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It's a great effort but such development is too slow and resource limited to really challenge commercial solutions. They don't get to make their own ASICs (e.g.

It's a great effort but such development is too slow and resource limited to really challenge commercial solutions. They don't get to make their own ASICs (e.g. Canon DIGIC) so they need to use limited and expensive FPGAs; they can't make their own sensors (e.g. RED Dragon) so they need to use CMV12000 which is a sensor for scientific and industrial applications - fast, but not optimized for image quality (from my limited knowledge! I could be wrong). Most likely they won't get access to latest and greatest OEM sensors like Sony BSIs. By the time it's out, you could buy either a fully integrated solution that's far ahead technically - from the likes of RED, Canon, Blackmagic etc - or if you're after some exotic application you could just use an industrial camera from IDS or Ximea. Yes the customization and the abilities around this camera could be endless, but it'd take something really special on that end to overcome to hardware limitations coming from the development model and to make it a viable professional tool.

binarymax 9y ago
Give it some time - they just launched! If it becomes popular they will have more funding to work with and have the ability to advance the tech. You don't enter a patent briarbush market with the best solution the world has ever seen, you make a good enough showing and grow.
- eropple 9y ago
  I use Panasonic's midrange GH3 and GH4 cameras for video. 16MP sensor, Micro Four Thirds mount. For general purpose cinema, they will shoot better than the sensor in this camera will (which isn't to say it's the best thing in town, it's not, but that's kind of my point) and the stuff they're flogging, like on-the-fly color conversion, is not particularly useful in the center or edge cases compared to getting high-quality, raw, as-ungraded-as-you-can-get material to work with in post. It's a neat idea. Your implication that it's good-enough doesn't scan to me, as even a prosumer videographer. Maybe I'll be wrong--but Blackmagic is already vastly ahead in the pure-cinema space, so...
  - binarymax 9y ago
    But isn't the point of this to be able to hack it and add things that you need for your use case? Nobody said the arduino or raspi was meant to replace your day to day compute. This is targeted as a hackable base system to learn about the technology and stimulate innovation. Right now hacking cameras requires insanely niche knowledge and reverse engineering skills.
    - eropple 9y ago
      If the point is to hack, you totally should buy an Arduino. (I just bought my college-age EE brother one. He's messing with it right next to me. It's cool.) It is also orders of magnitude cheaper. But for video and video specifically, a "hackable base system" is not a raison d'etre to exist beyond the niche-of-a-niche hacker community who's not going to pay you materially for the thing in the first place. This stuff is expensive! Near as I can tell, something like this needs a reason for videographers, and not computer people, to pay for it to get the traction needed to allow it to expand and progress. The set of people who need to "add things" to a video camera for their use case is small because there are few use cases that are not better undertaken by getting the highest quality, cleanest raw footage you can (which is not helped by adding, like, inline color correction), storing it in the least-lossy format you can, and then taking that output and transforming it down-the-line either in post/editing for recorded media or in your better-equipped visual mixer for live. The most interesting "hardware hacks" I can think of for cameras would be in the focus/image stabilization arena, but I don't think you get much insight into that with the passive E-mount (could be wrong, I don't use Sony) as opposed to an active E-mount or Panasonic's Power/Mega OIS stuff in the MFT. For Power/Mega OIS in particular, my understanding is that the sensors are in the lens but the brains are in the camera--could be some novel things to do there.
      - gt_ 9y ago
        This is opinion, but opinion from a passionate cine nerd: Good stabilization techniques don’t happen in the lens and passive E mount is perrrfect for this camera. Stabilization is a mount’s job, and not really a hack. Most camera hacking these days is done with SLRS which are not “real” video cameras, for lack of a list of technical explanations. Magic Lantern is a popular DSLR hacking tool and it’s problematic to use. Think trying to use Windows as if it were Linux.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  In the interests of accuracy, the Axiom project has been in gestation for >5 years so they're off to a slow start. But they have a lot of good will in the pro cam community because they were careful to keep delivery expectations low and warned people not to structure projects around the hardware any time soon.
empath75 9y ago
Stuff like that seems like it would be nice for people who like to hack around with internals, but you’re talking about a tiny tiny fraction of users.
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  Like most things methinks...but the majority non-hacking users get to benefit from the ones who do like to hack around with internals. Plus its (user) hardware/software upgradeable, some fancy new thing comes out you just have to bust out the toolkit instead of having to buy a whole new camera. I'm thinking something like a light-field sensor with the "LSD simulation" firmware would be a perfectly sensible upgrade.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  That's what everyone said about Linux in 1993.
vvanders 9y ago
Yup, agreed. You're also giving up a huge compromise in lenses when going with this approach. When it comes to photography lenses mean more than the camera 95% of the time(unless you're doing sports/action photography, where you need good AF). With this it's all manual + adapters which always has compromises compared to use in their native format. It's super-cool technically but I don't see it taking over anytime soon.
- dylan604 9y ago
  I think you might have missed the part where this is a digital cinema camera. Cinema cameras rarely have AF, and are almost always manual lenses with a dedicated person assigned to pull focus. Also, being able to adapt lenses is a huge bonus. Look at the Micro Four Thirds market. There are so many adapters available and in wide use to be able use a wider selection of lenses. Pretty much the only way Sony cameras are used. The selection of Sony native mount lenses limited, but adapt that to a PL mount or EF mount, and the world opens up significantly
  - vvanders 9y ago
    Ah, good call. It was missing from the title so I was assuming they were going after the traditional camera market. For cinema they might have a better shot. I've got a non-trivial amount of Canon gear(300F4, 35F1.4, 135F2, etc) and looked into the Sony route since their A7 line looks killer. In the end all the adapters had compromises so I decided to stick with Canon. From all reports the AF drive on the adapters still have a bunch of edge cases.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > and looked into the Sony route since their A7 line looks killer They are. I recently tried out an A7S, nice thing, but getting the A7S2 in about two months. 4K in camera recording is worth getting the Mk2 for.
