This year NAB went HD.
Big surprise.
For the past several years HD has been the talk of the industry. For all the hundreds of thousands of square feet of displays, products launches and training going on at NAB, in my mind, there was really only one vender that stood out in the crowd, Red Digital. (More on that later.)
Despite NAB going all out to embrace HD as the wave of the future previous years were more exciting as far as the introduction of new and useful products for the micro film maker. The following is a list of some new and somewhat new products that caught my eye as microfilmmaker.
Anton Bauer, Elipz – The Elipz battery system designed specifically for DV and HDV cameras, which was introduced this year at NAB, is a battery system that can deliver up to 9 hours of battery life on a Sony Z1U or a Panasonic AG-HVX-200. Additionally, it gives you the option of adding on accessories that use the popular Anton Bauer plugs such as sun guns and wireless mics. It is innovatively designed to mount on the cameras tripod mount adding only a little more than an inch to the bottom of the camera. You can then mount the tripod to the bottom of the battery pack. This is a company that has long been the leader in battery power for the professional video market. However, until now they really weren’t someone you went running to for batteries if you have a DV or HDV camera. Even if the battery doesn’t last for 9 hours straight, what other battery can even come close? And with a retail price of only $299 with the charger or $199 by itself, you can’t beat it! Similar systems for small cameras require battery belts or additional shoulders mounts to get that kind of battery life. Here you can do it and maintain the mobility of a small camera and have fabulous battery life.
They also have a hand grip device called EgripZ that is designed to work with this system. It is one of the more innovative grips on the market to help give you additional stabilization with smaller cameras. The two flexible handles come down from the bottom of your camera and can be positioned for a variety of methods of camera grips. Though we haven’t field-tested this device it is impressive and should live up to most of its promises.
Red Digital, Red 1 – Here is the dream camera for most of us. It costs more than most microfilmmaker's budgets...but, surprisingly, not by much. Even though it is in development, the features it promises to deliver are worth taking a look at as a microfilmmaker...either with long-term invstment in mind or simply as an obtainable rental.
Honestly when I first started reading about this camera several months ago, I was skeptical. It didn't seem possible that a camera that can compete feature wise with the Panavision and Varicam could really be developed and priced at just a fraction of what these camera cost. So with some skepticism I went to the Red booth at NAB. After looking at the glass-encased mockups I was pretty impressed with the concept. It’s a camera that can be almost as low budget or as big budget as you want it to be, due to an innovative transformable, ultra-upgradeable design..
The idea is that you make a one-time investment in a camera that will suit your needs now and add on to it until you have a camera and accessories that will give you the same acquisition quality that a blockbuster movie would have. Though the exact user interfaces are still under development, this camera will allow for manual control over everything from frame rate to picture size. Since it records straight to hard drive there will be no need to digitize footage--just start editing. (Like an uber-version of the HVX200 workflow.) Until the camera hits the market sometime next spring the price point will still be somewhat up in the air. However, it should cost about $22,000 to get the body, lenses and basic accessories you need to shoot on one of these cameras. That is compared to around a $78,000 to $100,000 to be ready to shoot on a Varicam.
I spent some time chatting about the different features of the camera with Graeme Nattress, the legendary plug-in programmer and one of the contributors to Red’s development. Later, he was asked by someone if Red would make any money off the camera to which he quipped, “Of course, we’re not a charity.” With the money of the founder of Oakley sunglass behind the development of this camera, this dream is shaping up to become a pretty impressive reality.
Sony’s big claim: HD for everyone – Rather disappointing in my option. Sony may have been the first company to come out with a 1080i HD camera for the little guy but this year's new products are focusing on the big money clients. The only addition to their line of HDV gear is a couple of new decks.
Red Rock Micro – here is a product that is a dream come true for low budget filmmakers – an adaptor for cinema and SLR lenses for SD, HDV, and HD video cameras. We are working on getting a couple of days to field test this product and write up a full fledged review.
For low budget film makers, often the only cameras that are affordable are fixed lenses video camera. Even cameras like the XL series from canon and the new HD camera from JVC still have a video look to them with the lenses provided, due to their lack of depth of field. This is due to the size of the chipset in comparison to the size of a traditional 35mm frame of film. The larger the recording imager, the greater the depth of field. As such, the tiny imagers on digital cameras have always been at a disadvantage in comparison to a traditional film camera.
The best way to overcome this would be to use lenses Designed for 35mm cameras, but they are trying to focus their image on an imager that's the size of a 35mm frame of film. About five years ago, P&S Technik released a ground-glass imager that would focus a cinema lens' image in front of a digital camera's fixed lens, but it was nearly $15,000. However, last year, Red Rock Micro came out with a cinema lens adaptor at less than $1000. (And, if you'd rather build the system yourself, they even sell plans with the wheel of ground glass you need for $50 bucks at http://www.redrockmicro.com) I got my first hands-on test of the system at NAB and it is very impressive. We will be taking in out and field testing it in the next several months so keep an eye out for that in a up coming issue.
Just out of the box at NAB, Red Rock Micro has added a follow focus feature that can be added on to the lenses adaptor. If you have ever worked with cinema lenses you will know that, with the added depth of field, maintaining focus becomes much more important, especially for moving subjects. With this add-on, Red Rock Micro has added functionality to the adaptor that will be invaluable.
Grid Iron Software – For those of you who use After Effects a lot to enhance your projects, you will be familiar with the struggle of how much you would like to do vs. how much your processing power will let you do in an acceptable time frame. Some features like gaussian blurs and the new lens effects take a lot of time to render, no matter how fast your computer is. Thanks to Grid Iron there is now a way to work around this problem.
If you have a dual or quad processor PC or MAC you can install Grid Iron's Nucleo, which takes control of your processors and maxes out their capacity to render faster. After a quick demo I walked away pretty impressed and begin to wonder if I should go ahead and purchase the plug in. A little while later, I was over at Adobe’s booth testing out After Effects 7 and, low and behold, the demo unit had Nucleo installed. If Adobe is tweaking their demo units out with Nucleo to make AE7 shine, I knew it was definitely worth purchasing, so turned right around and bought it. A quick word of warning: Nucleo requires at least AE 6.5 or later to work. I had to upgrade after I got it, which added to the cost. (Although, with all the pimp new features in AE7, I would have bought it anyway.) In the week that I have been using this plug in I have actually done renders faster than real time for the first time ever. Check it out http://www.gridironsoftware.com.
Miller, SOLO – I have been shooting with DV for ten years now and have had a hard time finding a tripod that has the features that I want and a price I can bear. Satchler, Vinton, and Miller manufacture some of the best tripods in the business but they are very expensive for people like myself. As a result I have always used Bogen tripods. Bogen does have decent products but because you are paying much less for product there are some draw backs. The heads don’t have the smoothness necessary for perfect pan and tilt shots. They are also heavier than their more expensive brothers. I had been hearing good reports on a new tripod from Miller called the SOLO designed just for the DV and HDV market. I was able to test one for about 30 min at NAB and was very impressed with the head fluidity weight and easy set up. I come with a shoulder strap so the camera operator can but it on their shoulder while shooting hand held or moving to a new location. With a price point of $795.00 it’s a little more than most bogen tripods but appears to be worth it with the added features.
