Happy Halloween With 50% More Cowbell

Greetings from PhotoPlus, Part III

One of the standard features of any photo trade show is beautiful women in skimpy clothes, posing for photographers. PhotoPlus Expo was no exception. The biker above was in the Panasonic booth.

Hadn't seen this before - body-painting. Unique Photo lived up to their name by making these two poor young women suffer (naked) through hours of body make-up to pose for the masses.

Best Booths At PhotoPlus Expo

Trade shows always have really cool booths - some companies go beyond the call of duty and come up with some creative ways to showcase their products.

Canon's tongue-in-cheek tableau, which is so out of character for Canon.

Nikon set up this mad scientist tableau to show off the video capabilities of their SLRs. Felt bad for the poor actor who had to act like a mad scientist all day long. You can't do this for 3 days and not have it affect you in some way.

Not a great booth as booths go, but just great to see Kodak still alive and kicking.

Greetings From PhotoPlus, Part I

Your intrepid traveler DV Dude ventured into the heart of Gotham yesterday to visit the PhotoPlus Expo. PhotoPlus is a photo trade show open to the public, and all the big names (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic) and many smaller names were exhibiting their wares to the throngs.  Being New York, lots of people crammed into a too small space.  Due to the timing, not a lot of new products to show,  so not much new to see.

First public showing in the U.S. of the upcoming Panasonic GH3 (due in December). Camera is much larger, heavier and sturdier than the GH2 it replaces, and looks very interesting.

Lowel was showing off this new prototype LED light that looks a lot like a cordless drill. Battery or AC powered, focus ability and dimmer control. 1/4" screw on the bottom to mount to light stands, clamps etc.  Aiming to ship this winter.

Ahh, 4K. You know you want one. DV Dude wants one too. Alas, DV Dude doesn't have the $25,000 to buy one. Glorious picture though.

Where Jimmy Hoffa Is Really Buried

Recently in the news there has been some speculation of Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place, and the FBI always concentrates in Michigan, the last place Jimmy Hoffa was seen alive. This, however, is way way off the mark.

I can now officially put this all to rest - I discovered, by accident, Jimmy Hoffa's grave site. The photo above was taken west of Oatman, Arizona, on Route 66. Your Dudeness of DV was doing a photo trip of Route 66, taking some pictures of a picturesque valley, when I came across this grave marking Out in plain view, BTW. Just sitting there.

So no, Jimmy Hoffa isn't buried in some concrete in a stadium, or under some driveway - he's buried on Route 66.

You're welcome, FBI.

Yes There Really Was A Cat Video Film Festival

And this was the winning entry: Henri 2, Paw de Deux.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 Review

Brought to you by YouTuber marquesbrownlee...

He Did It!!

One of our regular customers in May told us of his upcoming video project - scaling Mount Kililmanjaro. While daunting in of itself, he was going to video tape Spencer West's journey up the mountain. Watch the video to see why this is not your run-of-the-mill mountain climb. Read in Tuesday's Toronto Star that they made it to the summit on Monday. Great news, and a big DV Shop congrats to all those involved. Safe travels down the mountain and back to Canada everyone.

DV Dude's New Car

Next time you need a crane shoot or dolly shot why not hire one of these Porsches to do it for you. By far one of the coolest things we've seen in a while!

DV Shop Goes to 11

Just like Spinal Tap, DV Shop goes to 11.

Celebrating our 11th Anniversary today.

Team CoCo Rates Adobe Premiere and FCPX

Adobe Comes Out To Play

The DV Shop is holding a free information seminar on the new Adobe Production Premium CS6 this Thursday, May 3rd.

This is open to anyone who wants to see the new cool features of CS6.

Session lasts about 2 hours, and is being run by Colin Smith from Adobe, and will be done here at our store.

We have 3 sessions - 11 am, 3 pm, and 6 pm.

If anyone wishes to attend, please book a seat, as seating is limited. Give us a call at 416-604-1492.

CS6 will be shipping in mid-May.

Cool Lighting at NAB 2012

NAB is always full of lighting equipment, but there were three new lights that caught my eye this year. I previously blogged about the Zylight F8 LED Fresnel light, and today's entry is on new lights from Zacuto and Rotolight.

Utilizing new microplasma lighting technology, the Zacuto Plazma light is a softer, more powerful fixture than LED, but has the same benefits of LED in that it consumes very little power. Think of it as a LED and Chimera love-child. Coming in Julyish for around $1350.

