3D Printed Film Video Camera | Hacker News Reader

3D Printed Film Video Camera

joshuabird.com

113 pointsgiuliomagnifico28 comments

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On the build versus buy axis, there is the Lomokino

https://microsites.lomography.com/lomokino/

I have one.

It's been pretty fun and certainly a different way of thinking about making pictures.

It fits in a hoodie pocket so it makes a reasonable walk around.

Scanning workflow requires some bespoke decisions.

As would lab processing if I used it. I don't. I shoot it in B&W and develop in a tank.

Hmmm, a little googling suggests the Lomokino shoots only as fast as you crank (not 24 fps or anything cinemalike) and, even if you could run 24 fps on it, you'd get 4 to 6 seconds of film on a 35mm roll.

This 3D printed camera is looking pretty good to me.

Aside: love the Super-8 film used in the music video for the Pixies filk-like, "Andro Queen": https://youtu.be/10lyWR25_nQ

I don’t disagree. There are trade offs.

For five minutes shopping and fifty bucks total investment you can have a working Lomokino arriving the week after next and be out making pictures fifteen minutes after that.

What I think puts it on the same axis is a similar picture production workflow. There’s not much difference between developing exposed film, digitizing the negatives, and compiling them into something that will render.

Because that’s most of the work, fewer frames has the advantage of making redoing steps easier when figuring out the workflow. The results are less good but easier to obtain.

And if cinematography is a priority it might be better to get a film camera and run movie film through it.

You're right regarding convenience of course.

I see Kodak still sells Super 8 film at about $40 for 50 ft. A vintage Super 8 camera can be had on eBay for a good deal (I picked up a Canon 310XL a few years back — the same model I had as a teen — looks like those though are about $300 in good condition).

I'm curious about the B&W film you use, is that some form of positive B&W film, that can be projected?

Edit: Just looked more at the camera, it looks like it takes a 35mm canister of film, interesting.

So I guess normal B&W film?

My goto B&W film is Arista Edu 200 in 100’ rolls because it is cheap.

Movie moguls aside, projecting 35mm movie film at home is impractical because there never was much of a consumer market for projectors or cameras because 35mm movies are at an industrial scale. The projectors are big loud bright and hot.

16mm film would be about the limit for a hobbyist, and it is good enough for a feature film (but not a studio blockbuster). It’s about 1/4 the size of 35mm.

Also worth knowing that 35mm movie film requires bespoke processing due to the remjet layer to prevent halation and static charge buildup. And processing 16mm movie film is not cheap.

If you wonder what the girl was doing: rug tufting, using a tufting gun. I had to look it up :)

That was such an enjoyable read. I’ve always wanted to make a camera, and liked how they went into cost specifics for a lot of the processes.

I’m surprised they were able to take it to the F1 races or into airplanes.

"This brings us to about 16 seconds of video per roll of film, at a cost of ~$600 for 10 minutes." Expensive to use all the time but a great project.

Probably could have saved a few bucks on film using 100' bulk rolls instead of canisters, but then processing become difficult.

Yep.. this was my second thought ... "niiice.. i want't this... " then immediately after "hmm.. this seems expensive"

Is there any technical reason that film rolls are so expensive in 2022? Or is it just non-economies of scale and/or oligopoly profits?

Also, what would go well with this project is 3D printed film projector. Some of the parts already designed for the camera would go into the projector.

Lack of competition, 15 years ago you could get 36 pictures developed for £3 through the post and get sent a new film to use. Now there is only one place the develops film in my town and it is £20

Film is “dead”. And by “dead” I mean niche market and replaced by digital cell phone cameras.

Film equipment plants have shut down. E.g. https://petapixel.com/2021/07/01/fujifilm-to-close-four-u-s-...

So yeah if you want cheaper prices, more demand is required and more economies of scale.

I absolutely love this, including the eventual output. However, the word "video" needs removing from almost every part of the article as it makes it really hard to parse given that "video" is an entirely different medium.

"Motion picture" is the more traditional term, but it's clunky and perhaps unknown to the writer.

Or just call it a movie camera.

Yeah, “film video camera” is like saying “film DSLR camera”. There’s a built-in contradiction.

I guess “film video” could be a real thing if some crazy person stored an analog video signal on an optical track on film.

What the author has built is called a movie camera, as someone else already noted. (It’s a great project, very impressive!)

It would be a film video camera if they developed the film in quasi-realtime and then fed it into a scanner or a flying spot mechanism to read out pixels or a video signal. I would donate to a gofundme that wanted to do such a crazy thing.

I can't find a reference now, but there was some kind of military radar control system, which painted real-time light on film, which was continuously developed and projected on large projectors. It wasn't exactly video, but vector graphics, updated with a new frame every few seconds if I recall. A really wondrous system, with a built in permanent record of what had been shown on screen. (I wonder if these projectors were the inspiration for the projectors in War Games.)

Actually, video comes from "to see" and "to hear" so it's only video when it has sound.. The word implies nothing about the medium..

It's a moving picture camera that uses film as the recording medium.

Strict etymology is not the best way to understand a word.

Video here makes sense in a few ways, particularly because it's all but certain that what will be viewed is a digital scan and not a projection and because the audience may be more familiar with the word. However, in a professional or technical context, video always refers to electronic movies and is not used when the medium is film. For example, when you say a movie was shot on video, then you are saying it was not recorded on film.

I think I'm being an idiot here, but what do you mean "video is an entirely different medium"?

Isn't video a generic term for a picture with motion? Surely how that motion is captured is irrelevant so long as it's reproduced as a video?

I understand extra steps were taken, but the output here is clearly a video?

Apparently not, as I learn just now

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video

> Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media [emphasis my own]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_camera

> A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos (as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film).

amazing project - but this is not video, right? just a pure film camera?

From the article: "A video is simply a bunch of images shown one after another fast enough to give the illusion of motion. So all we really have to do is take a bunch of photos."

The project is a pure film camera that takes a bunch of photos.

Edit: The disagreement hinges on the definition of "video". Merriam-Webster says a video is "a recording of an image or of moving images". I think the project counts as "video" as a non-professional would understand it. But reasonable people (especially film & video experts!) can disagree.

not an expert at all. dating myself I guess

amazing!

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