Black Magic's $995 TV Studio

The ATEM Television Studio is Black Magic's lowest cost TV studio in a box (scroll half way down the page to find it).   The ATEM has a switcher with up to six camera/vtr inputs, 2 still store channels, and 8 channels of digital audio.  The output of the ATEM is mpg4 and quality of the mpg4 file is adjustable for live streaming or recording to hard drive.   There is also an HDMI and SDI output for monitors.

I spent a day working with it and although you can use the mouse I found myself using the keyboard as the switcher, using the number keys to set preview and the enter key to make transitions.

The actual hardware is single space rack mounted unit that's just an inch thick not including the heat sync.  It has four HDMI inputs and four SDI inputs, although only six are usable at a time.  And the output can be HD (both flavors) or SD.

So what's the downside?  The audio seems the weakest part.  It has no analog inputs so you need some kind of analog to digital adapter.  When I used it this created a four frame audio offset (audio first) so everything is barely out of sync.  You have to use some kind of audio delay device.

But the image quality is good, we were able to use 3 different model of cameras and they matched well plus the ATEM didn't seem to mind different camera frame rates.  In a test we had one camera shooting 24p and the rest 60i and the switcher cut beautifully.

This is the future of multi-camera TV, it's just that 5 years from now we'll have it built into all our laptops and be able to use our wireless iphones as cameras.  Here's a great blog about the for you potential webcasters.

http://www.studiotech.tv/studiotech-the-television-studio/

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/atem/models/

Rode DSLR Mics with Built-In Recorder

Rode has a pair of new mics specifically built for the DSLR market, each with a built in microSD recorder.

The VideoMicHD is a cardioid shotgun with 3 different recording options: 2 channel mono, 2 channel mono with one channel attenuated 20db for clipping problems and a balanced audio signal.  It also has a mini-plug input.

The VideoMicPro doesn't seem to be very pro at all but still is able to record.

But doesn't this give you all the disadvantages of dual system sound with none of the advantages?  And how do you adjust levels when you're recording without shaking the camera?  In fact, I don't see an level control anywhere?  I just don't get it...

http://news.doddleme.com/equipment/rode-announces-a-pair-of-dslr-centric-microphones/

JVC 4K Camcorder at CES

JVC launched the new GY-HMQ10, a 1/2" CMOS 8.3 million pixel sensor camcorder that captures and records 4K (3820x2160) at 24p, 50p and 60p.  It records 2 hours of AVCHD video to SDHC or SDXC cards at a bit rate of up to 144Mbps.  That's a lot, like what my F900 puts out.

The f2.8 10x zoom is glued on the front (no interchangeable lenses) and although it's being called a consumer camera it has XLR inputs with phantom power.  Also how many consumer cameras allow live monitoring/projection via four HDMI terminals.

This won't be the last 4K camera from JVC.  It is expected 4K pro cameras will be announced at NAB.

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/headlines/13621.html

Film Slowly Fades To Black

Within the last year, ARRI, Panavision and Aaton have all ceased production of their film cameras to focus exclusively on the design and manufacture of digital cameras.  According to ARRI, the company has only built film cameras to order since 2009.  Panavision built its last Millennium XL in 2009.

Film Craft, a lab in Detroit, closed its doors after 90 years of business, leaving one film lab (Astro) in the Midwest.  And despite Cinesite, Kodak is slowly fading to black as they prepare to file Chapter 11.

I've been predicting the end of film since the Ikegami EC 35 with it's fancy Plumbicon tubes but now that the end is actually here it's kinda sad.  I'll miss the sound of film purring through the gate.

But I won't miss the weight of a Platinum with a grand on my shoulder...

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kodak-prepares-chapter-11-bankruptcy-278689

http://www.ikegami.com/br/products/sdtv/ec35.html

New Adapter & Firmware for FS-100

Sony has announced new lenses, new firmware and an auto focus adapter for the FS-100.

The $400 buck LA-EA2 adapter allows you to attach A-mount lenses to an E-mount camera and have continuous auto focus using "Translucent Mirror Technology".  Read it loses almost a stop of light.

You can buy the adapter now but you can't use it on your FS-100 until February when the new firmware will be available.   The firmware will also give you:
*  PAL recording
*  Camera profiles can be saved and read from a memory card
*  4x and 8x expanded focus magnigication
*  Selectable ISO or GAIN display
*  Selectable Focus indication in feet or meters
*  Selectable Shutter indication
*  Added 2.35:1, 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 aspect-ratio markers
*  On/off button for zebra and/or historgram overlay
*  A new 28MB AVCHD bit rate for 3D.

http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&partNumber=LAEA2#reviews

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/headlines/13604.html

$500,000 Phone Camera Movie

OK, you knew someone would shoot a feature film with a phone camera but who could have guessed it would have a $500,000 budget and star Gena Rowlands?