Those clever guys at Rotolight in England have come up with quite an incredible LED light - sure it's powerful and bi-colour, but we've seen that before. But this light has WiFi, so you can control it from your iPhone! Yes, there is an app for that. But not only can you control colour temperature and light output from your iPhone, it has new Magic Eye technology. What is Magic Eye? Using your iPhone or iPad, you can sample the colour of the ambient light in the room, and transmit that colour to the Anova light, which will then reproduce it. Far out! And not only can it do that, you can sample light from around the world, and send it to the Anova light. So you want the exact colour temperature of the sunset in Tuscany, while filming in a studio in Vancouver, this light can do that. Available shortly for around $2900.

Blackmagic Does It Again, Again

Well, I think it's pretty safe to say that absolutely no one saw this coming - the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Blackmagic always does good NAB - introducing products that gets everyone's attention and as a result, their booth is getting busier and busier each year. This year it was insanity, from the very first minute the show opened to the last second on Thursday. NAB always has a few booths that are packed, and Blackmagic has joined that elite club. The long faces in the Matrox and Motu booths are testament to that.
And of all the announcements Blackmagic made at this year's NAB, this one got the most attention. In fact, this camera was the talk of the show - people were looking at the Canon stuff, and surprisingly no one was talking about the Sony FS700, but everyone was talking about this camera.

So, why? Is it because it is coming from such an unlikely source? If Panasonic or Sony announced this very same camera, would it have gotten so much mindshare? So while our waiting list grows at the DV Shop, let's deconstruct this little retro box.

The Good
- Price ($2999)
- Comes with DaVinci Resolve (a $999 value)
- Size and weight
- Takes Canon lenses, and Nikon lenses with an adapter
- Thunderbolt
- Nice big 5" LCD
- Can record in ProRes, Avid DNxHD, or RAW
- Claims of 13 stops of dynamic range
- Metadata entry while shooting (providing one has the time)
- Menu system seems well thought out and elegant
- Out-of-the-box thinking from a company that has never made a camera before

The Bad
- No XLR inputs, only 1/4", and no HDMI out
- No autofocus (unlike Panasonic AF100, Sony FS100)
- Small sensor (slightly smaller than the AF100)
- RAW takes up a lot of space on those expensive SSDs it records to - 30 minutes of footage on a 256GB SSD that costs about $400. ProRes and Avid are much smaller file sizes - about 2.5 hours on a 256GB SSD. For comparison sake, AVCHD records about 3 hours on a 32GB SD card that costs $60 (albeit in 4:2:0 colour space)
- Blackmagic has no history of making cameras. In fairness, neither did Go Pro or Red, but as anyone who went through the first year of Red can attest to, sometimes experience is a good thing.

The Ugly
- Battery is internal and non-switchable when it runs out after 90 minutes. Yep, 90 minutes - that's how long the internal battery lasts. To shoot longer, you'll have to either run AC, or get a Switronix adapter to run off D-Tap off of Anton Bauer or V-Mount batteries, which adds cost and weight.

As for picture quality, that will have to wait until it actually ships in late July. On paper, it certainly looks promising, with the caveat that you have to do a lot of colour grading in post.

Hats off to Blackmagic for once again shaking things up. Even if this camera doesn't live up to the hype, it's a good step towards the kind of innovation the industry needs.

Cool Slider Company at NAB 2012

Every NAB, one comes across a cool new company with neat products. This year, the Dude discovered MYT Works, a New York company founded in 2010. They had a cool booth, with lots of wood (!), and the best logo I saw at NAB this year. And just when you thought nothing new could be done with sliders, these guys come along and do the coolest sliders and skate dollies.

Possibly the longest slider I saw at NAB this year.

There were a lot of little skater/table dollies at NAB, but I liked this one the best.

NAB Bits & Pieces, Part II

Coolest steadicam rig found at NAB? This from Steadiseg, which combines a Steadicam and Segway. Everyone needs one of these!

Proof that the world is indeed going to end in 2012? The Kardashian's have a store in the Mirage hotel. I'm not sure which is more disturbing - that the Kardashian's have a big enough ego to think they deserve a store, or that people actually buy stuff there. So, the next time you're in Vegas, and have that urge to get a Kim Kardashian face fan, you're in luck!