      - dylan604 9y ago
mmastrac 9y ago
I'm not sure your concerns are completely valid here. We've reached the point where consumer phone cameras are good enough for 90% of photography. At this point there's huge value in giving better access to the platform itself to start applying machine learning techniques directly on the camera. In addition, the FPGA you call limited I'd argue gives access to powerful reprogrammable logic. Why hard-code image processing algorithms when you can update them as new techniques come out? Not only is this an amazing sensor (180fps, global shutter) but it's using cutting edge technology. I'd argue that it's possible sensor technology is reaching some of its limits and an industrial sensor here can match the quality of DSLR sensors. It may only be 12MP but Google and Apple have both shown that intelligent algorithms can produce amazing results from sensors that size. The video on the properties of the sensor itself is quite impressive: http://vimeo.com/17230822 http://vimeo.com/17230822
- phkahler 9y ago
  >> At this point there's huge value in giving better access to the platform itself to start applying machine learning techniques directly on the camera. What does machine learning have to do with photography? If there's an explanation for that, then I'd add why does it need to happen on the camera?
  - bri3d 9y ago
    I worry this is going to go the "computer aided photography isn't the one true photography" direction, but check this out: https://research.googleblog.com/2017/10/portrait-mode-on-pixel-2-and-pixel-2-xl.html?m=1 https://research.googleblog.com/2017/10/portrait-mode-on-pix... ML has thousands of applications in photography, from HDR to mask creation to feature removal to subtle aids like noise reduction.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    I'd agree with parent that ML is one of the killer apps of more open professional camera hardware. Nowhere I can think of (other than Android, but a lot of caveat there) has an open hardware upstart challenged entrenched commercial players for legacy needs and won. Where you do win is by targeting emerging needs, especially ones legacy commercial players are ill equipped to take advantage of (due to institutional inertia or ugly tech stacks). As for why ML on edge devices: a large amount of work is going into running models (or first passes) on edge devices with limited resources (see articles on HN). I would assume they have business reasons. But offhand, almost everything about vision-based ML in the real world gets better if you can decrease latency and remove high-bandwidth internet connectivity as a requirement.
marci 9y ago
One of the roots of the axiom is elphel, a company that's been selling open hardware cameras for more than 15 years with similar features. http://elphel.org http://elphel.org The Axiom angle is more cinematographically oriented.
foolrush 9y ago
> they can't make their own sensors (e.g. RED Dragon) so they need to use CMV12000 which is a sensor for scientific and industrial applications - fast, but not optimized for image quality > from the likes of RED, Canon, Blackmagic etc Guess which sensor in in some of BlackMagic's offerings?
- flyinglizard 9y ago
  I think they rely heavily on customized Fairchild sensors for their Ursa line: http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2015/04/blackmagic-super-35-sensor-features-15.html http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2015/04/blackmagic-s... (great blog BTW!) I'm not aware of any pro cinema camera using the CMV12000 as-is, but I've been out of the loop for some time.
  - dharma1 9y ago
    Image sensors world is a great blog indeed. I'm pretty sure the Blackmagic used CMOSIS sensors at least on the 4K Production Camera. On Axiom - I think it's great to have open source cameras like this, but the price point needs to come down significantly before it will get traction. Also, with indie camera companies expect long delays - Axiom's been years in the making, as have KineFinity cameras (another independent RAW cinema camera brand). From a practical POV for indie filmmakers, the resale value of these cameras is also questionable when compared to BlackMagic or RED. I think much of the benefits of RAW (dynamic range) will actually come from 10bit HEVC cameras shooting HDR. GH5 is one of the first of those, in 1-2 years I expect every smartphone will shoot 10bit HEVC that will have significantly more latitude than current 8bit video, even at small sensor sizes. I would actually love to see mobile SoC's like Qualcomm 845 (4K 60fps, 10bit HDR, Rec 2020 color gamut) and Android used on semi/pro cameras, with a good OLED touchscreen, relatively large (1" or larger) sensor and maybe m43 mount lenses. Something like BMPCC but with updated sensor and chipset, running Android.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Latest and greatest is severely overrated - that's something you throw money at if you already have a hot project and need additional hype. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not (eg Collateral was a very successful ad for the Viper camera's relatively good low-light performance; Public Enemy not so much for a different model). I've been following this project for a few years and while it's got a slow development/adoption curve it's on the right track both economically and technologically; eventually it'll become the Linux of cameras. The thing is, we're already in an era of technological abundance where digital photography is concerned; commodity solutions are already good Enough for pretty much all commercial purposes. You can shoot an indie feature on an iPhone; even huge budget films like the Avengers franchise use Blackmagic pocket cameras as crash cams (cheapish cameras that you set up to run automatically stunt cars to provide a second or two of dramatic first-person footage). There will of course always be more highly engineered offerings out there, that will be important for highly specialized tasks like astronomy and scientific work. And ultradense sensors might be deployed to allow photography at multiple focal depths - but even that is likely to find its way into consumer gear before lone. At this point the industry focus is no longer on which camera has the best specifications as on workflow and support. Blackmagic ave done incredibly well for themselves with a (relatively) technologically inferior sensor/package but by being more open than Red and thus building a larger and stronger community at a somewhat lower price point, for example. It's a good example of the tortoise beating the hare over the length of the race.
SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
The Chronos high-speed camera[1] is a lot more interesting as a product, though not fully open-source. The software is FOSS, the hardware isn't. It has the advantage of being for a niche application (high-speed photography) and substantially cheaper (about 0.1x the price) than similarly capable commercial cameras. [1] http://www.krontech.ca/ http://www.krontech.ca/

