I’ve been reading with some skepticism news out from Sony about their latest mystery CineAlta camera in the works. It seems we’ve hit a bit of a plateau in camera development the past year or so and the more I look at the shortcomings of the current digital cinema cameras on the market, the more I think Sony may be onto something big.
 
Could this really finally be Sony’s big break… could Sony actually be the first to market with an entirely new generation of digital cinema camera? It seems too much to believe, they’ve been slow and in my opinion brought too little too late throughout the past few years of bottom up explosion in 35mm format HD+ camera platforms. It feels they’ve not even been in the race the past three years… Red Digital Cinema, Canon, Arri have all played a role in the revolution, but where is Sony?
 
Perhaps they have outsmarted us all, maybe they’ve passed on the first generation of 4K cameras, choosing instead to refine thier 35mm HD platform cluminating in the F35. Maybe they’ve been waiting patiently, not interested in compromise, but intending to trump all competitors with some serious innovations in sensor design.
 
The specifications floating around the internet point to a break away from current (past) offerings in a few fundamental ways.
 
One article I have come across reads “Behind the PL mount, there’s an 8K sensor: 8768 x 2324 pixel single CMOS sensor (that’s 20.4 Megapixels) — Super35 3-perf size,  16-bit RAW output, 16:8:8.”
 
Resolution: Beyond Pixel Count – Supersampling

This is not an 8K camera, this is a 4K camera with sixteen photosites per pixel! There is no news yet revealing what kind of sensor architecture is involved here but what we have is 16:8:8 at 4K! This is true 4K everybody, not psuedo 4K derived from a debayer process.
 
Ultra High Dynamic Range – Beyond Silver Halide

Could this be the first camera to put to rest all argument that film emulsion is still superior in latitude to digital alternatives? Here we have a sensor that promises a wider color space than any other digital camera, “native” ISO is speculated at around 1000ISO. The camera shoots 16bit RAW to 1TB SR Memory Cards.
 
Sony is definitely taking things to a totally new level. However they are not alone in this race for the next generation of digital cinema camera technology.
 
Let’s not forget Panavision’s Dynamax35 which has been quietly in development for years. I wrote this in October 2009 – Panavision Dynamax 35 Ultra
 
We have yet to see anything come to market in the 4K camera arena from either Sony or Panavision, and I have a feeling these are two names that may come to define the next generation of digital cinema acquisition very soon indeed.
 
By Richard Lackey
Original Article on Digital Cinema Demystified