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! 
 

NAB 2014: Attack of the Brushless Gimbals

As predicted by the staff of the DV Shop, NAB 2014 would feature many rip-offs of the Move stabilizer, and lo-and-behold, that prediction turned out to be conservative. There weren't just a few cheaper Move's out there, there were A BILLION of them. This one pictured above is from a company called Defy.

This one was aimed at smaller D-SLRs, from a Chinese company called Big Balance. 

Those crazy guys from Montreal, Shape, were showing off this Go Pro stabilizer. It will retail for $699.  

Down the hall a few hundred feet, the Chinese company iFootage were showing off their Go Pro stablizer. While not as sophisticated as the Shape one, it will come in around $299ish.

So, after many days of trying these various stabilizers, what does DV Dude think? Well, they all are very similar, and they all were prototypes, and they all were buggy. They all worked to a certain degree, but since they were all using the same "brain", they all had the same flaws and were all doing the same mistakes.

The biggest challenge for end-users is adapting the way you use the device, as a lot of the normal way you shoot won't work very well. These are not  miracle workers. The on-line videos are very deceptive, and are demonstrating techniques that frankly are not how you shoot video. This technology isn't quite 100% there yet.

We'll be bringing in some units to test further, but there is something to be said for the old school Steadicam approach. It has its flaws too, but in many ways it might be more successful in getting the shot. More on this to come in the months ahead.

 
 

DV Dude at NAB 2014: SuperMeet!

Tuesday night was the 13th Annual SuperMeet, the world-famous and largest gathering of what used to be Final Cut Pro users. This is DV Dude's 9th or 10th SuperMeet. Not sure of the exact numbers, but about 1000 people crammed into the Royal Paviilion at the Riveria Hotel.

There were presentations from Blackmagic showing off the new features of Resolve 11; Adobe showing off the new Premiere CC update (including adding features that were in FCP 1.0, and then making a big deal out of it); a really cool audio editing software called RX3 that everyone should own; HP walking through their line of HP workstations (not much enthusiam for this presentation - interesting reaction considering all the complaining about the new MacPro); Go Pro showing the coolest promo video with some really amazing footage; and finally Autodesk showing off Smoke 2015.

Then there was the world famous raffle, where everyone acts crazy to win more prizes. Over $100,000 in prizes were given off in about an hour, and DV Dude's losing streak was kept intact.

Three Interesting Tidbits From the Presentations:
- Adobe Premiere is now the #1 edit software by market share
- Go Pro is seeing themselves as a media company now, not just a camera company. Expect to see Go Pro channels.
- HP is #1 in marketshare for workstations.

Before one enters the hall where the SuperMeet is held, there is a hall where the food and drinks are, and little presentation tables from various sponsors. Here we have the new MacPro expansion rack from Sonnet, which will cost you US$1500, and gives you back all the things Apple took out.

We also saw the new DreamColor 27" monitor from HP, and not only that, met the guy who actually designed it! 

  
 And finally, for some unknown reason there was a parrot there. The parrot just went from person to person - here someone from Dot Hill is trying very hard not to upset the parrot. Yes, the parrot eventually did find its owner - an older man who attended the SuperMeet and just decided to bring his parrot along.
 

NAB 2014: 4K Is So 2014! 8K Is So 2015!

Those smarty-pants at Japan's NHK had their 8K booth again this year at NAB. NHK is always about 10 years ahead of everyone else, so this is more a preview of where we'll be going once we find 4K boring. And yes, the detail in the image is absolutely mind-blowing. No photo can do it justice.

While the booth was not much different from last year, what was new this year was the 8K Cube camera. Much smaller than last year's monstrosities that were the size of a 1976 Buick Roadmaster.

 And just to rub it in, this little guy can shoot 8K at 120P! Take that, Blackmagic!
 

DV Dude at NAB 2014

DV Dude has arrived safely in Las Vegas for NAB 2014. Stay tuned for postings of the cool new stuff he's checking out all week.

The Sunset Strip in Black-and-White

DV Dude spent some time on the famous Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in January. Here are some of pictures he took on the Nikon D610.