One of the things that has always piqued my interest at NAB is the booths from the tower companies - the guys that put up TV and cell phone towers. I don't know why - someone has to do it, and TV stations need towers, so NAB is a perfect place for them to show their wares, but it always makes me smile at the "surreal-ness" when I see them. Well this year I happened to notice this group has their own trade magazine, the Tower Times. This shouldn't be a surprise, since every single industry has its own trade magazine that would induce utter insomnia to anyone outside of the industry. But not only do they have a magazine, they also have a trade show every year! This year's trade show attracted 800 attendees over 4 days! And not only did 800 people show up, they have an awards stage to give awards to people with the best booths. So a special shout-out to Primus Electronics for winning Best of Show for 10x20 booth at the 2012 NATE convention. In case you're wondering, NATE stands for National Association of Tower Erectors.

Guest Blog on NAB 2012 Musings

Mike Curtis of HD for Indies has written an excellent piece on his thoughts on this year's NAB. This saves me from essentially writing the same piece, just not as concise and eloquent and insightful as Mike has done. NAB always has trends, and Mike captures this year's trend - surprise announcements from people you'd never expect to do "x", doing "x".

Read it here - http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/mcurtis/story/top_ten_trends_of_nab_2012/

Greetings from NAB 2012, Part II

Blackmagic's booth at NAB is one of the must-see booths, and as you can see by the picture above, it is packed. This is at 9:15 a.m, BTW. No booth is ever packed first thing in the morning, but Blackmagic's was. And it stays this way all day long.

Like they did last year, Blackmagic introduced a ton of stuff. This year's announcements weren't quite as breath-taking, but significant none the less. The one that is getting the most attention is the Cinema Camera. Yes, Blackmagic is trying to do a Red.

This poor Blackmagic employee drew the short end at who gets to man the camera section of the booth. Surrounded by way too many people, all trying to see this new camera.

With a sensor slightly smaller than Micro Four Thirds (aka Panasonic AF100), this little retro-looking camera is getting the most buzz. Once it ships in July for $2999, we'll see if it delivers.

Here it is all blinged-out. I'll do a post later on my thoughts on this camera, compared to the competition.

As an aside, for the first time ever at NAB, the Red booth was virtually empty when I dropped by. This has never ever ever been the case before.

Greetings from the 2012 SuperMeet

One of the highlights to NAB is attending the annual Final Cut Pro Users Group SuperMeet, which is where FCP users from around the world attending NAB gather for one night of celebration, drinking, and listening to some less-than-formal presentations of new products. There is also the world-famous Raffle, and this year over $100,000 worth of goodies was raffled off. Master of Ceremonies is the charming Michael Horton, head of the LA FCP Users Group, and this year his MC duties was shared by the head of the Boston FCP Users Group.

Here are members of the FCP Montreal group on stage in full courier-du-bois outfits. These guys are legendary at SuperMeets because they always win big at the raffle, and they are VERY exuberent when they win. For the last few years, they have donated specially-brewed Canadian beer to the raffle. I ran into these guys at the Sonnet booth earlier in the day, and they were at lot more excited about the products introduced this year at NAB than I was.

Sad to report, but this was the least-exciting SuperMeet I've ever been to. Terrible audio malfunctions dominated the night and forced a lot of improv on the stage as techies desperately tried to figure out what was going wrong. It was also the smallest attendence I've seen for a SuperMeet. And as a sign of the times, it is no longer called a Final Cut Supermeet, as FCP has been stricken from the name - it is now, as of this year, CMPUG Supermeet. CMPUG standing for Creative Media Professionals User Group. Congrats Apple - last year's SuperMeet you showed off FCP X, and in one year you managed to have a legendary worldwide celebration of your product, named after your product, with user groups around the world celebrating your product, completely disassociate themselves from your product. Apple, if you've lost Michael Horton, you've lost the war.

Presentations last night were from Autodesk showing the new Smoke editor/fx software; Stephen Hurlbut showing off the new 4K DSLR, the Canon 1 C; BlackMagic showing their new Cinema Camera, and their attempt at showing off the new Resolve 9 software was canned due to technical difficulties; and Adobe showing off Premiere CS 6.

Even the raffle, the world-famous scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs, do cartwheels on the stage raffle, was muted this year. Yes, there was one cartwheel, and some screaming, but there was a distinct lack of energy in the air.

