Aquatcech have unveiled their new housing for the Canon 5D Mark 3 today, the DCV-V3. Essentially the design remains unchanged from previous versions but of course updated to account for the new button layout of the 5DMK3. You can also purchase an upgrade kit to convert both your previous DCV-v2 5D MK2 housing, or your 7D housing.
Price looks to be $1895
As well as Canon’s new EOS C300 camera being made available for order today, B&H also have new Cinema EOS lenses that will be a perfect compliment for this camera.
Last week at CES I had some hands on time with the new zooms and they are meticulously constructed, a joy to use.
Canon CN-E 14.5-60mm T2.6 L S Cinema Zoom Lens with EF Mount
Canon CN-E 14.5-60mm T2.6 L SP Cinema Zoom Lens with PL Mount
Canon CN-E 30-300mm T2.95-3.7 L S EF Mount Cinema Zoom Lens
Canon CN-E 30-300mm T2.95-3.7 L SP PL Mount Cinema Zoom Lens
Gura Gear is a camera bag company started by wildlife photographer Andy Biggs. Andy’s very first bag was called the Kiboko and it was very well received my a great many people. Built specifically with wildlife photographers in mind it allowed people to travel with the very biggest lenses but still in a bag that complied with airline restrictions. The Kiboko is also incredibly lightweight, being built from nylon sail cloth and so it made a lot of fans amongst outdoor photographers who carry their gear a long way.
Recently Gura Gear launched a new website along with a new bag and intentions of launching a Kiboko 22l in the near future (the regular Kiboko is 30l). The new bag is called the Chobe and it is a shoulder bag that expands to offer either a 19 liter capacity or 24 liters. The bag can be specified with a padded camera compartment or without, allowing you to tailor the bag to your current needs. It features all the usual travel friendly features for photographer such as room for a laptop, passports, keys etc Notably the bag is also made out of the very same super light weight sail cloth of the Kiboko. The Chobe costs $349 for the bag including the photo insert. There’s no getting past the fact that this is a steep price to pay for a shoulder bag, especially when rivals like Think Tank photo make a very good airline travel shoulder bag for less than half the price. So what do you get from the Chobe that you don’t get from rival bags ? Well we will have to wait to find out on that one, I’m hoping to get a chance to test this bag out at some point. In the meantime though I just wanted to make people aware of it because it certainly looks like a smart bag for those that want the very best looks. In the literature on their site Gura Gear make mention of several other types of business user who might like the Chobe and it seems that maybe they have desires to expand their reach a little bit to encompass other people who also travel a lot. No harm in that when they make bags that look this good !
You can order the Gura Gear Chobe from Outdoor Photo Gear HERE
The new Thunderbolt standard, developed jointly by Apple and Intel, is an exciting prospect for media creation professionals of all sorts. It allows a phenomenal data transfer rate that looks sure to change the way we think about computer peripherals. As of September 2011 Apple has now added Thunderbolt ports to all it’s computers except the Mac Pro which is sure to follow shortly. Like many other photographers though I have been eagerly awaiting some useful peripherals. People “in the know” have suggested that Apple is currently charging a huge amount of money to license the technology though, meaning that consumer targeted solutions will be a while away.
Nonetheless, Thunderbolt peripherals are starting to trickle out and Sonnet Technologies are the first ones that I have seen who are offering a memory card reader solution. In fact the way they have approached the problem is quite clever. Essentially they have build a Thunderbolt enabled dock for existing expresscard expansion ports. You can buy one of their Echo docks and then simply add to it the relevant expresscard adapter. They have a dual compact flash card reader, an SD card reader and of course Firewire and all manner of USB and SATA. This is clever because it means you only have to buy the dock once, thereby only sucking up the currently high Thunderbolt licensing fee just once, but allowing you to use different options plugged into it.