binarymax 9y ago

Give it some time - they just launched! If it becomes popular they will have more funding to work with and have the ability to advance the tech. You don't enter a patent briarbush market with the best solution the world has ever seen, you make a good enough showing and grow.

eropple 9y ago
I use Panasonic's midrange GH3 and GH4 cameras for video. 16MP sensor, Micro Four Thirds mount. For general purpose cinema, they will shoot better than the sensor in this camera will (which isn't to say it's the best thing in town, it's not, but that's kind of my point) and the stuff they're flogging, like on-the-fly color conversion, is not particularly useful in the center or edge cases compared to getting high-quality, raw, as-ungraded-as-you-can-get material to work with in post. It's a neat idea. Your implication that it's good-enough doesn't scan to me, as even a prosumer videographer. Maybe I'll be wrong--but Blackmagic is already vastly ahead in the pure-cinema space, so...
- binarymax 9y ago
  But isn't the point of this to be able to hack it and add things that you need for your use case? Nobody said the arduino or raspi was meant to replace your day to day compute. This is targeted as a hackable base system to learn about the technology and stimulate innovation. Right now hacking cameras requires insanely niche knowledge and reverse engineering skills.
  - eropple 9y ago
    If the point is to hack, you totally should buy an Arduino. (I just bought my college-age EE brother one. He's messing with it right next to me. It's cool.) It is also orders of magnitude cheaper. But for video and video specifically, a "hackable base system" is not a raison d'etre to exist beyond the niche-of-a-niche hacker community who's not going to pay you materially for the thing in the first place. This stuff is expensive! Near as I can tell, something like this needs a reason for videographers, and not computer people, to pay for it to get the traction needed to allow it to expand and progress. The set of people who need to "add things" to a video camera for their use case is small because there are few use cases that are not better undertaken by getting the highest quality, cleanest raw footage you can (which is not helped by adding, like, inline color correction), storing it in the least-lossy format you can, and then taking that output and transforming it down-the-line either in post/editing for recorded media or in your better-equipped visual mixer for live. The most interesting "hardware hacks" I can think of for cameras would be in the focus/image stabilization arena, but I don't think you get much insight into that with the passive E-mount (could be wrong, I don't use Sony) as opposed to an active E-mount or Panasonic's Power/Mega OIS stuff in the MFT. For Power/Mega OIS in particular, my understanding is that the sensors are in the lens but the brains are in the camera--could be some novel things to do there.
    - gt_ 9y ago
      This is opinion, but opinion from a passionate cine nerd: Good stabilization techniques don’t happen in the lens and passive E mount is perrrfect for this camera. Stabilization is a mount’s job, and not really a hack. Most camera hacking these days is done with SLRS which are not “real” video cameras, for lack of a list of technical explanations. Magic Lantern is a popular DSLR hacking tool and it’s problematic to use. Think trying to use Windows as if it were Linux.
anigbrowl 9y ago
In the interests of accuracy, the Axiom project has been in gestation for >5 years so they're off to a slow start. But they have a lot of good will in the pro cam community because they were careful to keep delivery expectations low and warned people not to structure projects around the hardware any time soon.