The highlight of the night was a 45 minute session with Morgan Spurlock, indie-doc director. Morgan was very witty and charming and told great stories, and if it wasn't 6 a.m. as I write this, I might be able to relay some of those witty stories. He showed the trailer for his new film on ComicCon, and in keeping with the technical difficulties of the night, it played with no sound. So once Morgan realized there was going to be no sound, he started narrating the trailer, providing sound effects, sarcastic comments, music and whatever else he needed to do. It was hilarious and he got a standing ovation for it. It was great to hear Morgan tell his stories of making SuperSize Me, and other production stories (his trying to get Ambercrombie & Finch to be a sponsor in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was particularily funny), and it reminded me of what can make NAB special.

Greetings from NAB 2012, Part I

Your Dudeness of DV arrived Monday morning for his 9th NAB to beautiful weather, a rental Infiniti G37x, and a surprising lack of announcements.

Since the Dude has learned to stay away from the more popular (and extremely crowded) booths on opening day, here is some off-the-beaten track pictures.

There were many remote control helicopters this year at NAB, but this one was the most spectacular. Over 6 feet long, and looking military-grade, this is the remote helicopter to end all remote helicopters.

Zeiss unveiled their new CP.2 zoom lens - a telephoto 70-200mm. Available in November 2012 for only $19,999. At this price, you can afford two!

I only did some of the lighting booths Monday, but this was the most interesting light I saw - the Zylight F8 LED fresnel. Combing a powerful LED engine with a fresnel face, this light is weather proof and is focusable. Has rubber bellows! Shipping in July for $2000.

Now this is a mixing board! Mmm... faders. Lots of faders.

For tomorrow's post, off to the South Hall, which is post-production centric.

Quick View of What's New With The 5D MK III

Changes from the MK II

For Photo:

- 61 AF System
- Transmissive LCD in viewfinder (Similar to 7D) allows for gridlines on demand as well as showing only the active focus points
- 6fps continuous shooting
- Larger optical viewfinder with 100% frame coverage
- Extended High ISO Range with native 25,600 and user expandable to 102,400
- HDR Mode
- Advanced Metering from Canon 7D

For Video:
- Embedded SMPTE Timecode
- Video ISO Range of 100-12800
- Headphone jack for audio monitoring
- Visual audio meters when recording
- Adjustable audio levels when recording
- 29:59 clip length
- ALL-I and IBP h.264 video codecs

Things to be aware of:
- No uncompressed HDMI output
- Does not accept EF-S Lenses (the 5D Mark II did not either)

The future of computing.....

April Fools.

My Telephoto is Longer Than Yours...

In the ever-growing "To be tested" pile, today we tried out this beast of a telephoto conversion lens. It's the Raynox HDP-9000EX 1.8x Tele convertor lens.

It mounts to any 72mm filter thread, including those on photo lenses. The shear magnitude of this lens is ridiculous. But in a good way. It gives you the extra reach to get that shot that would be impossible otherwise.

But when you see it, you can't help but giggle and then think to yourself - "That looks bad a$$!"

Just make sure your tripod is strong enough to handle this bad mother tele-converter!

A Canadian Landmark That Is Out Of This World...

In 1967, a proposal was made to build the world's first UFO Landing Pad as a landmark for the town of St. Paul, Alberta. The Government of Canada responded to this proposition and, during the grand opening on June 3 1967, St. Paul was declared the Centennial Capital of Canada.

In the 1990's Mayor Paul Langevin officially opened an adjacent UFO tourist information centre to welcome visitors. As you enter St. Paul from the West, drop in to visit this landmark and see the UFO exhibit downstairs. This is an opportunity to view actual photographs of UFOs, crop circles and cattle mutilations. The exhibit is designed to educate. A UFO Hotline compliments the display with reports of UFO sightings and encounters of all kinds.

http://www.town.stpaul.ab.ca/UFO-Landing-Pad

So you thought 12fps was fast...

MIT Media Lab researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion frames per second. That's fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of light traveling through objects. Video: Melanie Gonick.

Cool Computer Stuff At CES 2012

While at least half the exhibit halls were full of iPod cases and headphones, there were some computer exhibits at CES 2012. Intel and Microsoft had huge and crowded booths, and there were plenty of ultra books on display, but since your Dude brought his MacBook Air to CES, ultra books were sooooo 2011. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But these two items did catch the Dude's attention.

