Digital Video - May 2008 - (Page 10)

DV UPDATE Marketing Executive of Canon’s Broadcast and Communications Division, during the traditional night-ending Q&A session: “Does it bother Canon that Sony’s new EX-3 camera [featuring an interchangable lens] has a proprietary mount?” He smiled and replied, “I won’t speak for Canon on this, but it does bother Larry Thorpe.” Thorpe is a man who clearly loves his job and simply wants to supply users with the best possible glass that they can easily use on the camera of their choice. He went on to say that he had discussed the issue with Sony and then explained that the new mount was necessitated by the EX-3’s engineering requirements, and that Canon would surely offer an adapter to allow the use of their optics with it. “Sony just released the camera yesterday,” he added, “so give us a little time and we’ll have lenses for it.” Of note, two other guests at the Canon dinner were Fred Kaufman and Neil Rettig, the former an exec producer with the PBS series Nature (now in its 26th season) and the latter a cinematographer and naturalist filmmaker. They have been collabThe Stasis Flex. orating for almost 30 years, and their latest project is an episode of Nature currently entitled American Eagle. Shot by Rettig with a Panasonic VariCam fitted with Canon’s HJ40X10B 10400mm lens (to which a doubler was then added), American Eagle features breathtaking footage of our national bird in flight, clips of which we saw at the dinner. With Rettig often sequestered in a blind more than 100 yards from his skittish subjects, the HJ40X10B zoom was the perfect tool for the job, and he credits Canon for their support not only on this project, but over many years of working together. American Eagle will air on PBS in the Fall. — David E. Williams bound to only get better and better. Next up was the new VistaBeam 600 and finally — a product that really caught my eye — is the Vista Single. An incredibly versatile fixture that can break down easily, mount easily flush to walls and with a great diffused parabolic reflector, it can throw light at a good distance. Just like Kino’s classic fixtures, you can easily strip the Vista Single out of its housing and break it down to the bare bones and get into tight spaces. — Jay Holben IMPROVED FORMULA Frezzi introduced a whole new battery technology — nickel-zinc, which they attest will be the wave of the future with lighterweight, longer-lasting, no-travel-restrictions power. Their prototype 60-watt-hour HD60EGN battery was available for a looksee, but won’t be ready until the end of the year. — Jay Holben LIGHT MATTERS Rosco has two new cool products. The Litepad is about 1⁄4" thick and made in many sizes and three shapes (square, rectangle and circular). It’s literally a pad of light — a great twist on LED fixtures that has so many applications. It gives a good punch and can be slipped in to the tightest spot (like say, taped to the back of a headrest in a car to light the person in the back seat?). Dimmable. Great fixture, and they’ve got a kit with 12 fixtures in it that is very cool. The Rosco VIEW (Variable Intensity and Exposure on Windows) consists of a wide polarizing filter that is available in 56"x8' rolls. You apply this polarizing filter to windows in a location. To the eye they are, of course, completely transparent. However, combine them with a custom Polarizer on the camera and you now have a variable ND filter on the window that does not affect the amount of light in the location! You can suddenly instantly ND the windows without any light loss and instantly balance the light to exterior light all throughout the day with just a mere turn of the Pola on the camera! Seriously, why didn’t anyone do this before? The system is good enough to block out almost all the light from the windows with 90-degree Pola position and shoot day-for-night without blacking out the set. Incredible. The Rosco VIEW is not cheap — about $700 a roll (so for a big office location that’s about $700 per window) but the potential time savings is incredible. The material is about 7mm thick (regular gel is about 3mm thick) so if you’re really careful, you can reuse it. Very cool product. — Jay Holben ARTICULATING ARM Anton/Bauer has an interesting shoulder mount rig for smaller DV cameras — the Stasis Flex sits over your shoulder and has a lockable snake-like articulating arm that adjusts the camera to many different angles and locks it firmly in place. It’s an interesting idea, although it didn’t really work all that well for me when I tried it at the show. It felt too loose on my shoulder and I wound up compensating with my arm taking on more weight. It might be better if I spent some time getting used to it. — Jay Holben KINO’S FLOW In the Central Hall, I ran into Kino Flo creator and president Frieder Hochheim, who walked me through three new products. One I was instantly familiar with: the Kelvin Tile from Element Labs. KinoFlo will now be an official distributor and, later on, manufacture the fixture as well. This is a great bit of news as the Kevin Tile is an excellent LED fixture, and in Kino’s hands it’s 10 dv may 2008 VIDEO FOR SALE I stumbled into (and nearly passed by) the booth for pond5.com, an online stock footage company utilizing the same user-generated content model as istockphoto.com (of which I happen to be www.dv.com http://istockphoto.com http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - May 2008 Contents DV Update Close-Up AJ-HPX3000 Camcorder Sidecar Raid Zoom H2 Recorder Instant Expert 324 Flat-Panel Display Extreme 35MM Adapter Type-S JIB How Slow Can You Go? Global Gastronome Mixing It UP Long-Distance Runaround Tools & Technology DV 101 Production Diary

Digital Video - May 2008

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