Hi all. If your visiting IBC then please drop by and say hello. I’ll be on the Sony stand as usual, helping man the entry level production area. Should have all the latest F3/FS100/FS700 toys to play with. I have some video shoots in the mornings at ends of the day, so middle of the day is the best time to drop by for a chat. See you there!

This came in from Convergent Design today. If your at IBC what have you got to loose!

(30 August 2012, Colorado Springs, CO) Convergent Design is excited to announce the great Gemini 4:4:4 Giveaway at IBC 2012! Visitors need only stopover to Booth 7.D01, have your badge scanned, and retrieve your registration nomination; no purchase necessary.

A winner will be randomly drawn on 25 September 2012 and awarded a FREE Gemini 4:4:4 recorder, including Nanuk carrying case with anti-static foam, transfer station, and two SSD’s. This is a complete unit, a $5995 value!

Make plans to visit Convergent Design and see our multi-camera set up, including the recently announced, not yet available Canon EOS C500 with Gemini 4:4:4 recording 4K Cinema Raw, the popular ARRI ALEXA with Gemini 4:4:4 recording ARRIRAW 60fps, IndieCam to Gemini 4:4:4 2KHD raw, IO Industries Flare 2KSDI rig recording stereo 3D to Gemini 4:4:4, and the trail-blazing nanoFlash recorder.

I’m sure this post will get some flack, but I really do think that Blackmagics marketing of the BMD Cinema Camera is pushing the boundaries of whats fair and reasonable. This isn’t a criticism of the camera itself, which for the money is a great deal and I’m curious to see how it really performs in the wild. This is a criticism of some of the over inflated statements that BMD are making about it.
In a recent magazine article it’s quoted that according to Blackkmagic “the Cinema Camera has been designed to eliminate the problems of….. …. limited contrast range, a maximum of an HD sensor, poor quality optics and lenses and poor integration with NLE software… …. with these limitations they cannot (the competition) be used for high end work or feature films”
Come on BMD, who are you trying to fool, do you think your potential customers are really stupid enough to fall for that statement? For a start 13 stops of dynamic range can be achieved with many current cameras. The BMD camera is no more than HD itself, the sensor is bayer, so even though it has 2.43K pixels (it doesn’t even have the headline 2.5K), the resolution is still only more or less HD. It has a Canon mount so will often be using exactly the same lenses as much of the competition and every NLE worth having these days works perfectly well with all the common codecs like AVCHD, XDCAM or AVC-Intra. Try using ProRes (as used by the BMD along with DNxHD and DNG) on a PC, it gets truncated to 8 bits and there is no way to render back to ProRes. By their own account the BMD camera is no more suitable for high end work than most of the competition. In the past I’ve come across senior BMD sales reps that have tried to sell me the camera because “it’s 2.5K which is so much better than HD”. When I’ve challenged this all I’ve got is.. “umm, I don’t know the answer to that, I need to discuss it with the factory”. Come on Blackmagic. Don’t treat us like fools, many of us do actually understand all this stuff. You have a good product at a great price, don’t use ridiculous over inflated statements that don’t hold water, it makes you sound like dodgy used car salesmen. Sell it for what it is, a very low cost HD camera that can shoot raw with interchangable lenses.

Here’s some more footage from Arizona. Shot with the FS700. Theres a mixture of timelapse shot using S&Q motion at 1 frame every second as well as lightning shot at 480,240 and 120fps.

Here’s a little clip I shot yesterday as part of my Arizona workshop. As we had some time between storms we took a little side trip to the Grand Canyon to try shooting aerials with the F3’s and FS700. This clip was shot with the FS700 using the 18-200mm stabilised kit lens. It came out really well, I’m very pleased. I did add some additional stabilisation using Premiere CS6’s warp stabiliser, but if the shot isn’t reasonably stable to start with this can add some blur. Fortunately the FS700 active steadyshot is very good so this was not a problem.

We kind of knew this was coming, a lower cost super35mm camcorder from Canon. Slightly smaller than the C300 but using the same sensor recording to AVCHD at 24Mb/s and with a built in LCD panel as opposed to an external one this really does look like a nice little camcorder. Follow the link below for the full details from the Canon web site.

http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/news/canon_unveils_eos_c100.do

I won’t be posting much this week as I’m in Arizona shooting storms and the Grand Canyon. I’m shooting with the FS700 and getting some great footage and clips. Here’s a few frame grabs for you. Believe me when I say the footage is even more amazing. lightning at 240fps is ver cool!

I received an email from Convergent Design this morning outlining how the Gemini 444 recorder will support 4K, 10 bit raw at up to 30fps from the Canon C500 via a chargable firmware upgrade. If you’ve got two Gemini’s you can even record raw 4K at up to 60fps which is pretty impressive, but one hell of a lot of data (approx 1.5TB per hour). I only wish that Sony and Convergent would get together quickly to do the same for the FS700.

Here’s an extract from the email:

“As anticipation for delivery of the Canon C500 mounts, Convergent Design is happy to announce support of Canon 4K Cinema Raw on the popular Gemini 4:4:4 external recorder.

Gemini 4:4:4 is a full uncompressed recorder and 5″ monitor that records to two 1.8″ SSD’s. Convergent Design offers an ARRIRAW Option, as well as a Stereo 3D Option, both as paid upgrades. Rounding out it’s functionality will be a Canon 4K Cinema Raw Option.