The point of the article is that phone cameras will democratize Hollywood... if you have a half a million.  But I do like the camera set up...

http://thenextweb.com/video/2011/12/27/olive-the-first-cinema-film-shot-on-smartphone-but-will-it-democratize-hollywood/

Philip Bloom review of the Canon C300

Philip Bloom gives his review of the Canon C300 after shooting with it for a few days.  It reminded me why I live in sunny SoCal and not rainy France.

I'll cut to the chase, he basically likes the C300 but has 4 complaints:
1.  No XLR's in the body of the camera, just the monitor
2.  Monitor connects to the camera with cables that have to be factory repaired
3.  Slo mo is 720 not 1080
4.  It's only 8 bit.

I concur.  Plus you can't turn off the info on the screen without turning off the frame lines.

Watch the actual 17 minute review video.  It's more exciting than the 7 minute test video...

http://philipbloom.net/2011/12/24/c300review/

Magic Lantern HDR Upgrade for Canon DSLR's

The new "Xmas Update" of Magic Lantern has two great new features, FPS control and HDR video.  Frame Per Second control allows you to lower the frame rate down to 4fps with a shutter speed as low as 1/4 of a second.  This also makes HDR possible.

HDR records two frames, one exposing for highlights and one for shadow detail.  The frames are then combined in post.  The Magic Lantern firmware doesn't combine the frames, just records them.

So what's the down side?  HDR is great for high contrast scenes with not-so-fast moving subjects.  That means it doesn't work for anything that really moves.  Also, this update is only for the 60D, T3i and T2i so if you own a 5D or 7D you're SOL.  Most important, downloading the firmware immediately voids your warranty.

For more information on how it works go to:
http://news.doddleme.com/uncategorized/magic-lantern-firmware-rocks-canon-dslrs-with-hdr-upgrade/

Here's the link to the upgrade:
http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Release_2011Dec22

RC Helicopter

I was shooting a real estate video for a friend who's a realtor and she also hired an RC helicopter guy to take some stills.

Now, being a camera guy and helicopter pilot I was very interested in this device and the images it took.  The helicopter was battery powered and surprisingly quiet for all those blades spinning around.

There was no monitoring on this helicopter, just send it up and point and shoot.  Then, they'd bring it back down and check the little Canon Powershot to see what they got.  The lightweight copter bobbed like a cork in the wind and it would have been impossible to get any kind of usable video much less hold the horizon.  Even just taking stills, the shooting ratio was about 25:1, they took about 125 shots to get 5 usable images and I don't think my friend ended up using a single one.

There's a bunch of these kind of helicopters on the market and some even have a monitoring solution but having seen the results without stabilization I think they're all pretty weak.  But it sure was fun to watch them fly!

Play with a Lytro camera picture

The Lytro light-field camera not only records color and intensity but the direction the light is coming from.  There's only two buttons on this camera:  On and take a picture.  You zoom by rubbing your finger up and down the casing.

There's no focus, you shoot now and focus later.  Try it for yourself...

http://mashable.com/2011/12/20/lytro-camera-design/#30555Pack-and-play

Epic/Scarlet

RED was at the ICG 600 Mega-Digital event for the first time with a mini-training session for the Epic.  It's fun to sit in a session with DP's, operators, assistants and DIT's, each with their own concerns and questions.  Not only did we have a chance to shoot with the Epic (the Epic is the one with hump) but question them about the upcoming Scarlet (no hump).

As you might remember, the Scarlet was supposed to have 2/3" chips but the popularity of the large sensor DSLR made that camera obsolete before it was manufactured.  Instead, RED was testing a batch of Epic sensors, found some too slow for 5K and are using these "rated" chips for the 4K Scarlet.

Speaking of speed, it's slow... for today's cameras.  The original RED One was really slow but a couple of years ago RED came up with the MX chip.  The Epic/Scarlet is as fast as the MX with a top floor of 800ASA but everything above that is noisy plus now the other manufacturers, notably Canon, are much faster.

And while we're looking at the front you can see what audio types will hate, the two unbalanced mini-plugs.  That's the only audio ports on the camera.

The biggest advantage of the Epic/Scarlet is 5K/4K resolution but who's using it or asking for it?  Unless you're shooting features you're delivering 1920x1080 for broadcast and less for the internet.  .r3d files are huge, the SSD cards and associated hardware is expensive and transcoding those files can literally take days.  Seriously.  I've heard of people easily shooting 200MB to 1TB a day.  This requires some kind of full time data wrangler.

If you use the raw .r3d files, everything frame has to be graded and color corrected.  Most producers I work with want an image then can edit with now, not something they have to transcode and grade first.  Many current RED user only use the 2K proxy files to edit but these Quicktime files are not available on the Epic/Scarlet at this time.