empath75 9y ago

Stuff like that seems like it would be nice for people who like to hack around with internals, but you’re talking about a tiny tiny fraction of users.

UncleEntity 9y ago
Like most things methinks...but the majority non-hacking users get to benefit from the ones who do like to hack around with internals. Plus its (user) hardware/software upgradeable, some fancy new thing comes out you just have to bust out the toolkit instead of having to buy a whole new camera. I'm thinking something like a light-field sensor with the "LSD simulation" firmware would be a perfectly sensible upgrade.
anigbrowl 9y ago
That's what everyone said about Linux in 1993.

vvanders 9y ago

Yup, agreed. You're also giving up a huge compromise in lenses when going with this approach. When it comes to photography lenses mean more than the camera 95% of the time(unless you're doing sports/action photography, where you need good AF). With this it's all manual + adapters which always has compromises compared to use in their native format. It's super-cool technically but I don't see it taking over anytime soon.

dylan604 9y ago
I think you might have missed the part where this is a digital cinema camera. Cinema cameras rarely have AF, and are almost always manual lenses with a dedicated person assigned to pull focus. Also, being able to adapt lenses is a huge bonus. Look at the Micro Four Thirds market. There are so many adapters available and in wide use to be able use a wider selection of lenses. Pretty much the only way Sony cameras are used. The selection of Sony native mount lenses limited, but adapt that to a PL mount or EF mount, and the world opens up significantly
- vvanders 9y ago
  Ah, good call. It was missing from the title so I was assuming they were going after the traditional camera market. For cinema they might have a better shot. I've got a non-trivial amount of Canon gear(300F4, 35F1.4, 135F2, etc) and looked into the Sony route since their A7 line looks killer. In the end all the adapters had compromises so I decided to stick with Canon. From all reports the AF drive on the adapters still have a bunch of edge cases.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > and looked into the Sony route since their A7 line looks killer They are. I recently tried out an A7S, nice thing, but getting the A7S2 in about two months. 4K in camera recording is worth getting the Mk2 for.
    - dylan604 9y ago

mmastrac 9y ago

I'm not sure your concerns are completely valid here. We've reached the point where consumer phone cameras are good enough for 90% of photography. At this point there's huge value in giving better access to the platform itself to start applying machine learning techniques directly on the camera. In addition, the FPGA you call limited I'd argue gives access to powerful reprogrammable logic. Why hard-code image processing algorithms when you can update them as new techniques come out? Not only is this an amazing sensor (180fps, global shutter) but it's using cutting edge technology. I'd argue that it's possible sensor technology is reaching some of its limits and an industrial sensor here can match the quality of DSLR sensors. It may only be 12MP but Google and Apple have both shown that intelligent algorithms can produce amazing results from sensors that size. The video on the properties of the sensor itself is quite impressive: http://vimeo.com/17230822 http://vimeo.com/17230822

