The art and science of making media.
Here at NAB 2013, Replay XD is showing some new accessories for their action cameras. The new $39.99 dive housing is waterproof to 60 meters(197 feet). The standard lens is made of acrylic. An optional all glass lens is available…
Recently I taught my first lighting class, for Abel Cine, at Sony DMPC in Culver City, California. It got me thinking about how I know what I know about lighting, and why I seem to be able to explain it.…
There are times when you’ll want to use a small camera like the Sony F55 without a viewfinder–say, if you’re mounting it on a crane, in a car or on a Steadicam. Apparently it’s possible to accidentally disable the data…
Sony gives us a lot of gamma table options in the F5 and F55. I recently had a chance to sit down with an F5 and map them all out, and in doing so I learned a lot about both gamma curves and how BlackMagic Resolve Lite handles them. I had no idea what I was getting into when I shot these tests. Usually I bring clips into Final Cut Pro, export them to Apple Color and capture waveform images from there, but according to Sony there are no current options to import XAVC HD directly into Final Cut Pro 7 or X. I’m not that familiar with BlackMagic DaVinci Resolve Lite, but I learned a lot… while putting a nice dent in both my forehead and the wall over my desk along the way.
DVi contributor Craig Chartier saw a lot of really cool stuff at NAB this year. Most of it wasn’t even shipping then, but everything is available now. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Craig presents his “best products of the year” for 2012 in this four-page buyer’s guide. A lot of these items weren’t available for sale yet when they were first shown at NAB, but all of them can be bought right now, and the links to buy them from B&H, or directly from the manufacturer, or in some cases on Amazon, are included at the end of each description. There are no $10,000 items on this list. They are ranked in no particular order of importance and they cover several areas of production.
This article has been authored for DVi by Chris Skorrow of Lindos Electronics. George Lucas once said: “I feel that sound is half the experience. Filmmakers should focus on making sure the soundtracks are really the best they can possibly…
Some of you may recall that I wrote about the GoPro Hero HD camera a couple years ago. Despite the low cost of the basic camera, it produces amazing images with enough quality to be utilized in many professional broadcast…
Another NAB, another Vinten review! Yes, it’s that time again: tinker and test, tweak and note, dust off the keyboard and set about disseminating the information. This is something of a “two for one” deal. This was necessitated by the fact that Peter Harman at Vinten kindly sent me the Vision blue5 for the review, and very nice it is too. However, it’s COG/ Mass graph quickly demonstrated that all of my Video cameras, even piled/ bolted one on top of the other, weren’t going to get the Counter Balance system to play ball in a fit. Cue: a mad scrabble to prise one of the very first prototypes of the new CB100 (more of that anon) out of my business / design partner / machine and powder coat shops in Texas. As I write this (eight days before copy deadline) it’s currently shown as “somewhere between Chicago (?) and New Zealand,” just what I really didn’t need.
Posted to our forum by DVi member Ian Campbell: I got my DVD copy of “How to Setup, Light, & Shoot Great Looking Interviews” in yesterday’s mail. I’ve now watched the DVD twice, and I made some notes and wrote…
The three levers, tilt, pan and slide plate lock, all have 6-position spring loaded lever arms allowing easy re–positioning at 60º intervals, although the latter two are not retained, so can easily be wound clean off the head. They all look readily replaceable in the event they take a fatal smack.
I have read somewhere that there is an issue with the slide plate lock lever swinging above the head plate and thus not allowing a “hippy” camera system to lock, or only with difficulty. As that lever only requires a 90º swing from full lock to off, and vice versa, and the lever arm is repositionable in 60º increments, if you can’t configure the lever arm not to swing above the head plate, you simply haven’t grasped how these levers work. This is a non-issue, and it’s simply not true.