The Epic/Scarlet can shoot higher frame rates but you pay a price:  The faster the frame rate the smaller the frame size.   In other words, to shoot 48fps you're at 3K, 120fps you're down to 1K which is less than 720p camera (I don't know why film types use "width" pixel count and TV types use "height" pixel count).

More important, the RED doesn't downsize, it crops, so your FOV changes as you speed up.  To you that means the focal length of your lens gets longer.  Go twice as fast and you effectively zoom in by 2X so you're 18mm lens becomes a 36mm, so don't think high speed and wide angle.  Use HRDx and everything doubles again.

The HDRx doesn't work with motion shots.  HDRx works by storing an A frame at standard exposure and an X frame exposed at a higher shutter speed at the same time.  If it's a still frame, HDRx works like a charm.  If you have any motion, camera or talent, you get this ghosting from the blur of the A frame.  It just doesn't work.  But you could use the A and X frames separately like the shot above of someone driving out of a tunnel into the sunlight.
http://www.fxguide.com/featured/hdrx-the-impossible-shot/

Finally, let's talk price.  The Epic-M package runs $58,000, definitely Alexa territory.  But unlike the Alexa you get everything you need to shoot, except AC adapter.  The Scarlet body starts at $9750 but you don't even get a viewfinder.  RED sells a basic package is $14,015-15,515 depending on mount.  And this is a very basic package, just enough to shoot.  .r3d uses lots of memory so you'll need more than one SSD and each 128GB RedMag is $1800 bucks a piece.   Even this basic Scarlet package price doesn't even include a viewfinder and, of course, no glass.

Speaking of lenses, the Scarlet come in four flavors:  You can get an Aluminum (Al) mount or, for those who swap lenses constantly, a Titanium (Ti) mount and either of these can be for PL or Canon EF lenses.

RED has realized that many lower end/Scarlet type users aren't going to want to spend tens of thousands on glass and has made using Canon EF glass easy.  The DSMC Side Handle has all the dials and buttons a DSLR user is familiar with and makes it easy to adjust f-stop and go through menus.

Design wise, RED has really thought out the design of the camera (besides audio) and I'd really like to buy American  but is it what producers are looking for with all the other cameras in the market?

Here's what Philip Bloom has to say about the Epic/Scarlet:
http://philipbloom.net/2011/11/20/scarlet/

I wrote this a month ago as I was still collecting information.  Now, there's a new development:

http://philipbloom.net/2011/12/10/nomoreepic/

iphone vs. Canon

I post a bunch of iphone accessories for fun and I hope people don't take it too seriously.  Not that the 4S doesn't take a nice picture, it does... for a snap shot camera.   To show the real difference between the 4S and a Canon 60D I snapped a couple of shots of Claudia, our talent du jour on a commercial I shot last week.

The above shot was taken with my 4S.  Sharp, in focus and overexposed.  I had Claudia under a 4x4 frame with Opal so she's a half stop under the background and and still she's hot... in more ways than one.  More importantly, everything is from the lens to infinity is in sharp focus.

Same shot with nothing changed except the camera: The Canon 60D with the Tokina 11-16.  I tried to match the wide lens of the iphone and note that even with the extreme wide angle I'm still able to get the background soft.  I also love how the 60D is fighting to hold the detail in the reflector kicking her.

With a real camera I can switch lenses.  Here I went with the 24-70 and look at the separation from the background.  So, does the iphone 4S take a nice picture?  Sure,  but it doesn't compare with a 60D in the hands of someone who knows how to use the camera.

Mobislyder

Here's something fun for Friday, the Mobislyder.  It's shown here with an iphone but it handles any small camera including a GoPro which does get you thinking.

I think it's only a friction slider but what do you want for $129 bucks...

http://www.glidetrack.com/mobislyder/mobislyder.html

Sony 18-252mm Lens

The Sony SCL-Z18x140 18-252mm Zoom has arrived for the F3 camera.  Sony has been promising a motorized zoom for the F3 and had previewed this lens at PhotoPlus Expo.

There are some things that really stand out about this lens starting with the incredible focal length range.  18-252 gives you everything you need for 99% of most shoots and all in a 5 pound lens.

But there's always a downside, in this case the speed of the lens.  It's a T3.9 at 18mm but quickly ramps to a T6.8 fully zoomed in.  I think that's unacceptable for anyone shooting indoors or at night but this lens would be great for sports or nature shooters.

But the most interesting thing about this lens is it can be fully automatic like any home movie camera.  It has manual/auto focus, manual/auto iris, manual/servo zoom plus built-in image stabilization.  Like the article asks, "Could this be the first 35mm motion picture point and shoot?"

