Repairing A RED Cinema Camera On The Cheap

July 25, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 13 Comments

[ALT CINE] took a punt recently when purchasing a damaged RED Komodo camera online. In functional form, the 6K-capable camera sells for several thousand pounds (or dollars, or euros), whether used or brand new. However, [ALT CINE] was able to score the damaged unit for just £700. The question was—could it be repaired and turned back into a functional camera?

Things looked promising from the drop. The camera had just 3 hours of usage recorded in the firmware, and the casing seemed to suggest it had little use. However, the problem was soon revealed to be serious as the image sensor itself appeared to be damaged. Some research provided hope though—that the damage could be limited to a glass layer in front of the sensor itself that had delaminated.

Thankfully, disassembling the camera was easy enough thanks to its modular design, and [ALT CINE] soon had the sensor block on the bench for further examination. The cause of the issue was apparent—overzealous cleaning leading to fluid getting stuck to the rear of the filter in front of the sensor. Simply popping off the filter, cleaning and drying it properly, and reassembling, was enough to get the camera back to fully operational status.

RED’s repair service quoted $695 for a glass filter swap and $1,395 for a full sensor change. In contrast, [ALT CINE] was able to demonstrate that this repair was something easily within the realm of an intermediate camera tinkerer and it cost almost nothing to achieve. The video also covers an alternative potential repair route, wherein a DSMC2 filter can be subbed into a Komodo camera if the damage to the filter glass is otherwise unrecoverable.

It’s rare to get this lucky when it comes to repairing big-dollar cinema cameras like this one. We’ve featured some other great deep-dive camera repairs before, too. Continue reading “Repairing A RED Cinema Camera On The Cheap” →

Overpowered RC Car + Gimbal Cam = The Greatest Chase Vehicle We’ve Ever Seen

July 9, 2026 by Tyler August 8 Comments

Modern cinema relies very heavily on quadrotor drones, because they make for very smooth, very easy to position platforms. From slow pans to chase shots, drones are great– if your shots can be taken at a high enough altitude. Close to the ground, things get a bit dodgier. That’s where [Transistor Man]’s camera chase vehicle comes in— it’s a rover, so it excels close to the ground. In fact, it can’t go anywhere else, except perhaps if provided with a jump. It’s got a hefty gimbal to hold the camera steady on any terrain, a decade-old surplus radio to provide full HD FPV to the remote driver, and a powerful 1/5th scale radio control rally chassis to make it all go. Plus googly eyes, because everything is better with googly eyes.

It looks like an enormous amount of fun to drive, but more importantly it provides smooth, cinematic shots from the professional Sony camera held in the gimbal. One big takeaway is that when 3D printing something that will bounce around this much, you can’t rely on pure strength– flexible filaments are your friend. Just about everything printed ended up remade in TPU if it didn’t start that way. The other takeaway is that we’ve reached enough of a technological plateau that if you scrounge around, you can build something to take a top-of-the-line footage with decade-old castoffs, like the gimbal and radio used in this project, which is a great thing for hobbyists and small studios.

If you can’t find surplus, you could always DIY a gimbal. We’re not filmmakers, but we find ourselves wondering how shots made with this rover would compare to a camera slider.

Analog Surround Sound Was Everywhere, But You Probably Didn’t Notice

October 28, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 22 Comments

These days, most of the media we consume is digital. We still watch movies and TV shows, but they’re all packaged in digital files that cram in many millions of pixels and as many audio channels as we could possibly desire.

Back in the day, though, engineering limitations meant that media on film or tape were limited to analog stereo audio at best. And yet, the masterminds at Dolby were able to create a surround sound format that could operate within those very limitations, turning two channels in to four. What started out as a cinematic format would bring surround sound to the home—all the way back in 1982!