OWC was showing a prototype drive array system - Jupiter. Based on a mini-SAS back-bone, this array gives you all the benefits of fibre arrays, at a much lower price point. The benchmark tests they were showing in the booth were insanely impressive - read 1719 MB/s and write of 1578 MB/s. WOW. DOUBLE WOW. There will also be an upgrade path for switches to make this an affordable SAN. The blue case design will change, and it is targeted for an April launch. The Dude is excited.

Your Dudeness normally doesn't pay attention to Windows computers, being a committed Mac head, but this caught his eye in a big way. The Xi3 is about 4" square, and is the computer that the Mac Mini should have been. Besides its nice styling, and the cool different colours it comes in, is the genius of the upgradability of it - all the internal components are on removable modules, able to be swapped out down the road with different modules with newer components.

The Xi3 features an AMD processor, 2 eSATA ports, 6 USB ports, dual monitor
support, ethernet, and a SSD drive. And it only draws 20w of power. Because
it is so small, it can be attached to the back of a monitor, or hidden in
places you normally could never put a computer.

Because it draws so little power, it can be ganged together in small places
to be a render farm. Mmm.... Hats off to Xi3, a Utah company, for making a
better Mac than Apple.

Cool Photo Stuff at CES 2012

There wasn't a ton of photo announcements at CES this year, but your Dude saw three cool products that he'd like to share with you.

Of all the cameras I looked at, this one surprised and impressed me the most - the new Fuji X-S1. Feels great in the hand, insane 24-624mm zoom, no shutter lag... Part of Fuji's acclaimed X line. This is worth looking at instead of a Canon Rebel or Nikon D3100. DV Shop should have stock shortly.

The biggest hit in the Canon booth at CES - took forever to get my hands on this to play with. Slightly larger than a Canon G12, but with a much larger sensor, this is Canon's answer to the mirrorless cameras coming from Panasonic, Sony, Olympus and now Nikon. And I think they may have done the smartest job. No, you can't change the lens, but unless you need super wide or super telephoto, the 28-112mm zoom will suit most people's needs quite nicely. A perfect "pocket" camera for SLR owners, or someone who wants better images than the point-and-shoots deliver, without the bulk of a SLR. Coming at the end of February for around $799. Going to sell well. My only
nitpick on this - same lousy optical viewfinder that plagues the G12.

Let's face it - what's cooler than using your iPhone to control your SLR? With this cable and app, you can use your iPhone as a remote shutter release, and even do time lapse. Canon version coming in February for under $80. Nikon version will ship in April.

More Cool Things At CES

Been a little busy catching up at work to blog. Here's some more cool things
the Dude saw at CES.

This had line-ups at the Sony booth to try, and have to admit, it was cool.
This Star-Trek inspired device is a Personal 3D viewer, and it does work. I
always have felt 3D in the home was going to centre on gaming, and what I
saw at CES reinforced that.

More stylish than a Go-Pro, this wearable video camera from Panasonic is
interesting.

Very cool product from GigaPan Systems. This robotic camera mount automates
panoramic images by taking tens, hundreds or thousands of photos, then using
their GigaPan Switch software, combines the images into one mega panoramic
file. The GigaPan can do 360 degrees, and uses NASA based technology. If you
do this for a living, this might be worth the money (under $1000).

Postcards from The North Hall at CES 2012

The north hall at CES 2012 is a lot of fun, because it has car stuff in it. There are the very cool concept cars that we already blogged about, but it is also the section of CES that has car audio, and you know, if it's a trade show, and you have car audio, then everyone has to compete with everyone else on who can do the most over-the-top car audio displays. So without further ado, here are some of the best DV Dude saw, and yes, his eardrums did survive.

I always felt having a single speaker in the car door is just so ...
restrained. Here is what every car should be like.

Now we're talking! This is taking it real man!

You know you want one.

The Weird & Wonderful At CES 2012

Sure, one could talk endlessly about Crystal vs OLED TVs, the upcoming wave
of Ultrabooks, or numerous other serious CES subjects, but really, it is so
much more fun to show you the weird and wonderful your Dude discovered at
CES 2012.

Possibly the least appealing iPod dock seen at the show. With the speakers
built into the eyes, how could one go wrong buying this for that special
someone in your life?

I kept waiting to see if R2D2 was creating this hologram, but no. The image
is about 7 inches in height.

The one licensing deal that didn't make sense - Jack Daniels' guitars.
Really? You're going with that?

I can't make a caption up for this.

Now these are SPEAKERS! They were taller than the Dude!