Archive of the Cameras Category

This is the 2009 Reel Impressions Cinematography showcase which premiered at the 2009 NAB Show in Las Vegas on a 24 ft. movie screen, projected in HD.

Reel Impressions is a joint partnership between the NAB Show and Reel-Exchange.com.

This year Reel-Exchange member, and Reel Impressions participant, Westley Gathright posted video blogs on his first experience attending the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Westley patrolled the exhibit halls and attended some of the sessions and provided his POV via videos captured with a Flip camera then posted to YouTube.

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Press Release

Calibrated Software, an innovator of applications and plug-ins for video, asset management and mobile platforms, announced an enhanced family of cross-platform tools to streamline and speed the process of viewing and using high-definition camera and other video files within popular post-production systems and editing packages. The products are being demonstrated at NAB booths #C5108 (Ikegami) and #SL8307 (Square Box Systems). Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2009 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

While we’ve handed the buzzword crown this year to “3D,” let’s not forget about old friend “workflow.” Solutions and improvements abounded this year at NAB, and the Vision Research people are no exception. They are addressing the issue as it relates to their popular high-speed digital camera technology.

The guys at Vision Research showed me their new 10gigabit Ethernet Phantom CineStation—a docking station for its hot swappable CineMag memory magazines designed to speed up the transfer of data from the magazine to the people who need it—both the transfer and the download of the data. When you consider, according to Vision Research, that the Phantom HD system gobbles up about four megabytes of memory for each frame shot, just a few seconds of material can suck up internal camera memory quickly. more

To hear the Podcast, push the play button or download here.

Few people have more NAB experience than Band Pro Film and Digital Chief Technology Officer Michael Bravin—he’s been attending NAB for over 30 years. During that time, Bravin has witnessed, and participated in, the rise of an entire new industry—the digital cinematography industry that Band Pro specializes in. As he did in 2008, Bravin sat down again this week with me at the Band Pro NAB booth to discuss the state of digital cinematography in 2009, and its role at NAB this year, particularly in light of the current economic downturn and reduced NAB attendance. Bravin has interesting thoughts about what new trends and opportunities will emerge from these conditions that industry-watchers should consider.

Arri marketing chief Franz Wieser was caught in my optimism detector this afternoon. Chatting a short time ago, Franz told me he was surprised by how solid traffic to the Arri booth has been since Monday, and that orders in certain categories were underway. Given the dire economic atmosphere, not everyone can say that. But Franz did say what many others have been telling me the last two days–namely, that fewer NAB attendees does not translate into less active NAB attendees. Important people with cash to spend wisely were at the Arri booth, and dozens of others, and they were talking serious business, and not merely kicking tires.

In particular, and this was another theme I heard from a few other manufacturers, Franz told me that attendance at the show, and business interest, out of Latin America has been extremely strong, and he points to that region as a rising giant in the media world, and eager to grow. more

At the Canon booth at NAB 2009 we talked with them about user-requested firmware updates for the 5D Mark II DSLR, as well as the basic video featureset of the new Rebel T1i. We also got a quick look at a concept 3D stereoscopic camera design from Panasonic.

Here’s a must-see device and not just because you can control it with your iPhone: AJA’s ambitious little portable digital disk recorder—Ki Pro—attaches to virtually any camera (via SDI or HDMI) and records virtually any video (or audio) source directly (and losslessly) to 10-bit full raster Apple ProRes 422. Unplug it from the camera, plug it into Final Cut Studio via FireWire 800, and media is instantly available to edit. Or record to 35mm ExpressCard Flash. Ships in June starting at $4K with 260GB HDD storage module and an AC adapter.

You can see it on the JVC booth coordinating nicely with the brand new HM700 HD camcorder. Apple’s Richard Townhill and AJA’s Nick Rashby have the whole total world domination thing pictured for this device; if you’re hooked on ProRes workflow you’ll track their vision of a continuous ProRes stream from production to post. No one will miss digitizing. more

Globalstor CTO Scott Leif is two years into his Red workflow experience. Technology partner Assimilate worked closely with Red in the development process of the camera—Assimilate can deal natively with Red files. Now Globalstor debuts the next generation of its ExtremeStor-DI REDe video storage workstation. This is the first workstation to deliver native uncompressed 4K resolution, Leif says. Raw, DPX, and Cineon files are handled in real time at 24fps (it can also do stereo 2K). It’s built on the Intel Nehalem architecture, which Leif calls “nothing short of spectacular.” The system also incorporates Nvidia’s Quadro Plex 2200 D2. Core software is Assimilate’s Scratch.

Will be available in rack and tower versions at capacities from 1.4-9 terabytes.

It’s the solar charger that sucks people into the Anton Bauer booth—imagine a kind of picnic blanket embedded with solar cells with an adapter that plugs into the battery. It’s a just a technology demonstration at the moment, but since the collector part of it is real, Anton Bauer has a reasonably manageable task to deliver a camping-friendly batter charger that will run on sunlight.

Meanwhile the company has delivered a hot new 4-gang charger. VP of Marketing and Business Development Shinichi Minowa says the TM4 charges batteries up to two times faster than the Anton/Bauer TWQ charger. It doubles as four discreet AC power supplies; it can power various equipment with a 70W supply via a 4-pin XLR. The power supply can be used simultaneously with the charger, allowing three batteries to be charged while operating from AC mains.

Also new, the Dionic HC high current battery, capable of up to 10 amps, with 91 watt-hr capacity; a built-in LCD real-time fuel gauge tracks up to nine hours of run time.