Continue reading “Analog Surround Sound Was Everywhere, But You Probably Didn’t Notice” →

Hackaday Links: July 9, 2023

July 9, 2023 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Good news this week from Mars, where Ingenuity finally managed to check in with its controllers after a long silence. The plucky helicopter went silent just after nailing the landing on its 52nd flight back on April 26, and hasn’t been heard from since. Mission planners speculated that Ingenuity, which needs to link to the Perseverance rover to transmit its data, landed in a place where terrain features were blocking line-of-sight between the two. So they weren’t overly concerned about the blackout, but still, one likes to keep in touch with such an irreplaceable asset. The silence was broken last week when Perseverance finally made it to higher ground, allowing the helicopter to link up and dump the data from the last flight. The goal going forward is to keep Ingenuity moving ahead of the rover, acting as a scout for interesting places to explore, which makes it possible that we’ll see more comms blackouts. Ingenuity may be more than ten-fold over the number of flights that were planned, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready for retirement quite yet.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: July 9, 2023” →

Movie Magic Hack Chat

January 18, 2021 by Dan Maloney 1 Comment

Join us on Wednesday, January 20th at noon Pacific for the Movie Magic Hack Chat with Alan McFarland!

If they were magically transported ahead in time, the moviegoers of the past would likely not know what to make of our modern CGI-driven epics, with physically impossible feats performed in landscapes that never existed. But for as computationally complex as movies have become, it’s the rare film that doesn’t still need at least some old-school movie magic, like hand props, physical models, and other practical effects.

To make their vision come to life, especially in science fiction films, filmmakers turn to artists who specialize in practical effects. We’ve all seen their work, which in many cases involves turning ordinary household objects into yet-to-be-invented technology, or creating scale models of spaceships and alien landscapes. But to really sell these effects, adding a dash of electronics can really make the difference.

Enter Alan McFarland, an electronics designer and engineer for the film industry. With a background in cinematography, electronics, and embedded systems, he has been able to produce effects in movies we’ve all seen. He designed electroluminescent wearables for Tron: Legacy, built the lighting system for the miniature Fhloston Paradise in The Fifth Element, and worked on the Borg costumes for Star Trek: First Contact. He has tons of experience making the imaginary look real, and he’ll join us on the Hack Chat to discuss the tricks he keeps in his practical effects toolkit to make movie magic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e13S0SenmPQ

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, January 20 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Continue reading “Movie Magic Hack Chat” →

Open Source Digital Cinema

June 17, 2017 by Al Williams 19 Comments

Years in the making, Apertus has released 25 beta developer kits for AXIOM–their open source digital cinema camera. This isn’t your point-and-shoot digital camera. The original proof of concept from 2013 had a Zynq processor (a Zedboard), a super 35 4K image sensor, and a Nikon F-Mount.

The device today is modular with several options. For example, there is an HDMI output module, but DisplayPort, 4K HDMI, and USB 3.0 options are in development. You can see several sample videos taken with the device, below.

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3D Printed Lens Gears For Pro-grade Focus Pulling

November 17, 2015 by Dan Maloney 29 Comments

Key Grip, Gaffer, Best Boy – any of us who’ve sat through every last minute of a Marvel movie to get to the post-credits scene – mmm, schawarma! – have seen the obscure titles of folks involved in movie making. But “Focus Puller”? How hard can it be to focus a camera?

Turns out there’s a lot to the job, and in a many cases it makes sense to mechanize the task. Pro cinematic cameras have geared rings for just that reason, and now your DSLR lens can have them too with customized, 3D printed follow-focus gears.

Unwilling to permanently modify his DSLR camera lens and dissatisfied with after-market lens gearing solutions, [Jaymis Loveday] learned enough OpenSCAD to generate gears from 50mm to 100mm in diameter in 0.5mm increments for a snug friction fit. Teamed up with commercially available focus pulling equipment, these lens gears should really help [Jaymis] get professional results from consumer lenses.

Unfortunately, [Jaymis] doesn’t include any video of the gears in action, but the demo footage shown below presumably has some shots that were enabled by his custom gears. And even if it doesn’t, there are some really cool shots in it worth watching.

And for the budding cinematographers out there without access to a 3D printer, there’s always this hardware store solution to focus pulling.

Continue reading “3D Printed Lens Gears For Pro-grade Focus Pulling” →