SevenOak Stabilizers

Learn more here.

Shoulder Rigs

Shoulder Rigs and Camera Support

OpTech Rainsleeve

Op/Tech Rainsleeve - Review from Gavin Hoey on Vimeo.

Gear in Action: Sigma 30mm 1.4 + Tokina 11-16 2.8

Smile Of The Week: Shirley Jones Edition

On the way to work today, DV Dude came upon this pile of LPs unceremoniously  dumped on the sidewalk.

A trip back in time to be sure.

In Honour Of Black Friday It's Darth Vader VS The Dark Knight

Smile Of The Week: Buffalo Snowpocalyse Edition

 As Buffalo gets hammered by a real Snowpocalyspe, one resident (by the Twitter handle Spotrac) makes the best of the situation.

DV Dude's Smile Of The Week

NAB comes to the East Coast

NYC is home to the Content Creation World and SATCON show, an industry trade show being produced by NAB. The show is held at the Javits Center in Manhattan.

While not as big as NAB, many manufacturers brought their products down to demo to the EastCoast production crowd.

Panasonic had a large booth showcasing their 4K VariCam and 4K Broadcast monitor. This camera produces a beautiful image!

Sony had their new FS7 with the Cine 28-135 Power Zoom Lens. Nice rings on the lens, well dampened and very smooth power zoom.

Vitec was on hand to show off the latest from Sachtler, Petrol, TeraDek and AutoCue Prompters. Their iPad Lite prompter looks like a great option for DSLRs. Mounts on 15mm rails and is small and compact. 

 Many other manufacturers were there with demos of their latest gear.

One that caught our eye was vMix, their new vMix GO System looks like it could be a new live streaming power house.

- 8 HD-SDI inputs that can be Quad-Linked to give 2 x 4K SDI inputs.
- XLR Audio in and out
- ISO Recording
- Preset CDNs and custom streaming server output
- Portable All-in-One unit
- 4 x 2.5” Hot Swap Drive bays
- Live Green Screen and Virtual sets

Other Manufacturers included:

AJA - showing their new CION.

Atomos - had the Shogun and their other recorders on display. Big booth with a cool Sushi Bar scene setup for cameras to shoot.

Blackmagic - busy booth with lots of people checking out their cameras and switchers, several of their great Tech Support people were also on hand to answer questions and demo products.

Corning - Optical Thunderbolt and USB Cables.

Decimator - 12 input HD-SDI Multi-Viewer

G-Tech - new Studio XL unit on display as well as the rest of their urgent line up.

Matrox - VS4 Capture card and Monarch HD Streaming/Recording Device.

 

4K BluRay!!

For those who have been wondering, yes Virginia, there will be 4K BluRay for Christmas. Not this Christmas though - Christmas 2015.

The spec for 4K BluRay is being finalized, and it is expected manufacture of actual players next summer, for a Christmas 2015 launch. It uses the H.265 codec, and it can fit a 4K movie onto the same capacity 50GB BluRay disc as HD titles use now. 4K BluRay will use 10 bit encoding, instead of the 8 bit on BluRay HD, and use the 4K 2020 colour space, instead of REC 709. And just to make things even better, 4K BluRay will use a new copy-protection system.

DV Dude can hardly wait for 4K BluRay, so he can watch "Attack of Killer Tomatoes" in all its 4K glory, as the filmmakers obviously intended it to be.

GoPro Hero 4 Promo Film

Timed to nicely coincide with the launch of the new Hero 4, here is another visually stunning, eye-popping, out-of-this-world promo film from those crazy dudes at Go Pro, who have made these promo movies into something of an art form.

It also makes you realize what an incredibly boring life you lead, compared to these Go Pro shooters, who lets face it, live a much more exciting life than you could ever hope to.

Enjoy!

Rick Young Gets His Hands on Blackmagic's New Ursa

This is a great video from Rick Young of MovieMachine.TV giving an overview of Blackmagic's new Ursa camera. We received our demo model of this camera and it's causing quite a stir in the store. 

Now if only we could get stock. Patience is always a virtue when waiting for a new Blackmagic camera to ship.

Adding Accessories To Your Camera

We just got in some new camera bracket grips from Custom Brackets.  We've been carrying their camera cages for a while now and the build quality is excellent and pricing is quite reasonable.

Get more info here.

The Most Asked For Lens Of The Year

After much anticipation, the Rokinon 50mm Cine Lenses have arrived!

We have display models available for in-store testing in Sony E, MFT, Canon EF and Nikon Mount.

This lens now nicely rounds out the range of Cine Lenses from Rokinon with the 8, 14, 16 (Crop only), 24, 35, 50 and 85mm focal lengths.

