Sony a7s is a decent contender. Full frame, amazing low-light capability.
Sure Axiom will win on some features too: 4:4:4 vs 4:2:2 video, RAW output, aptitude for change.
Let wait and see which users (movies, ads, etc) choose which one and for what reason.

P.S. Not letting go of GH3 despite my interest in Axiom, just a totally different purpose of a camera :)

Well it's indeed the world first open source and cinematic video cam.
Elphel is only the other open source cam but it's not cinematic.

Ok the heading is a little cheesy, but then after a fantastic uptake the crowdfunding
campaign has run out of breath a little and we need to generate some new buzz :)

BTW Sony F5 doesn't look exactly cheap to me either. And comparing to more pricy cams is good since Axiom aims to challenge them with more features at a smaller price point :)

Hi,

I'm not on the Apertus team however I've seen many a discussion on the IRC channel and so I can answer that. Yes indeed powered lens mounts are on the list of features. It's just that they expected after the initial release of Axiom Beta, the one which crowdfunding is being collected.

To this I would however like to add that old manual lenses are arguably rather well suited for shooting movies. I think it is an established fact of life that nearly all cinematic production is done with manual focus (google "focus puller", "first assistant camera"). Now the modern electronic lenses even if they have a manual focusing ring are not well suited for the task. The problems are:

1. the connection between the manual focusing ring and the lens part is electronic rather than mechanical - pulling focus is a lot less convenient, there is no mechanical feedback
2. focus control is not always proportionate - with a fully mechanical lens if you rotate forward 1/4 of a turn and then back 1/4 of a turn then you will arrive at the old focusing point; not so with fly-by-wire lenses - the distance your focusing point travels depends on how fast you're rotating the manual focusing ring and returning predictable to an earlier focus setting is not possible; this in particular renders useless "follow focus" devices with hard stops and pencil marks
3. it is often better if the aperture can be set in a step-less fashion

Old manual lenses certainly fix the first two issues, not sure about the last one. So I can conclude that while having a powered mount is very much desirable on Axiom cameras (and so it will come just a bit later) it is also true that the old lenses are in fact more suitable to the task of shooting movies and so the decision to deliver a fully manual Nikon-F mount first is justified

Yes I do have a nice powered lens for GH3. I also have some modern lenses my Nikon. However because of the above limitations I have already decided that should I dare to invest into actually buying an Axiom (presently I'm just a crowdfunding campaign backer) then I'll have to splash out for some old Nikkor-s as well. BTW I've been thinking of buying old glass on occasion anyway. I find it rather charming and the heavy metallic lens barrels inspire confidence in me

Well, the first thing people hit when shooting movies on DSLR-s/prosumer mirrorless cams are absence of the ability to shoot in RAW and limitations in choice of codecs. Often people are saying that if there is now RAW then at least the codecs should have been provided with higher bit rates. GH2 in particular was hacked to up the bit rates. Why bit rates? The classic example is high resolution video of a tree with wind moving the leaves around. You can only capture that without visible artifacts if you're using a codec with a high enough bit rate or better still if you're using RAW. Axiom's however are designed with highest possible storage bit-rates from the start. We shall probably need to wait a little longer for a proper storage backend (ssd raid) but I do not doubt that it will come soon after the release of Axiom Beta - it's just the most obvious next thing to do.

Not being a professional cinematographer or even a videographer I won't be able to continue the list of things which can be improved on in the present day commercial cameras. However I'm confident that the utmost flexibility of an open source camera will be put to a good use by the industry.

Hi Joey, you definitely have a point here. However if I may I would like to point that Axiom cameras are conceived specifically as cinematic e.g. having a feature set particularly geared towards shooting movies and may end less suitable in "run and gun" situations.

Re the cameras you listed, probably each of them is likely to be exceeded in one respect or another by Axiom Beta and Axiom Gamma variants with CMV12000 sensor.

• Firstly all the above nice and very useful cams are FourThirds format e.g. width of their sensor is about half the width of of 35mm film frame used in still photography. This is commonly referred as a "crop factor 2". Particularly GH4 the only 4K camera in the set is a bit smaller still at a crop factor of 2.3
• CMV12000 is of APS-C at 22.8mm x 16.9mm which yields a crop factor of 1.53 - and this is a pretty big. Bigger sensor means that we can achieve a more shallow depth of focus blurring the irrelevant background behind the backs of our actors. This is indeed very useful in motion picture shooting.
• Next the whole philosophy of Axiom is to allow us using RAW footage. The very first release of Beta will have the ability to stream RAW footage at full resolution and 30fps via 2 HDMI connectors. This will necessitate usage of two external video recorders which is not exactly convenient but at least capturing RAW footage is going to be possible. It also goes without saying that one of the first the first things for the development team to look into after the initial release will be an SSD RAID solution attachable to the camera. With this RAID it should be come possible to store RAW footage both more conveniently and at higher frame rates. And again the ability to shoot RAW is of paramount importance when we talking about creating movies.
• Of the cameras you listed only BMPCC (which seems to be selling for GRP 660 currently in the UK) is able to store RAW footage. However BMPCC is only Full HD and not 4K.

You're right however to state that cameras do exist with a comparable feature set: Black Magic Production Cinema Camera, AJA CION, top cameras from Red and Arri. Some of them are priced similarly to future Axiom Cameras some are way above it. I do hope however that the open nature of Axiom the full freedom to hack will unleash creativity in cinematic community and we will end up with a product both more flexible and closer aligned to the needs of movie makers - indie and mainstream alike.

Exactly. But I also have another secret hope. I hope that once Axiom cameras take off the ground 3rd party manufacturers will step in. Anybody is free to make cameras/modules/parts according to the open specs, so we should see competition. A competition on a level field with no patents used for unfair advantage. Competition will curb prices bringing them in balance with manufacturing costs.

Will that not be a world worth living in? :) And does it not justify supporting the project regardless of the initial camera prices?