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….