Digital Bolex Update – Units Will Ship November

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by Tim FokOctober 29^th, 2013

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Digital Bolex creators Elle, Joe and team have posted further updates to the development of their 2k D16 camera. If you were amongst the first 100 to pre-order the camera, keep an eye out for the postman next month.

The refreshing transparency of the Digital Bolex team has continued with a recent blog post re-affirming a mid November ship date for the initial batch, among some interesting advances with their camera’s construction, audio and color science.

The blog post displays a series of camera components sent from their Chinese supplier. Here’s what they say:

“These parts are leaps and bounds better than the last generation. The surface is clean and feels amazing, the machining is perfect, and the paint is durable and smooth. Many products these days have a little bit of a texture etched into the metal or plastic or paint. The purpose of this texture is to hide the inevitable surface imperfections in manufacturing. The D16′s paint however is smooth and clean, like the back of an iPhone, though matte instead of glossy.”

The team are close to freezing development on the first version of the firmware, but before doing so have been working on the color reproduction of the cameras white balance presets, HDMI output and also testing the camera’s performance under cold conditions.

“While Toronto is certainly colder than Los Angeles, it’s still not cold enough yet to test this upgrade in extreme weather. So our resourceful engineers MacGyver’ed a great solution: they stuck a Kino Flo mini and a tiny color chart in the fridge with the D16!”

The final break through is accomplishment of audio capture on the D16. The camera now records 16/24bit and 48K audio, with 96k to follow shortly. Audio meters are displaying on screen with peak warnings also.

It’s rare a camera company is this transparent these days. There are obvious flaws to the technique; RED learnt this the hard way with the oh-so prolonged release of the Scarlet camera. However as a neutral viewer it’s great to see the progress of a camera’s development, for more pictures and information be sure to check out the Digital Bolex blog post.