After a few months of behind the scenes activity, Cinemartin released new images and specs about their upcoming Fran 8K camera. Rumored to be formally announced sometime later this year, the Cinemartin Fran 8K has the potential to give cinematographers another real choice in digital cinematic cameras.
The Specs
I know a lot of you have been waiting to see what Cinemartin was thinking about when then developed Fran 8K. These are some just a few of the real eye-opening specifications.
23x over Full HD, same quality
Full HD, the standard on TV's, measures 1920 x 1080 (2.073.600). Fran 8K delivers 7920 x 6024 pixels makes a total of 47.710.080 Pixels (47.7 MP), or in other words, 23x more resolution than Full HD.
Global Shutter
Global shutter delivers instant frame readout, this means images are captured at once at the same time, unlike rolling shutter where one sensor is read from one side to the other with some delay.
Bigger than VV
Fran sensor is bigger than the VistaVision, has an area of 1.456 inches by 1.062 inches (999 mm2 - 37 x 27 mm). The VistaVision aperture is 1.485 inches (37.72 mm) by 0.981 inches (24.92 mm). EF or PL mount.
Internal Sampling
The Fran has variable resolutions (8k, 4k, 2k) that do NOT crop the sensor; for example, 8k at 14mm is 14mm in 4k too. No cropped. Internal downsampling is available for some resolutions.
Expansion Modules
The Fran has been designed to be able to expand its capabilities. Each side of the camera has a dock space for modules that will be developed for the camera. Currently, they are working for an I/O module (with xlr audio in/outs and SDI out).
NVME M.2
The Fran records onto removable SSD M.2 certified media. 1 TB and 2TB drives are available for the Fran.
RAW
While all preview is done at full-color spectre, recording is done at pure Raw, either Bayer (no color info applied) or Debayered (color info applied) to give the max possibilities, applying LUT, etc. All non-debayered clips (sequence of images) can be set to transcode after recorded, to Debayered files at a lossless compression ratio of 2:1 (png, dng).
Automatically Backup
Anytime you connect a drive all the media will be backup, you can set to move or copy file with or without transcoding to either 2:1 debayer raw or, say after a recording session either Avid DNxHD/xHR or Prores, from Camera to your Drive. Then you can unplug the drive and connect to your favorite computer.
Franenc : A powerful encoder based on Cinec CPU/GPU
Simply transcode using your fast computer CPU / GPU, from the external backup media or NVME drive, to your editing drive. Use Cinemartin Franenc, optimized software bundle based on the Cinec software, to encode Fran files faster, to PNG, DNG, Prores or Avid DNxHD DNxHR using your NVIDIA GPU & CPU with up to 16 cores.
Summary
Interesting indeed. Those are just a few more of the newer specifications aligned with the much anticipated Cinemartin Fran 8k. Cinemartin has lots more of the most interesting technical specifications along with some stills and with the promise of some test footage coming soon. I’ll keep you posted.
