Can You Build a Cinema Camera That Rivals What You Can Buy?
Matthew Trahan doesn’t have a big Hollywood budget to work with, so he set out to build his own cinema camera.
Cinema cameras are expensive. Like, really expensive. Entry-level models without lenses or anything else start at around $3,000 and those are for low-budget productions. “Real” cinema cameras cost $30,000 or more — again, before lenses, which can be more than the cameras themselves. Matthew Trahan doesn’t have a big Hollywood budget to work with, so he set out to build his own cinema camera.
Trahan has a sense of humor and starts the video by saying that he doesn’t know much about cameras, which sets the tone for the project. Starting with the idea that digital cameras are “mostly software,” Trahan decided to use a Raspberry Pi as the base for the camera, borrowing heavily from the CinePi project.
The hardware includes a Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB), a Raspberry Pi HQ camera module, what I think is a C-mount lens, a touchscreen LCD, a SmallRig battery (actually very nice), and all the bits and bobs to tie that hardware together. You can never overlook cables and adapters! Trahan put all of those components into a 3D-printable enclosure design called the Frame8, which Storfis created specifically for CinePi builds.
But does that all yield a quality cinema camera? Yes and no.
The CinePi software is great and provides full control over everything a cinematographer would want. But digital cameras aren’t just software and the hardware itself isn’t exactly cutting-edge. The Raspberry Pi HQ camera module has a 12.3-megapixel Sony IMX477 sensor, which is decent for its size and cost. But it is still 7.9mm sensor that costs about $55. Compare that to the 43.3mm full-frame sensor on the “budget” Blackmagic Pyxis 6K that costs about $3300. Sensor size isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing either.
In any case, this is still a great project for a camera that is perfectly usable and will output decent video for YouTube.