I Never Knew Kevin Spacey Could Do All Those Voices

What's On Your Camera?

While this may seem a bit excessive, it's worth the look you get from DV Dude trying not to laugh his head off when you show him what you've managed to MacGyver together with a few random accessories from the show room floor.

This Car Commercial Is Barely Legal

Still Can't Believe He's Gone...

Best Selfie Of The Year

Fun Fact: DV Dude is a secret Sharknado fanboy.

D810: Nikon Ups Their Game On Video

Nikon Canada has released a new video shot on the brand-spanking-new D810. Beautifully done by Preston Kanak, it was shot in Nova Scotia, and shows off the features of the camera quite nicely.

Nikon D810 Video Feature Highlights
- Full Frame Sensor, shooting 1920x1080 at 24p/30p/60i/60p
- Zebra Stripes for Highlights
- Flat Picture Control Profile for maximum flexibility in color grading
- Headphone jack for sound monitoring
- Uncompressed 4:2:2 output via the HDMI port
- Aperture Adjustment during Recording
- Auto ISO Adjustment in Manual Mode
- Video ISO Range of 64-12,800
- Simultaneous Live View for External LCD and Camera LCD
- Simultaneous Recording on Memory Cards and External Recorder
- In Camera Time Lapse with Exposure Smoothing

This camera is definitely worth looking at in comparison to the Canon 5D, if you own Nikon glass.

These Are A Few Of DV Dude's Favourite Things...

Orphan Black is one of DV Dude's favourite Made in Canada TV Shows. The Season Finale this year featured quite a feat of Green Screen gymnastics!

Cinevate visits the DV Shop

Last week the guys from Cinevate came by the DV Shop to show off some new sliders. Their latest and greatest is the Hedron Slider. It utilizes a fly wheel for superior smoothness and control.

Cinevate has put lots of research into this slider, making it one of the smoothest we’ve ever seen. The craftsmanship on this slider is amazing! With manufacturing tolerance of less than one thousandth of an inch, the slider had no wobble or shake. The carriage had no play and stayed true along the entire slider.

It’s really a great story of how Cinevate came to be. Starting out in the basement making single pieces to a massive operation headquartered in Thunder Bay, ON.

Cinevate is a great example of the awesome products that are made right here in Canada, Eh?

Gear In Action: F&V R300 Ring Light

TGV4M's Final Project 2014 - Pentatonix Daft Punk Cover-Cover from Weston TV

For the past few years, we've been selling equipment to Weston Collegiate, a local high school in Toronto, and the teacher there kindly sent us a finished music video the Grade 12 class just completed. Good stuff everyone. And in case anyone is interested, the main light being used is the F&V R300 Ring LED Light.

Pentatonix Daft Punk WCI Cover - behind the scenes 2014 from Weston TV

And they also did a behind the scenes video of the shooting, and it is gratifying to see all the equipment we've sold them over the years being putto good use. Keep up the good work!

SteadyTracker User Videos

Learn more about the SteadyTracker here.

Testing Tokina’s New Cine Lenses…

This is Tokina’s 11-16mm Cine T3.0 Lens. (MFT Mount version pictured above)

While were are still in the process of testing these lenses, initial impressions are quite good. Solid build quality with well dampened Focus, Zoom and Iris Rings. 

This mammoth is the Tokina 16-28 PL T3.0 Lens. Sporting a 112mm front thread, it is not a small lens!

Our initial tests on the GH4 using the Wooden Camera MFT to PL Adapter show almost no focus breathing and a nearly par focal image across the zoom range. The distance scale seems to be fairly accurate and the overall build quality is professional grade.

While Tokina hasn’t made PL lenses before, they are off to a good start with this one. Extremely smooth and well damped focus, zoom and iris rings have no play!

The lens does seem quite capable of resolving 4k. Lens tests using an HD chart show the ability to resolve 1000+ lines.

Time to get a 4k test chart….

 

Small HD: Holy Torture Test Robin!

A fun video from the whacky guys at Small HD, demonstrating how much abuse a Small HD Monitor can take.

Worth the 7 minutes out of your life for a good laugh.

Small HD: Holy 3D LUT Batman!

One of the very cool features of the Small HD DP7 monitor is the ability to load your own custom LUT. With so many cameras shooting flat imagery, this allows you to see a better representation on set of what the final image will look like.

This video gives a quick overview of how that feature works.

We have the Small HD DP7 monitors in stock.

Bambi Meets Godzilla

Here's an old classic to warm your hearts on this Friday of the Victoria Day
weekend.

While Bambi vs Godzilla is a legendary classic, very few people have seen
this one.

Enjoy!

The DV Shop is 13 Years Young!