The Canon 4K Cinema Raw Option will capture 10-bit Log Raw (.rmf) up to 30fps on a single Gemini, and up to 60fps using two Gemini’s. Likewise, a single Gemini supports HD up to 60fps, while two Gemini’s enables a blazing HD@120fps!
Convergent Design is excited about this release. “The picture quality of the C500 is astounding; beautiful and crisp. We enjoyed shooting with it. Paired with the Gemini 4:4:4 it is not only a powerful camera, but a compact and sleek option for big pictures from a hand-held rig. The size and cost of Gemini 4:4:4 makes it a natural fit,” says Amber Cowles, MarCom Director.”

So, tomorrow I depart for Arizona to run a week long workshop on documentary video production. It’s monsoon season in Arizona so thunderstorms are an almost daily occurrence and these will be the backdrop to the workshop.  Amongst the kit need to run the workshop is the main camera, a Sony FS700, 4 lenses including that lovely Zunow, vinten tripod and a Canon 550D DSLR with special lighting trigger. I’m also taking a small motion control head and an extra tripod for time-lapse sequences that will include star trails, sunsets and sun rises etc. Then there is the laptop for editing and batteries to power everything.

The problem of course is that I only have a limited baggage allowance. 2 bags at 23kg each plus a carry on bag. Now I have, would you believe it, managed to cram all of the above into my allocated bags. I’ve even managed to include a weeks worth of clothes (they make up much of the padding to protect my valuable gear. One thing to consider when packing for travel is the weight of the cases themselves. A typical large pelicase or similar can weigh in at 6 or 7kg before you’ve even put anything in it. A similarly sized samsonite suitcase costs less to buy, weighs a lot less and doesn’t shout “valuable.. steal me”. For tripods a larger suitcase will often take a standard set of ENG legs diagonally across the interior or a roll along large sports bag will take a set of legs wrapped in your clothes and then the head can go in your main suitcase.

After packing all the essential I found I had a couple of kilos to spare so I’ve also included an NEX5N with a time-lapse controller and a few extra batteries. Out in the USA we will be joined by another instructor with an F3 and more kit, so between us we should be well sorted for a great workshop.

It’s not too late to join us if your interested in learning how to shoot storms, lightning, starscapes and time-lapse as well as many other documentary production techniques.Use the contact for if your tempted.

I’ll be blogging as often as possible from Arizona either here or on my Facebook page so do check back to see how we get on. Should be fun!

Sony kept this one very quite. The first I heard about this was yesterday. It’s based on the NEX-VG20 which is in turn based on the NEX-5N APS-C stills camera. It is a shoulder mount camcorder with a really rather nice form factor that includes an adjustable shoulder mount. The sensor is an APS-C sized sensor, so slightly smaller than the super 35mm sized sensor in the Sony F3 or FS100/700 camcorders. It records on to SD cards or Memory Sticks using AVCHD. It is a world camera so will record in both PAL and NTSC modes, frame rates include 23.98p, 25p, 30p, 25i, 30i, 50p and 60p. As well as the camcorder Sony also have some new memory sticks that have built in raid storage. So a 64GB card provides 2 separate 32GB memory areas so recordings are recorded twice. If one half of the memory were to fail, your recordings will still be safe on the other mirrored half. Clever stuff, but it won’t help you if you loose the card!

Getting back to the camera, because the sensor is a 16.1MP APS-C sensor designed originally for still photos, there will be more moire and aliasing than you would see from a dedicated video camera sensor because the optical low pass filter is designed for still photo resolutions as opposed to HD video. Although based on the NEX5N stills camera the video image processing has been tailored for video so the video image quality should be better than that from the stills cameras. As well as video the camera will also take still photos and has the ability to store raw still images. The camcorder has XLR audio connections, but no timecode and no HDSDI out, only HDMI. The LCD viewfinder uses the same LCD as the FS100/FS700 and a very similar looking loupe/eyepiece. This is a budget entry level camcorder, so sadly no ND filters. Probably just as well because if it did it would really annoy any FS100 owners. Ergonomically it looks really good.

The shoulder pad can be adjusted and slides out from under the rear of the camera on built in rails. The top of the extending shoulder mount has mounting points for accessories such as external recorders or radio mice so no need to use 3rd party rods and rails. Perhaps the most significant feature though is that the NEX-EA50EH is supplied with a servo zoom lens! This 11x zoom lens (SEL18200PZ18-200) uses Sony’s now familiar E-Mount so it will also fit on any other E-Mount camera. On the side of the lens there is a small zoom control rocker (three fixed speeds, low-mid-high), so even if your E-Mount camera doesn’t have a zoom control (FS100, NEX5N etc) you can still use the power zoom. Apparently the lens is based on the 18-200mm kit lens that comes with the FS100/FS700 but now with a zoom servo and updated firmware, so it will almost certainly telescope and extend in length as you zoom. It has optical stabilisation and auto focus. Manual focus is of the round and round, non calibrated servo variety. I’ve been told that the NEX-EA50EH will cost around£3k including the lens. The lens itself will be available separately from photo stores some time around the end of the year.

You can find the full tech specs here.