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.

Citizen Kane Trailer

For this long weekend, a blast from the past, and one of DV Dude's favourite
films.

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.