**EDIT** YES I KNOW I SAID ALIASiNG WRONG 😩 I was trying to focus on my FRENCH** I apologize in advance for my poor FRENCH haha! What do you guys think the most interesting thing about this camera is? 👀 ============================= Join our Discord Channel💬 ► discord.gg/3aeNPU7GHu Twitter ► twitter.com/frame_voyager Instagram ► instagram.com/framevoyager/ TikTok ► www.tiktok.com/@framevoyager Join our RU-vid channel 📺 ►ru-vid.com/show-UCmXGDFnFh95WlZjhwmA5aeQjoin
@@FrameVoyager I'm just hassling you! Keep up the good work! I actually didn't know that about the shutter on this camera! Used a Penelope, never a Delta...
I worked with an 16mm aaton minima, weird loading system but in terms of usability it was so tiny you can put it in really small places. I believe vanHoytema owns one and uses it frequently for tight shots.
I love these Abandoned Camera videos. Information dense, attention keeping, great included source material and enough nerdy details. I really enjoy this series and look forward to watching them all.
My understanding is that one of biggest reason why CCD sensors have been phased out is that they require a specialized fab, while to CMOS sensors that can be fabricated in the same shop as other non-photosensitive ICs. (technically they are all photosensitive to some extent if not covered)
Yep! They were much more expensive to make and not necessarily very stabile. I know from what I saw a lot of people were surprised they went with CCD sensors, but that also could be just based on what was available on the market at that time. Gotta wonder if they identified a good cmos sensor how different things could have been
@@FrameVoyager Well, we know it's hard to source good CMOS sensors even today. CCDs started to die in stills already 20 years ago, so the manufacturers (still) making them were probably eager to find new customers. Machine vision was eventually one the final applications, but now that's gone too.
Working in this industry, this is one of the best, if not the best youtube series ever! Great work and respect! I remember all the cameras mentioned in this series. And with most of them I was like “this camera will not make it” when it was introduced. And with some of them I was sorry for the companies that their cameras were not successful.
Really excellent series. It's lovely to flashback to some of the historical moments of the last decade that led to our current state of digital cinema. I remember being so excited for the Penelope Delta, such a shame it never made it.
Appreciate it! And for sure, it's kind of cool collecting all of this and telling a narrative about a camera most forgot about. Really surprised no one's done this type of series before
I know aaton cameras well. One of the 80’s and 90’s most sought after commercial directors, used his own camera to shoot his spots. They were probably the camera of choice for anyone coming from the world of documentary production, so that was the look that really took over during the late 70’s. Try and find the original Volkswagen spots if you want to see the style to which I’m referring.
@@FrameVoyager I prefer your style honestly. You keep my attention without going into random tangents about things I either don't care about or that don't relate to the current subject. I love it ❤️
Of any camera to be abandoned or cancelled, this one definitely hurts the most. It had such an incredible design and with such unique features that could have really changed the game, so it’s unfortunate that it was killed by a faulty sensor. Given Aaton’s standing in the industry and the time this was supposed to release, who knows what kind of impact it could have had on the film industry. Given the current state of the camera market, (with every company racing to get the best form factor, dynamic range, resolution, etc) I can’t see something like this being made today. But I like to remain optimistic, and the industry is always changing. You never know what could happen, perhaps a camera with this type of technology will be attempted again in the future.
Wow, they were so ahead of their time. And why don’t we have some of this tech today? The shifting sensor to emulate film grain and temporal resolution is great. We have IBIS but none of the cinema cameras use this tech to their advantage. And actually a mechanical disk shutter for a digital sensor, why not. Would emulate the gate of film. At least Sony’s BSI CMOS tech got the photo sites larger and closer together with putting the wiring behind them instead of in between. Damn!
@@FrameVoyager What's interesting is pixel shift tech is still used today in 4k projectors. Most of them aren't really 4k, but say the shifting recreates 4k. I wonder if a pixel shift projector + pixel shift video would result in the correct pixels getting shifted lol.
I'm working with the Aaton s35 tomorrow, we got a new video tap from it, which looks like the one from the Penelope. The other issue Aaton always had was non standard power connectors. And the dang batteries themselves..... anyway. Great series. Thank you for the inside scoop I was never up on what happened to Aaton. I was looking forward to the D-Minima.
