BLACKMAGIC DESIGN: URSA; STUDIO CAMERA; CINTEL FILM SCANNER; DAVINCI RESOLVE 11

There were many major announcements from Blackmagic Design at NAB 2014. In this video piece Simon Westland, Director of Sales EMEA at Blackmagic Design, shows us the latest developments, including:

• (i) Ursa: digital film camera featuring a user upgradable sensor and lens mount, large 10 inch fold out monitor and more!
• (ii) Studio Camera: the Blackmagic Studio Camera features a very large 10 viewfinder, long duration 4 hour battery, talkback, tally indicators, phantom powered microphone connections and built in optical fiber and SDI connections.
• (iii) The new Cintel scanner will scan negative and positive 35mm film into amazing quality.
• (iv) DaVinci Resolve 11: a major upgrade with over 100 new editing and color grading features. This new update includes major improvements in online editing plus context sensitive trimming, onset file cloning, photographer style color grading tools and an amazing new collaborative workflow that allows multiple users to work simultaneously on the same timeline.

AJA CION: 4K, ULTRA HD, 2K, HD PROFESSIONAL CAMERA WITH APS-C SIZED SENSOR AND RAW OUTPUT

Revealed at NAB 2014, the AJA Cion is a 4K capable camera, which also does Ultra HD, 2K and HD formats, directly to Apple ProRes 422 and 444 at up to 4K 60fps or output AJA Raw at up to 4K 120fps. Featuring a 4K APS-C sized CMOS sensor with an electronic global shutter the camera records. The Cion can also output AJA Raw via 3G-SDI at up to 4K 120 fps or via Thunderbolt at up to 4K 30 fps.

KILLER PRODUCTS: ATOMOS SHOGUN 4K RECORDER; AND NINJA STAR MINIATURE PRORES HDMI RECORDER

Major announcements from Atomos at NAB 2014:

• (i) Shogun – The 4K and HD external recorder with in-built 1920 × 1080 screen. When paired with the newly announced Sony AS7 camera, 4K recording at extremely high quality will be possible.
• (ii) Ninja Star – the $295 HDMI ProRes recorder. Small enough to attach to any camera, ideal for high quality recording from cameras which traditionally would have recorded compressed images.

AVID ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF SUBSCRIPTION AND FLEXIBLE LICENSING OPTIONS FOR MEDIA COMPOSER

Avid has announced the availability of new licensing options for Media Composer | Software, giving media organisations and creative professionals greater choice in how they deploy Avids industry-leading video editing solutions.

SONNET INTRODUCES FUSION QR RAID 5 SATA STORAGE SYSTEM WITH QUAD INTERFACE

Available without drives, and in 8TB, 12TB, and 16TB configurations, the Fusion QR features a high-performance internal RAID controller that manages the enclosed 3.5-inch hard drives and offers five drive configuration options for maximum flexibility.

DAVINCI RESOLVE LIVE GRADE WORKFLOW USED ON FILMING OF THE SECRET SERVICE

Up to four camera sources were captured via a series of Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 4K I/O devices straight to a Compact Videohub router, which acted as a switch and allowed the DIT to change which camera sources were fed into DaVinci Resolve.

NEW INTELLIGENT DRONE TRACKING TECHNOLOGY ABOUT TO HIT THE MARKET

Next Level Aerial Filming will soon bring to market a system which enables a camera mounted on a drone to lock onto and track a subject, providing astounding aerial

Sony A7S still camera With 4K video capabilities

Announced at NAB 2014, the Sony A7S is a still camera capable of outputting 4K video to external recorders. This camera features a full-frame 35mm Exmor CMOS sensor with astonishing low-light performance, up to ISO 409600. External 4K recording will be possible using the soon-to-be-available Atomos Shogun 4K recorder.

VIDEO REPORT: RIGGING THE BLACKMAGIC POCKET CINEMA CAMERA BY PAUL MOON

Rigging the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera: HolyManta, Rapid ND, Contineo Cage, Zacuto Z-Finder, Tascam DR-60D & Rokinon Lenses.

CANON ANNOUNCES PRODUCTION OF 100-MILLIONTH EF-SERIES INTERCHANGEABLE LENS

Canon U.S.A. Inc., has announced that its parent company, Canon Inc., is celebrating an impressive lens-manufacturing milestone with production on April 22, 2014 of the Company’s 100-millionth EF-series interchangeable lens for EOS cameras.

A SPECIAL EVENING WITH RICHARD MARKS: RECORDED AT THE LACPUG

Marks has been nominated for many awards including four times for the Academy Award: Apocalypse Now,(with Walter Murch, Gerald B. Greenburg and Lisa Fruchtman), Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, As Good as It Gets), four times for ACE Eddie Awards. This is a rare opporutnity to listen to one of cinemas greatest editors.

AFFORDABLE 4K: SHOOTING WITH THE BLACKMAGIC PRODUCTION CAMERA

I tested the Blackmagic Production camera for over a week and found this to be immensely capable. The images are sharp, the colour rendition is good though does require grading - I was shooting the flat film setting. At this stage the camera records ProRes (HQ). RAW is yet to be enabled.

The small form of the Production Camera makes this useful for the single person who needs to move quick and acquire high quality images. The benefit of recording the higher resolution of 4K are very quickly apparent for those currently producing HD – when working with the 4K footage within an HD Timeline one can pan and scan across the Ultra HD image, and zoom within the frame.

This makes this camera ideal for the person looking to capture 4K with a small, portable, easy to use camera!

FILMING ON LOCATION - SYDNEY AUSTRALIA
EQUIPMENT: SONY PMW-F3, NIKON 17-35mm F2.8, FELLONI LED LIGHT