Archive of the Cameras Category

I call Thursday NAB’s “rump” day, a short, casual afternoon of thin crowds, when tired booth personnel slip away to visit competitors and otherwise view the show floor for themselves. It’s my favorite day.

For instance, I swung by RED’s tent and found no lines. I stepped immediately inside and like those before me, ogled the aluminum prototypes of the upcoming 5K Epic (the small boxy one) and 3K Scarlet (“3K for $3K”) rotating behind glass. more

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). more

Monday’s dharma at NAB was about bigness and smallness, and I’m still thinking about it.

Yesterday Tim Robbins gave the keynote speech. Ever since FCC Chairman Newton Minow gave his famous “vast wasteland” speech at NAB in 1961, it seems NAB has played it safe. Past keynotes I’ve attended have featured Ronald Reagan (attacked on stage by an ice sculpture-wielding assailant, yards from where I was sitting), Barry Diller, Richard Parsons of Time-Warner, James Cameron and the like. Safe Republican choices, not likely to get former NAB CEO and good ol’ boy Eddie Fritts in any Washington hot water.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Convention Center this year.

How Tim Robbins got invited to give the keynote is anyone’s guess. But there he was, on stage, facing a large morning audience of radio and TV broadcasters, cable owners and mixed-media types. more

Back from the show. I like taking a day or so after my last postings to look through everything I’ve collected, selecting some last items to include in a final wrapup. While that’s not a lot of time for deep reflection, I am at least far enough away from the hype of the moment to enable a bit of perspective.

At the NAB press office earlier this week I overheard an NAB official talk to the editor of one of the leading trade mags. He was asked about what he thought would be among the most exciting developments of the show. Instead, he begged off answering, stating that as far as he was concerned it was all just a rehash. He could find nothing new or interesting worth commenting on. more

Mobile Studios is on the Panasonic booth with an elegant flypack system for live production. The set up includes a Panasonic AV-HS400 switcher, BT-LH2600W monitor, and an AJ-HPM110 P2 recorder. It can be configured with Mobile Studios own MS-CG100HD character generator (available separately at $9995). Fourteen available rack spaces for optional intercom, wireless sound audio mixer, direct-to-edit capture, and battery backup/UPS. $30K to $75K.

In addition to the flypack on display here, the company also does one with a MOTU V3HD option for direct-to-edit capture on laptops with FCP or Premiere CS3. www.mobilestudios.com for more.

Storage is a consistent problem for video producers, and I just learned about a new, high performance, relatively low cost solution. Plus saw the Red camera in action, got a refresher course on RAID numerology and met with filmmaker Thor Wixom in the same meeting.

First the storage technology, which is called xSATA, and available on a product from AMCC called 3ware Sidecar, which includes a PCI Express card and enclosure that can house up to four disks drives (around $595). Configure the unit with four, 1TB drives, and you can get up to 4T of storage for about $2,000, which isn’t that much more on a per gigabyte basis than a simple eSATA system.

Where eSATA uses one connection to service all drives in an external enclosure, xSATA devotes one connection to each drive. AMCC claims that this increases throughput from an actual bandwidth of about 40 MB/second for eSATA to about 350MB for xSATA. more

In yesterday’s blog I didn’t get a chance to describe Sony’s press conference, so let’s catch up.

Sony is the largest exhibitor at NAB and their Sunday press conferences are large, slick affairs. I’ve genuinely enjoyed them through the years, though Sony as well as Panasonic could learn a thing or two from Apple, whose stage personalities memorize their presentations. Robotic readings, unnatural eyelines from footlight teleprompters, jokes fed from prepared text—it’s not pretty. Neither are taped testimonials from smiley-faced Christian evangelicals representing megachurches delighted with their Sony HD systems.

I’ve nothing personally against this market segment, but I squirmed at the mention of Jesus Christ to a mixed, international audience. What this sort of thing is doing at a Sony press conference full of trade journalists—for the second year in a row–is anyone’s guess. A Jewish journalist friend of mine from Moscow sitting in the next row looked uncomfortable, if not quietly flabbergasted. more

Building on the success of its acclaimed XL H1 High Definition (HD) camcorder, Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging technology, has introduced the new shoulder mount XL H1S and XL H1A HD camcorders, which include new advanced features requested by professional users for improved operation and image control. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Thomson Grass Valley Infinity finally shipped around IBC time last year. That camera was announced a few NABs ago, and the delay was due partially to Thomson’s late-in-the-game adoption of CMOS technology (three Xensium 1920×1080 2/3in. sensors) that Thomson believes offers better image quality than CCD technology. The bright side of the delay: as IT industry catches up to the needs of video production, the hard-drive-recording Infinity grows in power.

The Infinity records to Iomega’s Rev Pro media as well as CompactFlash cards, which are available immanently at the 16GB level. A new version of the camcorder, announced at the show and expected to ship in June, makes use of new Rev Pro recording media to expand its capacity. (Current Rev Pro media stores 35GB.) The forthcoming Infinity DMC 1000/20 is enabled to use higher-capacity Rev Pro XP and ER hard-disk media. ER means extended recording; the small 65GB hard drive packs can store 90 minutes of HD content at 75Mbps, or more than four hours of standard-def video. XP, meanwhile, means extra performance (extended didn’t work here I guess): the 40GB XP carts support a higher transport rate; these store 50 minutes of HD content at 75Mbps and can offload data at higher speeds than the Rev Pro XP.

JVC announced that Avid Technology, Inc. will support the company’s ProHD format in its new line of Media Composer NewsCutter and Symphony editing systems. Avid customers will now be able to natively ingest high definition material acquired from JVC ProHD camcorders, VTR and hard disk recorders. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room