Cinema cameras are costly. Like, actually costly. Entry-level fashions with out lenses or the rest begin at round $3,000 and people are for low-budget productions. “Actual” cinema cameras value $30,000 or extra — once more, earlier than lenses, which will be extra than the cameras themselves. Matthew Trahan doesn’t have a giant Hollywood finances to work with, so he got down to construct his personal cinema digicam.
Trahan has a humorousness and begins the video by saying that he doesn’t know a lot about cameras, which units the tone for the mission. Beginning with the concept that digital cameras are “largely software program,” Trahan determined to make use of a Raspberry Pi as the bottom for the digicam, borrowing closely from the CinePi mission.
The {hardware} features a Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB), a Raspberry Pi HQ digicam module, what I feel is a C-mount lens, a touchscreen LCD, a SmallRig battery (really very good), and all the ins and outs to tie that {hardware} collectively. You may by no means overlook cables and adapters! Trahan put all of these elements right into a 3D-printable enclosure design known as the Frame8, which Storfis created particularly for CinePi builds.
However does that every one yield a top quality cinema digicam? Sure and no.
The CinePi software program is nice and gives full management over every thing a cinematographer would need. However digital cameras aren’t simply software program and the {hardware} itself isn’t precisely cutting-edge. The Raspberry Pi HQ digicam module has a 12.3-megapixel Sony IMX477 sensor, which is respectable for its dimension and price. However it’s nonetheless 7.9mm sensor that prices about $55. Evaluate that to the 43.3mm full-frame sensor on the “finances” Blackmagic Pyxis 6K that prices about $3300. Sensor dimension isn’t every thing, but it surely isn’t nothing both.
In any case, that is nonetheless an excellent mission for a digicam that’s completely usable and can output respectable video for YouTube.
