I wish them all the best - it's high time people had actual control of their cameras. I mean both control over the hardware and repairability. While CHDK [0] may offer the first, they do nothing about the second.
As much as this is important, I am convinced Open things are most useful at the lower end, opening doors to people who would otherwise just not be able to participate.
I would have a hard time justifying getting one of those for myself, because of the price, as a non-pro.
6-7 years ago, I would have been saving up for this. That was a very different market for video production professionals.
I never liked hacking cameras that were not made to be hacked, but this one is. It’s not the first, but the other projects appeared to be barely getting by.
The sad part is just how long this has taken to come to fruition, and how little sense it makes economically at this point.
For one, many of the problems this solves in a holistic and better way have found standard solutions widely implemented in the indie production market.
RED cameras are fairly prolific and accessible to a lot of people these days, and other imperfect solutions are popularly adopted as well.
While this option is all-around more capable, the modding workflow is still foreign and will take some time to adapt.
Purely economically, there is a lot less money flowing into indie production outfits, particularly from advertising and indie entertainment enterprises like Youtube-online media channels. Advertising is embracing data based decision models that override costly creative production efforts that would properly utilize a camera like this.
In short, this thing is for artists, and artists are screwed.
As much as this is important, I am convinced Open things are most useful at the lower end, opening doors to people who would otherwise just not be able to participate. I would have a hard time justifying getting one of those for myself, because of the price, as a non-pro.
Still, I hope they succeed.