Serendipity on the show floor makes for impromptu sessions. Tuesday I ran into cinematographer Bill Bennett in front of the Sony F35 parked on a dolly in front of Brand Pro’s booth. Not much to say about the F35–35 means its newly developed single CCD is the size of a Super 35mm film frame–except that it’s as impressively thought out as last year’s F23 on which it’s based, and like its double first cousin, Panavision’s Genesis, did once, it sets a new highwater mark in 4:4:4 RGB high-end digital cinematography cameras.

Well, for $250,000 without lens, it ought to. A lot to pay in weak dollars for tighter depth-of-field and better dynamic range than the F23, plus 1-50 fps variable speed in 4:4:4 (compared to F23’s 1-30). But you do get every pixel you pay for. This is a full-on 1920×1080 RGB image—no Bayer interpolation of phantom R and B pixels here, no sir. Leave that to lowly CMOS cameras like the REDs, Silicon Imaging 2Ks and Minis, and Arri D21s (at NAB upgraded from D20 with new 2K RAW data output mode).

Standing next to an F35 is like standing next to a Rolls-Royce Phantom (which I did, in the parking lot of Vegas’ McCarran Airport, license plate “Wynn 1”). That is to say, I suspect my chances of test-driving either one in 2008 are about the same. Still, as W. C. Fields might mutter, it is a thing of beauty. But standing before its splendor, Bennett and I were moved to discuss something else entirely: the beauty of Kodak’s new 5219 500T Vision 3 35mm negative. Two additional stops of detail in highlights, grain so tight you can pull clean detail out of the mud on a scanner–dynamic range an F35 can only dream of. The irony? Like Apple and Avid, Eastman Kodak was missing from NAB this year.

We had both stopped by Band Pro in the morning because Band Pro’s booth, like Sony’s, with which it’s always cheek-by-jowl at NAB, is a showfloor touchstone, a must-see destination. Band Pro in a few short years has become an industry engine, powering Hollywood’s move to 4:4:4 RGB through securing, as a dealer, the very best technology like Sony’s F35 and also investing in the future of HD production, for example, underwriting design and production of the Zeiss DigiPrime series (also the new Schneider C-mount lenses for Iconix).

That’s why Codex debuted their highly-anticipated Portable field recorder for HD, 2K, and 4K at Band Pro’s booth. And the true reason for my visit.

Joined by Bennett and Goldcrest Post’s Tim Spitzer and John Dowdell, we picked it up—all 9 lbs. of it–rattled it, kicked its tires, pushed its touchscreen controls, slid its aluminum module of RAID hard disks in and out, and pronounced ourselves sold. Yet another thing of beauty.

The Codex Portable is slightly arched in shape because it’s meant to be slung over a shoulder and bounced on the hip, much like a classic Nagra (think: large fanny pack). Its media module holds three or four 200GB hard drives with RAID 3 protection (failure of any disk in the array is tolerable) or, in an upcoming version, flash memory, for up to 3 hours of video or data-mode recording. It features two dual-link HD-SDI channels for two-camera or 3D production, and lossless JPEG2000 compression (about 4:1) to optimize capacity. Playback is real-time. Available in June for $45K.

As I’ve written elsewhere, rumors of the death of videotape have been greatly exaggerated—use of Sony’s portable SRW-1 for 4:4:4 production is climbing—but I noticed this year a wave of new products along the lines of the Codex Portable, aiming to supplant tape for field recording. Both JVC and Sony, for instance, announced piggyback flash recording modules for their camcorders. (Note I said “camcorders,” camera products that already feature tape recording.) Utilizing tiny SDHC cards in the case of JVC’s ProHD camcorders, and, as noted in Monday’s blog, SxS cards for the brand new PDW-700.

Sony also introduced a small piggyback 60GB hard disk recorder, the PHU-60K, to extend the recording times of its EX1 and EX3 camcorders, which capture to SxS cards (now up to 32GB, but good luck finding one). The PHU-60K connects to the camcorder using USB 2.0 and records up to 200 minutes at 35Mbps and 260 minutes at 25 Mbps.

In the HDV corner, third-party developer Focus Enhancements has been joined by the likes of Edirol, with their F-1 Video Field Recorder, essentially a tiny video deck with a removable hard disk cartridge. I shouldered a Canon XL-H1 bearing one, but the combination felt cumbersome. Perhaps the XL-H1 is too light for this. The F-1 could easily travel in a belt holder.

The same drawback—cumbersomeness when mounted to a camera—holds true for two new shoe-boxed sized, hard disk-based portable uncompressed 4:4:4 recorders, the Icon from Colorspace (“world’s first portable, uncompressed digital field recorder”), and the UDR D100 from Keisoku Giken.

That’s why Fast Forward Video’s sunflower-yellow Elite HD caught my eye. The size of a hard-cover book, with a brick battery mount on the back, it piggybacks like the others. A single iPod-sized, 2.5” hot-swappable 320GB SATA drive cartridge protrudes from its side. It records either 1080i or 720p (no 1080p/24) at up to 100 Mbps via HD-SDI. Seven hours per drive! It’s secret weapon: JPEG2000, between 4:1 to 6:1 compression, just like the Codex Portable, but with a difference. Only $6000.

Spinning disks whir and whine however. Ever wonder, like me, what noise levels we can expect from these purring piggybacks?