phkahler 9y ago
>> At this point there's huge value in giving better access to the platform itself to start applying machine learning techniques directly on the camera. What does machine learning have to do with photography? If there's an explanation for that, then I'd add why does it need to happen on the camera?
- bri3d 9y ago
  I worry this is going to go the "computer aided photography isn't the one true photography" direction, but check this out: https://research.googleblog.com/2017/10/portrait-mode-on-pixel-2-and-pixel-2-xl.html?m=1 https://research.googleblog.com/2017/10/portrait-mode-on-pix... ML has thousands of applications in photography, from HDR to mask creation to feature removal to subtle aids like noise reduction.
- ethbro 9y ago
  I'd agree with parent that ML is one of the killer apps of more open professional camera hardware. Nowhere I can think of (other than Android, but a lot of caveat there) has an open hardware upstart challenged entrenched commercial players for legacy needs and won. Where you do win is by targeting emerging needs, especially ones legacy commercial players are ill equipped to take advantage of (due to institutional inertia or ugly tech stacks). As for why ML on edge devices: a large amount of work is going into running models (or first passes) on edge devices with limited resources (see articles on HN). I would assume they have business reasons. But offhand, almost everything about vision-based ML in the real world gets better if you can decrease latency and remove high-bandwidth internet connectivity as a requirement.

marci 9y ago

One of the roots of the axiom is elphel, a company that's been selling open hardware cameras for more than 15 years with similar features. http://elphel.org http://elphel.org The Axiom angle is more cinematographically oriented.

foolrush 9y ago

> they can't make their own sensors (e.g. RED Dragon) so they need to use CMV12000 which is a sensor for scientific and industrial applications - fast, but not optimized for image quality > from the likes of RED, Canon, Blackmagic etc Guess which sensor in in some of BlackMagic's offerings?

flyinglizard 9y ago
I think they rely heavily on customized Fairchild sensors for their Ursa line: http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2015/04/blackmagic-super-35-sensor-features-15.html http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2015/04/blackmagic-s... (great blog BTW!) I'm not aware of any pro cinema camera using the CMV12000 as-is, but I've been out of the loop for some time.
- dharma1 9y ago
  Image sensors world is a great blog indeed. I'm pretty sure the Blackmagic used CMOSIS sensors at least on the 4K Production Camera. On Axiom - I think it's great to have open source cameras like this, but the price point needs to come down significantly before it will get traction. Also, with indie camera companies expect long delays - Axiom's been years in the making, as have KineFinity cameras (another independent RAW cinema camera brand). From a practical POV for indie filmmakers, the resale value of these cameras is also questionable when compared to BlackMagic or RED. I think much of the benefits of RAW (dynamic range) will actually come from 10bit HEVC cameras shooting HDR. GH5 is one of the first of those, in 1-2 years I expect every smartphone will shoot 10bit HEVC that will have significantly more latitude than current 8bit video, even at small sensor sizes. I would actually love to see mobile SoC's like Qualcomm 845 (4K 60fps, 10bit HDR, Rec 2020 color gamut) and Android used on semi/pro cameras, with a good OLED touchscreen, relatively large (1" or larger) sensor and maybe m43 mount lenses. Something like BMPCC but with updated sensor and chipset, running Android.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Latest and greatest is severely overrated - that's something you throw money at if you already have a hot project and need additional hype. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not (eg Collateral was a very successful ad for the Viper camera's relatively good low-light performance; Public Enemy not so much for a different model). I've been following this project for a few years and while it's got a slow development/adoption curve it's on the right track both economically and technologically; eventually it'll become the Linux of cameras. The thing is, we're already in an era of technological abundance where digital photography is concerned; commodity solutions are already good Enough for pretty much all commercial purposes. You can shoot an indie feature on an iPhone; even huge budget films like the Avengers franchise use Blackmagic pocket cameras as crash cams (cheapish cameras that you set up to run automatically stunt cars to provide a second or two of dramatic first-person footage). There will of course always be more highly engineered offerings out there, that will be important for highly specialized tasks like astronomy and scientific work. And ultradense sensors might be deployed to allow photography at multiple focal depths - but even that is likely to find its way into consumer gear before lone. At this point the industry focus is no longer on which camera has the best specifications as on workflow and support. Blackmagic ave done incredibly well for themselves with a (relatively) technologically inferior sensor/package but by being more open than Red and thus building a larger and stronger community at a somewhat lower price point, for example. It's a good example of the tortoise beating the hare over the length of the race.

SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago

The Chronos high-speed camera[1] is a lot more interesting as a product, though not fully open-source. The software is FOSS, the hardware isn't. It has the advantage of being for a niche application (high-speed photography) and substantially cheaper (about 0.1x the price) than similarly capable commercial cameras. [1] http://www.krontech.ca/ http://www.krontech.ca/