WARNING ! THIS IS NOT CHEAP ! The Echo dock is slated to ship in October for a cost of $150 , you will then need a Thunderbolt cable from Apple for $50 and a Sonnet CF card/expresscard reader for $100. Yes that makes it a $300 card reader!! More if you want to add other options. Due to the high licensing cost though we are not likely to see mainstream manufacturers like Sandisk, Belkin etc offering a solution anytime soon though…
A few new products have appeared on the Elinchrom website today. As a bit of an Elinchrom fan myself I like to see what they are up to. I use a Ranger system at the moment and I have rented their mains powered pack systems in the past for a few shoots. I find their stuff to be very well built and reliable. It often gets compared to Pro Photo equipment but Pro Photo is more expensive and I’m constantly hearing my fellow photogs sending their Pro Photo stuff in for servicing.
When I first saw this pop up in my in-box this morning I got quite excited but it turns out I was slightly premature. The new Zoom heads detailed below are for plugging into their mains power packs (along with one continuous halogen light). I had initially assumed that they also launched the Ranger versions of these heads and there is some justification in that because I know that they also exist. I have seen a picture of them clear as day. So take these Zoom heads here also as a look into the future if you own the Ranger system as I do….. the same design and features will be passed on to the Ranger lineup at some point in the future. The whole Ranger lineup is looking a little long in the tooth and my gut feeling is that they are planning on releasing a new Ranger pack at some point in the not so distant future and are therefore waiting to release the Ranger Zoom heads alongside that. Anyway, Ranger incompatibilities aside these are still cool products for the studio shooters out there!
Arri are better known for their cinema lenses and big production cameras like the Alexa but they also make acessories for filmmakers and with the rise in popularity of smaller cameras like the Panasonic AF-100 and the Sony F3 they now have smaller items to suit those cameras. New for NAB 2011 was the MMB-2 Matte Box. The premise of the MMB-2 is a modular design so you can add as much or as little to it is you require. You can buy a complete kit, or all the parts individually. Interesting add-ons include foam covered handles which mount right to the edge of the box, providing good stability for shoulder rigs. This was my favorite Matte Box for DSLR and small camera/large sensor type shooting at NAB this year. It brought with it all the quality you would expect from a company such as Arri but in an affordable package. With an optional skirt added to the back it will be compatible with photo lenses such as the Canon 24-70 which have extending front elements during zooming.
Redrock Micro gave us a glimpse of this product last year but at NAB 2011 they finally announced a release date of June 15th for one of the most talked about DSLR film making accessories. The system consists of several different parts so you can build up a solution that suits your needs. Those people running a shoulder mounted run and gun rig will want the wired option and others using steadycam rigs or tripod mounted systems might want to use the remote system with the aid of the microTape.
To understand the system have a quick look at this video from Redrock Micro:
Redrock microRemote preview from Redrock Micro on Vimeo.
The thing that impressed me most about this system was the responsiveness of the finger control for focusing. There was no visible latency in the system at all, even the smallest movement of your finger resulted in an immediate adjustment of focus on the lens. It was really very impressive and for a run and gun rig it would keep you so much more stable as you are able to grip the rig with two hands instead of having one hand on a handle and one on a follow focus. The little focus knob is easily useable with a single finger. Brian Valente from Redrock Micro told me that all new parts will be available for shipping on June 15th except for the Redrock motor. Instead you will be able to purchase Heden motor , until the new Redrock Motor is available. No timeline on the Redrock motor though and the Heden motor is quite a bit more expensive than the target price for the Redrock one. On the wireless side of things the display on the iPhone or iPod is intuitive and informative. Not only can you have it display marks as you would use hard stops on a follow focus, but you can also have it display depth of field for your lens, and where you are withing that field.
Redrock microTape tells you your distance to subject.
microRemote basestation
Finger control for wired focusing.
Heden motor controling focus.
The guys from Small HD have produced some great looking LCD screens over the last few years and at NAB 2011 they bought an interesting addition to their lineup, the DP4. The DP4 is a 4.3″ LCD screen that can be used with the additional eye piece to create an EVF similar in function the Zacuto EVF that I previously posted about. It features all the necessary functions such as peaking, zebra stripes and full screen scaling to ensure that DSLR output signals are filling the screen entirely.