I'm loving this series. It would be interesting to know more on the Arri D21 and i'm really curious to see the next episodes. You're doing a great job with the research
@@FrameVoyager i thinks it's Arri's reputation that makes it so intriguing lol. Even the digital bolex might be interesting but i'm not sure if it fits the "abandoned" or the "discontinued" category
Some info is missing from this story. What really happen was they kidnapped the ARRI top scientist and he was only able to make a 3.5K sensor but they wanted to push 7K. They also was working on a time machine looking for newer tech. When they went into the future then found Topaz Video Enhance A.I. so they broke into the office of Topaz and got the source code for Video Enhance A.I. and was going to run it in real time when filming with the Delta but the dam thing hot so hot one time on set it caught on fire and burned down the set. There was millions of dollars they had to pay out.
Great video! Another camera I’ve always wondered about is the Thomson viper, it was weird that they didn’t ever seem to develop a follow up despite having some relatively early success.
@@FrameVoyager Simple, thomson vipers got sent to the e waste yards, because for some reason panavision literally sends all of their end of life rental products to a e waste yard to be crushed instead of selling them off, absolutely bizzare but that's unfortunetly the case with the viper and the super 35 genesis, only very few of them remain around the world.
Thanks for reminding people how great of a man he truly was single handed genius if you ask me he doesn’t get the credit he should that’s for sure needs to be a film hall of fame
The mechanical shutter is cool. Of course it's an expensive part that could fail. However, I suppose a mechanic shutter could help with the horrific rolling shutter situation we are now having because of the resolution and DR race.
Red did this with their "motion mount" combo ND and electronic global shutter. I have no idea if Red even shipped it, but it's cool how it can change from a square wave (on/off) profile to a more sinusoidal shutter.
HOLY CARP! For YEARS I have been looking for that darned camera I remember reading about that wiggled the sensor between frames to get sub-pixel upscale-technology. FINALLY I now have the name of the camera and I can finally put the search to rest. It is really sad that this camera never really took off. And with sensor stabilizing becoming ever more popular, I cannot help but wonder if the digital gate-weave could possibly resurface in a future camera. Maybe even through a firmware update on a current camera. Though I guess that the offset would have to be recorded on each frame in order to take advantage of it fully. Anywhooo. Thanks for letting that part of my brain stop trying to figure out what it was. It is also interesting to see a glimpse inside the lens mount and see that there was evidently 3D-printing at play in these early prototypes. Those telltale layerings are hard to mistake. :) Maybe we'll also see the venetian blinds resurface in a camera. I am pretty sure that if you just get the sync right it should be very possible to add a mechanical shutter to just about any camera... not easy. But at least possible.
😂😂😂 Glad I helped you put a name to the camera! Honestly, this series has been so interesting to put together because no one has really talked a lot about these cameras or put their stories together. Glad to at least, as best I can with little information at time, piece together these stories!
Other cameras to look into: the Panasonic 3D AG-3D1 camcorder, Sony Nex VG900, JVC GY-LS300 (cinema camera?), Canon T6i is really the T5i rebadged because of the bad press from the recall.
Right? Doing this series has just reminded me how crazy this time for the industry was and am glad I can document the little amount of information on cameras lost in time!
@@FrameVoyager for us millenials and genZ I’d love a series highlighting the best and most iconic film cameras in the industry before (or even after) digital cameras arrived.
@@FrameVoyager Amazing series and research. Thank you! It is curious to see how in the mid 90´s there were 4 "surviving" film camera brands: Aaton, Arri, Panavision and Moviecam. A pity for Aaton, the A-minima was/is amazing and Arri fillled the pockets of Moviecam´s founder, so now only Arri remains (and reigns). Mi thesis is that Arri looked after cinematographer´s first and foremost, as opposed to Sony who focused on producers (which sank Panavision´s camera division). But that´s a big debate. Check these two for your film camera research. Cheers! Leitner, D.W. (1997) The love of look. On past, present and future of cameras. SMTP Journal. March 1997 (pp159-164). Thorpe, Laurence (2016). The SMPTE Century: Evolution in Cameras and Lenses from 1916 to 2016. August 2016. SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal 125(6):41-48.
Man, it would have been great if Aaton had gotten this to work. Would have kept more camera options out there and would have kept competition strong. Maybe ARRI wouldn’t have the high end dominance that they have. We’ll sadly never know.
I mean really tho... They had some unique ideas and a storied history in the cinema world. I feel like ARRI survived because they eased into digital, they didn't try and change everything with their first camera. Feels like these other companies tried to do too much at the beginning.
In truth, the fact that Arri stayed in business, and thrived given the pressure that companies like Sony exerted on so many areas of the business is extraordinary. SMPTE given the pressure that was thrown at them, eventually through up their hands and said, “make up your own specs for HD” and so, the manufacturers did. The fact that there was ever a term permitted to emerge, like “full HD”, speaks to the Wild West that the business was operating in at that time.