One thing that hasn't changed in the 13 years the DV Shop has been open is how amazing our customers are! We had a great turnout of well-wishers this week and it reminded us why we're still here providing tools for filmmakers and photographers! We've had a great journey together and we look forward to many more years of the same. Happy 13th to us all!

This Just In... Panasonic GH4 4Ks!!!

Today we received our first shipment of the highly anticipated Panasonic GH4. While we’ve only had a brief chance to look at it, we are planning to see how the 4K footage holds up with our test shooting.
 

Blackmagic Studio Camera HD: It's Here And On Time!?!?!

 Blackmagic, true to their word has shipped the HD version of the Studio Camera!

We’ve already opened one up and started to check it out.

First thoughts:
- The screen is amazing! Not a touch screen however.
- MFT mount is active and Autofocus is improved over the BMPCC.
- Lack of B4 ENG Mount is a big oversight.

This camera is perfect of setting up a streaming environment, whether it be in a Church, conference room or a studio.

We’ll be testing it with Blackmagic’s Studio Converter and ATEM Switchers soon. Stay tuned for updates.

In the meantime, we have one on display and in stock for purchase as well.

NAB 2014: The Wacky Edition

Another NAB has come and gone, and here's the final blog entry on some of the wackier things I saw there. I saw these "shoes" at the Shape booth, and thought it was just them being funny.

Then I saw this person wearing those same shoes walking around the convention centre. Those crazy Quebeckers!

Found this in the Edelkrone booth. It is a portable stand for your camera. Something both amusing and creepy at the same time. Those crazy Turks!

And finally, there is always something you see that you don't expect. There are trade magazines for every single industry in the world - some have a huge subscription base, others in the thousands. There are trade magazines for computer dealers, home theatre dealers, movie theatres, tower erectors, etc. So it really should come as no surprise that there is a magazine for Homeland Security. Those crazy Americans!

NAB 2014: Bits and Bites

Last NAB, Tokina showed off prototype cinema lenses, and this year, they showed off the very-soon-to-be-shipping models. Here we have the 11-16 and 16-28 lenses, and they were showing a prototype 50-130. The reaction was good to them from the crowd, and while they are not as cheap as their photo cousins, or as cheap as prime Rokinons, they are way cheaper than Zeiss zooms.

As a side note, they were also showing off a prototype filter coating that repels water. Very interesting.



Ever wondered what an FM Transmission antenna looked like? Wonder no more.

Ever wondered what a Genelec speaker looked like inside? Wonder no more.

Now this is a satellite dish.

Motion control for timelapse has become very popular in the last 2 years, but this is a motion control for real men.

NAB has some very plain but functional booths, some pathetic why-do-you-bother booths, and some out-of-this-world and you-have-way-too-much-money booths, and then there are some that are just nicely designed, and are a piece of art onto themselves. DV Dude's nomination in that category for this year is the Deluxe booth.

NAB 2014: Those Crazy Germans

One of the cool things about NAB is the exhibits of emerging technologies from around the world. There is special pavilion section each for Korea, France, China, and Germany. The German pavilion had two cool things in it this year. The first is The EagleCam, which is pictured above. This tiny camera is about 1 cm square, has a 1/3" sensor, and weighs 70g. There is a separate recording unit that is about the size of a Sharpie marker. So these crazy dudes at the Fraunhofer Institute made a camera specifically for a client to capture a Golden Eagle flying. (You cannot buy this camera - they only make custom cameras for clients). They built a special harness for the eagle to house the camera and recording unit on it. Packed into this tiny package is a Dual Core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, a h.264 compression unit, WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI, and it runs Android. And there are sensors for Gyro, Magnetic Compass and Air Pressure - just because you know, there was so much extra room.

Needless to say, the images are spectacular. And what a feat of engineering.

This is a little dolly named Polly, and while it appears small, it is heavy. This is no ordinary dolly - it has a steel flywheel inside. The flywheel generates its own power, so if you push it, it can just keep going - like forever, until it hits something like a wall. And due to its weight, it is very stable.

They make a kit with dolly track and a flexible arm, but be forewarned, it's not cheap. The Polly is US$2600, the Arm US$1200, and the Track US$800. Beautifully made, quite small, and rock steady. The only drawback will be lifting that beast out of its case.

NAB 2014: Cool Stuff at NAB, Part I

The Go Pro booth is one of the most popular every year at NAB, and they always have some cool vehicle parked in the middle. This year, the eye-candy was a car I've never heard of - Pagani. This is one very cool car.

Look at that exhaust system!

But as cool as the outside is, that does not compare to the interior, which is one of the coolest interiors I've ever seen.

Pagani is an Italian company, and was founded in 1992. They use engines from Mercedes, and have over 700 horsepower. They make about 50 cars a year, and they sell for about 1 mllion euros. The model seen here is the Huayra, and came out in 2011.