And I don't think this is going to be cheap.  Sony lists their 18x140 at $12,200 so who knows what the 18-252 will go for?

http://www.fdtimes.com/news/sony/new-sony-18-252-mm-zoom/
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-SCLZ18X140/

iPhone 4S vs. Canon 5D MkII Shootout

iPhone 4S vs. Canon 5D MkII Shootout.  The title says it all.

Well, not all.  I think everyone can see the difference but it's amazing how good the iphone looks.  Maybe it will be closer when they come out with the iphone 7 with the APS sized chip....

http://www.rosenblumtv.com/2011/10/iphone-4-vs-canon-5d-mkii-a-side-by-side-comparison/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rosenblumtv%2FzmJc+%28Rosenblum+TV%29

Tokina 11-16

The first lens I bought for my 60D was the Tokina 11-16mm.  It’s sharp, fast (f2.8) and the reason I could buy a “Super 35mm” sized sensor camera.

Although I like the deeper depth of field of a APC-C sized sensor, the 1.6 crop factor makes every lens longer.  The super wide Canon 16-35mm lens becomes a semi-wide 26-56mm equivalent.  But the Tokina's 11-16mm becomes a 17-25mm basically filing the role of the Canon wide angle zoom.

How good is the Tokina 11-16?  Ken Rockwell thinks this lens is better than any Nikon wide-angle and Ducloss takes this $750 lens, gives it a new outer shell, adds an aperture ring and sells it for $3500 bucks… and they can’t keep them in stock! 

You can’t use this lens on the 5D, I know, I’ve tried. It’s OK at 16mm but any wider and it vinnettes and I don’t mean just a bit.  At 11mm looks like a circle wide.  But the Tokina fully covers a Super 35mm sized chip.

This lens must have been originally designed for the Nikon.  Even though my Canon version focuses in the right direction (far/clockwise, near/counter clockwise) the zoom still goes the wrong way.  Drive me crazy but it’s still a great lens.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tokina/11-16mm.htm

http://ducloslenses.com/Duclos_Lenses/PL116.html

Sun Mask for Zucuto Z FinderPro

Bought a new Z Finder Pro to go along with my Canon 60D.  I’m sure everyone is familiar with the Zacuto loop-type viewfinder and how the magnifier can burn the LCD in just a couple of seconds.

Zacuto has come up with a simple solution that could help this problem called the Sun Mask .   It’s a little 16x9 matt that fits in the eyepiece that blocks at least 50% of the light hitting the magnifier yet leaves your view of the LCD unhindered.  Zacuto charges $3 bucks for a little piece of paper that costs .30 cents but think of what it could save in burns.

And everything that’s old is new again.  When the Zacuto viewfinder first came out you basically glued a little frame to your camera and the viewfinder snapped onto it.  Then, Zaucto came out with the Gorilla plate, a more elegant but heavier solution.  

The Gorilla plate really doesn’t work with the 60D’s flip out VF so you can still buy the old plastic frame for $6 bucks and can use the viewfinder in any position.  The downside is you can never "close" the LCD screen but when do you close the LCD on a 5D/7D?  And I still use the Gorilla plate when I'm shooting normally to take the stress off the little plastic LCD hinge.

http://store.zacuto.com/Z-Finder-Sun-Mask.html

My Canon 60D

I'm now the proud owner of a Canon 60D.  After shooting extensively with both the 5D and the 7D I decided I wanted the deeper depth of field that comes with the smaller “Super 35” sensor. 

Although I love the look of the ”Full Frame” (full still camera frame) sensor of the 5D, the shallow depth of field can be both beautiful and challenging. The smaller sensor give you a fighting chance to ride focus when you’re working wide open but still give that large sensor shallow depth of field look.

The real disadvantage of the APS-C size is the 1.6 crop factor that makes every lens longer.  For example, a 24mm lens becomes a 39mm.  It’s hard to find a sharp, fast, reasonably priced wide angle zoom then I found the Tokina 11-16 which I’ll cover in a later blog.

The 7D, 60D, T3i and T2i have the same exact sensor and processers and record the same signal, so why the 60D?

To start, I wanted a flip out LCD.  I’ve put my head in the dirt too many times to frame a low angle shot with the 5D/7D fixed LCD and I wanted the ability to see the VF from any position just like any other video camera I've ever owned.

While the T3i also has a flip out LCD and is cheaper than the 60D, it doesn’t have the full set on controls of the 5D/7D/60D, most notably the big Quick Control Dial.  And the big multi-function Multi-Controller star button is easier to access than on the 5D/7D.

Finally, on the 60D the dial locks and has a special position just for video so you don’t have to constantly hit the “Live View” button.   You turn the camera on and it’s ready to shoot video.

As with most things, there’s a down side:  You can’t take stills in movie mode unless you’re rolling video.  Stop recording and you have to move the dial to a still photo setting.  Luckily, I’m usually either shooting stills or video or trying to grab both at the same time.

http://usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/slr_cameras/eos_60d