Think Tank Announces Retrospective 5 Shoulder Bag

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Think Tank have added to their highly popular Retrospective series today with the announcement of the Retrospective 5 shoulder bag available in either black or pinestone.  I personally have the Retro 10 bag and it’s a fantastic bag for carry around town with a camera and couple of lenses.  The material is super tough and wear resistant and there are plenty of pockets for all the bits and pieces you need.  This new Retro 5 is designed for a small DSLR and a couple of lenses or a full Micro 4/3 kit or maybe a Leica M9 or some such …

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Red Announces First Monstro Sensor – Red Dragon + Red @NAB Photos

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There was a lot of hype about Red’s morning announcement and in the end it turned out to be a bit unexpected and less groundbreaking than their usual announcements.  Part of this is no doubt down to Jim Jannard’s vow to keep info under their hat’s until a little closer to launch time given the moving release dates and changing specs that have happened with all their other products in the past. This morning it was announced that the first Monstro sensor was in testing and it’s called Red Dragon.  The current sensor lineup is called Mysterium, Monstro will be …

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Zeiss Shows m4/3 and Sony E-Mount for CP.2 Primes

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Down at the Carl Zeiss booth this morning I got to check out the full range of Zeiss CP.2 primes on various cameras including the new M4/3 mount for the AF-100 and also an E-Mount for the Sony NXCAM 35.  These lenses really are stunning and solidly built.  Check out some shots below to see the new Sony cameras and some of the lenses including the Zeiss LWZ.2 zoom lens with a Canon mount.

Leica/ Band Pro and RED Teaming up to Bring EPIC Package

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Band Pro and RED have announced that they will be teaming up to bring a pre-packaged RED Epic setup including 5 of the new Leica Summilux Cine lenses.  I had a chance to check these lenses out this morning and I can’t think of a better combination.  The Epic is so small that putting a Zeiss Master Prime on it looks pretty crazy, but the Leica Cine lenses are also small and seem like a perfect partnership to the Epic to maintain the portable size.  No info yet on exact pricing, configuration or availability of these packages but you can …

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New Marshall LCD Monitors Make An Appearance at NAB

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I’ve previously covered information on these new LCD monitors right HERE but here at NAB Marshall had prototype units on display.  The casing design may change slightly , there are very much proto builds but the functionality of them was all in place.  I think these will be the go-to monitors for HDSLR shooting when they hit production at the end of May.  HDMI loop-through is great and the modular output allows HDSDI and even HDMI to HDSDI conversion using existing modules from Marshall’s range.  The user configurable nobs and buttons mean that you can select all your favorite functions …

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ARRI Launches the ALEXA Studio

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Arri has bought a third variation of the Alexa camera to NAB this year.  On top of Alexa and Alexa Plus there is now Alexa Studio which features a larger full sized 4:3 sensor and an optical viewfinder.  The viewfinder will allow much more critical focusing via the VF and includes a switch to un-squash 2x anamorphic lenses.  Arri are also expected to announce a firmware upgrade for the Alexa platform that brings 120fps. The unique ability of this camera to use 2x anamorphic lenses as well as 1.3x lenses is going to have a lot of DPs very interested …

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Manfrotto Bring 6 New Products to NAB

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Manfrotto have announced 6 new products for the show.  I’ll get some hands on time with them later and update this post with more photos but for now these are the info links to the Manfrotto website. Manfrotto 509HD Manfrotto LED Lights Manfrotto Photo-Movie Head Manfrotto Video Remote Control Manfrotto DADO Manfrotto Snake Arm UPDATE: So I’ve had a chance to take a look at these new products now and there’s some impressively useful stuff.  The snake arm could be the new magic arm for a lot of people.  It collapses a lot smaller and the has a ton of …

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Adobe Launches Creative Suite 5.5 Including subscriptions and Native RED Support in Premiere Pro

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Adobe has announced version 5.5 of it’s Creative Suite which includes updates for several of the programs NOT including photoshop. The headlines are a new subscription service for those who cannot afford the up-front price of the CS applications , and also native RED file support in Premiere Pro!  Now that’s a great workflow improvement for RED One and Epic shooters.  They have also released an SDK to developers for a new system to integrate tablets like the iPad into CS apps.  For example using an iPad as the menu system for photoshop.  This has huge potential as well!

An interesting feature of the subscription service is that you can purchase it just for one month at a time.  So if you have just a one off project you can pay just one month when you need it!  Monthly prices will be slightly more than 12 month subscriptions, but 12 month subscriptions require the 12 month commitment.

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Sony Deomonstrates F65 8K Video Camera at NAB 2011

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Sony kicks off the big NAB 2011 announcements with the unveiling of their new F65 8K video camera.  Whilst 4k is expected to be the next standard Sony is clearly already thinking towards even bigger things!  For now things top out at 4k but Sony says that updates in the future will allow much more.  Read on for full release and more info.

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NAB Show Report Index

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Right now I’m sitting in Vancouver airport on my way to Las Vegas to check out the NAB trade show.  I’ll be posting regular updates on some of the cool new gear that I find out there and I’m sure there will be a ton if it.  I’m mainly interested in the HDSLR movie making gear but I’m also going to check out a lot of the newer Cine lenses and the RED Epic and Scarlet among other things that RED are set to announce tomorrow morning. The show kicks off at 9am tomorrow morning with a keynote speech from …

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Nikon Launches new D5100 DSLR

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Several websites have leaked information on a new Nikon DSLR that was to be “officially” launched later this evening it would seem.  The Nikon D5100.   As with most of the recent new DSLRs like the Canon T3i , the Nikon now has an articulated LCD screen on the back and of course shoots full 1080p video.  They have also revealed the new ME-1 hotshoe microphone.

Main Specs:

  • 16.2MP Sensor
  • Articulated display
  • Full HD video 1920×1080p at 30p
  • New HDR feature
  • New special effects during video (selective colors, miniature effect, etc.)
  • “Nightvision” ISO up to 102400
  • EXPEED 2 processor
  • Standard ISO 100-6400
  • Stereo mic input
  • 4 fps
  • Quiet shutter mode

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3 New LCD Monitors from Marshall

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NAB is nearly upon us and Marshall have released details of some great looking new LCD monitors that will sit nicely with those of you using DSLRs or other small video cameras.  Arriving in 3 sizes (5.6″, 7″ and 9″) they all share most features except that the 7 and 9 get a handy HDMI pass through feature that allows you to pass on the HDMI signal from your DSLR and send it to a second monitor for a director of focus puller for example.  Perhaps the biggest news about these new LCDs though is a new system that allows you to add additional modular inputs or outputs to the back of the screen.  This allows you to configure any of them with HD_SDI  inputs.  They also feature LEMO connectors for hooking into the power systems of larger cameras like the Arri Alexa or a RED setup.  All in all these are by far the most feature packed LCDs we’ve seen on the market.  The 7″ in particular seems to hit many nails on the head, and with expandability of the new modular system it should last some time before getting outdated too.

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