4K Camera for $945

Point Grey's ice-cubed sized camera uses Sony's new 8.8 MP IMX1221 Exmor R sensor and can pipe 4,096x2160 images through a USB 3.0 port.  This officially makes it the world's coolest web camera.

It limits the frame rate to 21 FPS (185 mbps) but this may be just to use the USB 3.0 port.  The camera is designed for industrial applications including optical inspection, ophthalmology and interactive multimedia but Point Grey does list broadcast as a market, too.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/29/worlds-smallest-4k-usb-3-0-camera/

Kick Light

The Kick is a small light designed to be used with iPhones.  It has a couple of interesting features.

It can be wireless so you can control intensity and color temperature from your iPhone.  This includes  effects like strobe, lightening. etc.  One of these little units doesn't have the power to produce this effect on a full sized person but you can control multiple Kick lights at the same time.  The Kick does have the intensity to be useful for firelight/candle light.

The Kick light can also match light.  Sample of a light source in an image and it reproduces that color temperature.  The Kick light can also do this with changing color temperature sources like fire and can emulate both the intensity and the changing color temperature in real time.

Probably not practical at this size but make a 1x1 and you might really have something...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1918868829/the-kick-a-pocket-sized-lighting-studio-for-photo?ref=live

Canon t4i

The Canon t4i (Canon 650 in Europe) is the new flagship of the consumer camera with a couple of great features, my favorite being the new power switch which you'll note is off, still and video.

On my 60D the video mode is on the mode dial which means switching from video to stills means pulling the camera from my eye and turning the dial.  Sure, the 60D takes stills in video mode but they come out 16x9 even though the entire 3x2 image is recorded.

Speaking of the mode dial, there's two new modes:  Hand Held Night Scene and HDL Backlight which is Canon's HDR mode.  HH Night combines 4 images to reduce noise and HDL combines 3 images to increase apparent latitude.

There's a new chip in the t4i, that improves face detection, which allows for continuous autofocus even in video mode.  But don't get to excited.  It doesn't work well with the USM lens motors which is in just about in every Canon lens made.  The USM motor was designed to focus fast for still shooters.

There's a new STM motor designed for shooting video that focuses slower and smoother but is only available in two lenses at the moment and neither is an L series lens.  But I do have a weak spot for pancake lenses like the 40mm that's available.

Canon is also touting the Digic 5 processor but as far as I can tell this only effects still burst rate, from 3.7 to 5 frames per second.  Big whoop.

The big WOW is supposedly the touch screen.  You can go through the menu, change focus points, pinch and zoom to check focus, change f-stop, shutter, etc.  all by touching the screen.  This would be great IF I DIDN'T USE A ZACUTO VIEWFINDER which makes the touchscreen practically useless.

There are other consumer goodies like 7 different in camera effects like water color and a stereo mic on top so I can hear myself breathing and the auto focus motor even better. 

The street price of the t4i is $850 for body only.  I saw a t3i kit in Costco yesterday for about that price with two kit lenses.  I don't think I'd use the touch screen nor trust the auto focus (what if I'm not shooting faces?).  But I do like that power switch...

For more info, here's a few reviews of the Canon t4i:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_sOBGbvm3I&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk2s_wSFwRY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRS1RhXpAmM&feature=related

Free Canon C300 Workshop

Canon is presenting a free session on custom color adjustment for the C300 at the new Canon Hollywood Professional Technology & Support Center.

On June 26, between 6-8pm, learn to create dynamic images by creating camera custom picture profiles.  This means less color grading and the ability to deliver matched settings to multiple cameras.

http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/events_calendar/event_details/cll_events/20120626_hollywood_custompicture_pro_cll.shtml?WT.mc_id=EM1206EO01003&RID=1-6CGEO7&CON=1-Y0JD2&PRO=&CID=1-69ZFNN

Free Smoke

Autodesk Smoke is a powerful NLE, effects and finishing program rolled into one.  In the day it was expensive.  Really expensive.  Now, you can have it for free... for a limited time.

Later this month Autodesk will be releasing a public beta of Smoke 2013 for Mac.  This is a free install for everyone and will remain live until they start shipping final versions in fall.  At that time you'll be able to buy Smoke for mac for a mere $3500 bucks.  It's may sound like a lot but the original Smoke for Mac was $12,000 just a couple of years ago.

One word of warning:  You're probably not going to download this onto your laptop.  You need a Mac with some real horsepower to fully use Smoke.  Sign up for the download here...

http://usa.autodesk.com/smoke-for-mac/trial/?src=OMSE&mktvar001=457606&mktvar002=457606&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=autodesk%20smoke&utm_content=Branded%20Exact&utm_campaign=Autodesk%20-%20ME%20-%20Smoke%20-%20Br%20-%20Desktop%20Search

Sony FS700 240fps Food Fight

Cine Gear hosted the Shooting Low Light and High Speed with the FS700 seminar.  We was able to watch this test footage on the big screen and it was amazing how good that AVCHD codec looked blown up the size of a billboard.

The FS700 can shoot 120fps for a 16 second burst and 240fps for 8 seconds.  This is stored in a buffer memory and you can trigger storage at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a shot.  It takes about 30 seconds to render the footage out of the buffer onto a card.  The FS700 can record at higher frame rates but at much lower resolution.  The 980fps is really unusable for narrative but might be useful for industrial work.

The lowest ISO on the camera is 650.  This is up from 500 on the FS100 and may have been pushed up just to compete with the Canon C300.  The picture looked clean up to about 4000 ASA and usable up to 12,000 where the noise became noticeable.   20,000 ASA was what I would call "Night News Quality" but it's there if you need it.

 UNGRADED

The FS700 has the same Cine Gamma modes as the F3 and the test footage was shot in Cinema Gamma 4 which has almost 5 stops of overexposure over key as compared to the bit over 2 stops overexposure of my F900... which is why I have my zebras set at 60%!

GRADED

During grading they crushed the blacks slightly (note the loss of detail in the tree leaves), warmed and saturated the image.  The filmmakers wanted the footage to look like a "70's film".  There were no lights used.  They did have a white card... until it became covered with ketchup, mustard and chocolate pudding.

Watch the video at:  http://vimeo.com/43064629

4K Sensor for Smartphones

OmniVision has come up with the OV16820, a 16 Megapixel (4608x3456) image sensor.  This 1/2.3" sensor can shoot full resolution at 30fps or 4K2K (4608x2160) at 60fps.  Think iPhone camera that can shoot 4K slo-mo.

The sensor can also capture stills as 10-12 bit RAW RGB images, does burst photography and also has a strobe output to control flash.

And they've got some other cool things on their website...

http://www.ovt.com/products/sensor.php?id=116

C300 Menu Simulator

The C300 Menu Simulator is an interactive training tool to help you familiarize yourself with the camera's Custom Picture and Main Menus.

You can navigate with a mouse, keyboard, arrow keys or even your fingers on a touchscreen device to control the simulator.

http://learn.usa.canon.com/resources/articles/Simulators/c300.shtml?categoryId=229