NAB 2014: Tilta! Tilta! Tilta!

We have just started carrying Tilta products, and the reaction has been terrific to them, so we of course wanted to see what they have new this year. First up is a Steadicam-like device, complete with gimbal, arm, and vest. Shipping this summer for approximately US$3000.

Shown in prototype form was a new wireless follow focus system. The controls felt really really nice. Works with cinema lenses, such as Rokinon, Zeiss, etc. I don't think it will be so hot with AF photo lenses. Shipping this summer. I saw this 3 days ago, so I can't remember the estimated price, but I believe it was US$5000.

NAB 2014: Blackmagic Continues To Dominate The Camera Business

This is the third NAB in a row that the little Australian-company-that-could, Blackmagic, has blown away the competition with new camera models that feature innovations that shame the big boy players. The one getting the most attention is the 4K Ursa, which will be available in EF, PL, B4 mounts, and a "no sensor" version. Starting at US$6000, the Ursa is a much larger camera than the previous models, and by going big, solve many of the problems that have plagued the Blackmagic cameras since day one. So it is nice to see they've figured this camera thing out so quickly.

The big attention getter for the Ursa is the absolutely mammoth 10" flip-out LCD screen. Radical! And the image quality of the LCD screen is very good.

What isn't getting as much attention, and certainly isn't the sexiest looking camera ever, is the new Studio Camera. At first this seems a bit of a head scratcher, but once you figure it out, it is going to be a sleeper of a camera. It is like the big studio broadcast cameras for those on a budget. It can't record any thing - it has no recording mechanism, but it has SDI and optical fibre out, so it is meant to send a signal to a switcher. Blackmagic hopes it will go to a ATEM switcher, but the SDI signal is clean, so the signal will feed to any switcher out there. The ATEMs will have special features so it can do some controls over the camera.

It features the same mammoth 10" LCD in the Ursa, which makes a lot of sense in this camera. In the end, this camera will be perfect for live streaming, sports, churches, and any other venue that needs multiple cameras feeding a switcher. Pricing starts at US$1999. Shipping - well, we've learned with Blackmagic never to say when it is shipping. It will ship - sometime.

NAB 2014: AJA Joins BlackMagic In The Camera Wars

It seems everyone wants to be in the camera business these days. Well, everyone outside of Japan that is. Japan seems to have raised the white flag and just given up.

The latest camera maker is AJA, whichi is surprising and not surprising at the same time. This year they showed their first camera - CION - pronounced "see-on", and I have to say it is quite impressive. It features a 4K APS-C sensor with global shutter, 12 stops of dynamice range, PL mount, ProRes recording, and outputs for 4K RAW to a separate recorder. 

What impressed me the most were the little things - a dedicated SDI port for an EVF or monitor; a built-in D-Tap on the top for powering an ETF, Monitor or light; built-in Arri rosettes on the body; IR Cut filter; and a cheeseplate on the top.

A very impressive design for a first camera. It reminded me a lot of the Arri Alexa, but at $7000, about 1/10th the cost.

Shipping this summer, and they are very confident they will actually ship this summer.  

NAB 2014: Hard Drive Mania

NAB 2014 saw a number of new Thunderbolt drives announced. The picture above is the new LaCie 2Big Thunderbolt, featuring an all new enclosure design. The front "clips" are the removable drive trays; the unit has a hardware RAID controller; and there are two Thunderbolt 2 ports on the back for daisy-chaining. Should be shipping in May.

Another Thunderbolt solution from LaCie is this rack-mount 8 bay RAID enclosure. This picture above is a mammoth collection of like 20 of them together. Unit is very quiet; uses a web-interface to configure the RAID; two Thunderbolt 2 ports on the back; and amazingly the chassis is only 1 RU tall, which is quite an accomplishment. Shipping May/June. 

This is the LaCie rack unit with the top tray lifted up.

G-Tech also had new Thunderbolt drives on display. Trying to look good beside the new Mac Pro Darth Vader trash-can, these units feature a hardware RAID, a handle built into the side, two Thunderbolt ports, removable drive trays, and a lid - just like a, um, trash can. But the letter "G" lights up in a nice shade of blue, so that's cool, and if the unit fails, the G does turn red. Shipping in May.

 

But the most impressive drive array DV Dude saw was not a Thunderbolt solution, but the next version of MiniSAS - 12G MiniSAS HD. Featuring a new plug and much faster speeds, a multi-bay enclosure with SSDs benchmarked at over 7000 MB/s!! Yes - you read that right - SEVEN THOUSAND MB/s. And the read speeds were clocking in north of 12,000 MB/s. Now that's a hard drive array!