Hi, New viewer from France. First : your french is ok :p I think one of the reasons of the Penelope's demise you didn't mention (or maybe you're keeping it for the Dalsa Origin video ?) is RED. I mean, it is pretty well known in the industry that the Red One was born from the Dalsa Origin and that RED more or less bought the tech and patents from Dalsa. (or Dalsa didn't patent it and Red did but anyways the bones of Redcode Raw came from what Dalsa was doing). I met Jean-Pierre one or twice at Cannes Film Festival before his passing and I never actually managed to get a firm answer about whether or not the problems came from Dalsa unable to deliver sensors with a constant quality or RED coming into the mix or both (my theory is both : Dalsa was struggling to build those sensors and wanted to get rid of their Cinema Division, which they did in 2008, one year after the launch of the Red One)
Yeah, saving that bit for the Dalsa story because it was kind of hard to tie the 2 cameras together. RED for sure was a factor but they really didn't feel close to being in the same kind of camera playing field. But that's a good point! But I'll probably get into that with the Dalsa video like you said! Fascinating era for cameras in the early 2000s
For somebody that does a series on cameras, your CCD/CMOS knowledge seems to be rather lacking. CMOS sensors are used today because they are universally better than CCDs. And the "gap" you talk about? CCD have that as well, just smaller than CMOS. The sensors that don't have that at all are modern BSI CMOS sensors, since the the readout circuit is on the backside
I wouldn't say that it's lacking. This is information directly from the source from Jean-Pierre Beauviala and John Brawley who interview Jean-Pierre about this particular camera. Also, that's basically what I sad that the gap is smaller. Essentially CMOS was 75% and CCD was about 90% coverage for this Dalsa sensor according to Jean-Pierre Beauviala and John Brawley. But CCD's are also much more expensive than CMOS and at the time CMOS had not fully developed into what it is today. Sources: John Brawley: johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/aaton-delta-penelope/ No Film School: nofilmschool.com/2012/10/aatons-penelope-delta-camera Jean-Pierre Beauviala (describing the DALSA sensor): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HP8BPFFbCqA.html Able Cine: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9kraPJ1MGW0.html AbleCine 2: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NlWqOZzS4Rs.html
@@FrameVoyager but you framed it extremly poorly. Like CCD sensors are superior, but no longer used due to cost. Which is just not true. They are no longer used because they are sh#t compared to modern sensors. Just repeating sources doesn't make them right. Same for the aliasing and noise pattern part.
@@MegaWeitzel CMOS is only better now because development of CCD stopped and switched to CMOS. CCD development stopped because the profit margin on making CMOS was massively bigger.
Please do the P+S Technik 16 digital SR Mag. It was supposed to be a bridge to digitize all the s16mm ARRI SR3s out there and it never fully got delivered.
If you're keeping this series to cameras, the Ikonoskop A-Cam DII and Digital Bolex D16 are interesting cameras to add to your (probably long) list. If you're expanding the series to other stuff, Red has a lot of quietly canned products it announced: Meisler module, Redray projector and Redray player, just to name a few.
Does the Ikonoskop really qualify as an "abandoned" camera? There were just not a lot of them made. I've played around with the A-Cam DII in a rental house and I've shot with the original S16 one.
there are so many abandoned cameras we never even gonna know about them. like Nikon rumours said Nikon was testing 4/5 bodies before Z9 was announced. we don't know how many of them for Z9 and other models which we may not gonna see because they just got abandoned.
I learned in cinema school with Aaton 16mm cameras (and Arri 35mm as well) and never felt that the Aaton ones were more difficult to work with than the Arri. Actually, it was a really fascinating time to learn the work on film while learning A LOT about Digital Cinema Cameras alongside it (Sony F35, RED ONE and, yeah obviously, Arri Alexa).
I have tried to grade some of the RAW files from Penelope Delta that were available online at that time - aaaaaand it was nothing special... it was actually quite mediocre. Red and Arri files were much much more fun.
Not in the past but around this time is when it significantly shifted towards digital. I don't think Film is in the past but it's not what it used to be. And with processes like moving digital to film and then back to digital to get the film look or the film emulation that the Alexa S35 has now, could be 5 could be 20 years or more but eventually digital will be able to emulate film enough you won't be able to tell the difference. Especially with AI technology coming into play. It's kind of sad to be honest as FILM is such a fascinating innovation
I feel like ARRI played it a lot safer and didn't try to come out with a ton of new things in the first iteration. But we will find out in future episodes