How AXIOM Seeks to Liberate Cinema Cameras

Challenging the Status Quo

The apertus° project was created by filmmakers who were fed up with the expensive and limited tools they had to work with every day. It started in the garages and workshops of a handful of enthusiasts who built parts for their own camera prototypes. They then shared images of their camera rigs with the community and others joined in to improve them or make their own variations. The desire to have devices/technology without limitations that are tailored exactly to the film-makers own needs sparked the creation of the apertus° project and still keeps it going many years later.

Who is developing the World’s First Open Source 4K Cinema Camera?

Apertus° is the culmination of a diverse pool of knowledge. Our members’ backgrounds extend from hardware development, coding and engineering, to graphic design, filmmaking, journalism and arts production. In 2015, it’s easy for us to see that not only is Open Source everywhere around us, it’s also doing some pretty amazing things! Two thirds of the servers comprising the Internet are powered by open technologies. WordPress (free and open source) is the most popular blogging platform on the planet.
The majority of mobile phones sold are now using Google’s Android OS – a variant of Linux, and Raspberry Pi’s – also running Linux – have sold several million units (and this is showing no sign of slowing down anytime soon). The unprecedented rise of 3D printing has led to a vast network of users now sharing their designs (for printed objects) freely and openly online, and more people and businesses are continuing to discover the benefits of pooling their resources and releasing data for open access.

The decentralized, democratic model of the AXIOM Development

With apertus°, we believe in the power of communities, of empowering the user to explore and tinker, to transform ideas into outstanding developments. Our primary intention has always been to ensure this freedom, so that anyone can hack and modify whatever they require in areas that may otherwise get overlooked. After releasing our code and documentation, we hope to invest more time and effort into building a thriving online ecosystem, supporting communities, teams and companies to share customized FPGA code, DIY designs for hardware modules, special-purpose camera OS disk images and whatever else (apertus° related) you can imagine. We intend to ship Axiom with the capacity for filmmakers and engineers to extend, reprogram and optimise the hardware so that it may be placed in a variety of specialised cinematographic scenarios that we have not yet thought of. And this is only the beginning. Whilst the tipping point for open software & hardware development has not yet reached critical mass, there is every indication it is approaching.

AXIOM Beta’s planned features include:

• using external recorder solutions
• 3x HDMI Full HD (4:4:4) output at up to 60 FPS
• 4K raw output via experimental HDMI formats
• Capture full resolution, full bit depth raw still images to MicroSD card
• Remote control of all camera functions from smartphone, tablet, laptop
• Power management and monitoring (e.g. voltage, current, temperature)
• Highly customizable via modular I/O add ons (e.g. SDI)
• Accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope e.g. for image stabilization
• Different lens mount options (e.g. Nikon F-mount, EF and M4/3)
• Wide input voltage range (5-40V)
• Very lightweight and compact ~110x60x50mm
• Embedded Linux (e.g. Raspian, ArchLinux)
• LUTs, matrix color conversion, FPN compensation, false color display, overlays, dead pixel compensation
• Using Microzed board (instead of Zedboard used in AXIOM Alpha)

The AXIOM Beta development was successfully financed through crowdfunding. Now it’s the turn for the community to influence the development process and contribute actively to a better future for the camera market.

The Community and How You Can Get Involved

The key of how we build the AXIOM Beta is THE COMMUNITY. A lot of people have sent us emails about ideas and feature requests for the AXIOM Beta. We read them all and replied with our own thoughts to each and every one of them. But this is a very one-dimensional communication so we have looked into how we can make this process broader and more transparent, giving everyone a chance to participate – after all the community is a melting pot of ideas from people in all kinds of professions and backgrounds who maybe never worked together before.

We needed an online platform that allows people to post ideas, discuss them, turn them into a concrete feature request that is then claimed by a developer who actually implements it and continues discussion as the feature matures and is being tested by other community members who report bugs and propose fixes. For this we started evaluating Phabricator, a platform used for example by the Blender Foundation and fell in love with it. We named our Phabricator website “the apertus° lab” – because this is where the actual research and development is now happening. We did a few weeks of extensive internal testing of the system – after more than 200 tasks being created we think it has proven very effective to collaborate and gather ideas and so we are ready to stick with it and involve the entire apertus° community. Now is the time to introduce the apertus° lab, our new task and brainstorming platform for everyone – not just the team. It is meant to become THE hub for shaping what the AXIOM Beta (and future models) will become – a platform that covers everything from gathering / discussing ideas to wishlists, proposals, tasks and bugs.

But we can only provide a platform – we need all of you to fill it with life, with diversity. We know it can be frustrating to explain something that is obvious for someone in one profession to someone who comes from a completely different cultural background and technical field of expertise. But we think this process is exactly what makes this so exciting – building bridges and bringing people together. We know this requires patience and dedication – so stick with us and don’t give up easily.

The Next Step

Following the successful development and shipping of AXIOM Beta bodies, we will start working on the AXIOM Gamma, the consumer-ready version that will run on open source software and have an open hardware concept. This camera is not only a development platform like the Beta, but a fully baked product that can compete with current cinema cameras in comfort and ease of use.

We challenge the traditional structures of the camera market, we challenge the present paradigms of how cameras are developed and manufactured. That’s what we mean by “the community building their dream camera” – a decentralized, contributing development environment – and we want you to be part of it.

The Apertus AXIOM development timeline and feature chart.