Hands On With RED & 3ality Technica’s Meizler Module For Epic And Scarlet

The new Meizler module was teased a month or so back on RED’s website but at NAB the nearly finished product was on display.  At the RED booth it wasn’t possible to get up close to it but outside at the 3ality Technica booth they had one just sitting there all wired up and ready to play with.  It seems that not many people knew this and I only stumbled upon it in my final hours at the show. So what’s this module all about then ?  Essentially it’s aim is to streamline your camera rig and remove a number …

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RED’s New Products At NAB

RED announced a barrage of new products at NAB last week, including the details of the much anticipated Dragon sensor upgrade.  For $6000, Epic owners will be able to upgrade their current sensors to a 6k sensor which will also offer improvements in dynamic range.

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of mount options out there now with Nikon and Leica having been added to the lineup.  I was able to briefly try out one of the first Leica mounts with a Noctilux 50mm lens one evening, it is quite bizarre to have such a small lens on such a big camera but to have the option at all is pretty neat.  Feature application is pretty limited due to the inability to add any kind of follow focus though but for hand held travel shooting it would be a lot of fun.

The Pro IO module is ‘shipping soon’ for $3750.  These are all the Is and Os on this one side, these are no more on the other side.  It’s quite bulky really and you’ll need to add a module adapter to it to allow you to put it onto the camera body as well as you can see in the next picture.

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RED Announces The Scarlet-X

I’ve totally lost track about when we first heard the name Scarlet.  Either way it doesn’t really matter because what we heard about back then has long gone.  Red do not stand still and the specs and price of the Scarlet have evolved continually over the last few years around the launch of the spectacular Epic camera.  Today we finally get to see what they have settled on.           Important Specs 5k Stills (5120×2700) 4k Motion Lower data rate than the Epic 4K Quad HD at 30 fps … 3K at 48 fps, 2K at 60

Canon Launches The EOS C300 – Super35 Digital Video Camera

Ever since the somewhat accidental success of the Canon 5dMKII in the film making industry we’ve been waiting for Canon to incorporate their large sensor video capabilities into a camera that was designed from the ground up with this purpose in mind.  Many video capable DSLRs have come and gone since the 5dMKII launch but almost without exception they still had the same drawbacks of it’s predecessor when it came to more professional production.  Highly compressed footage, no XLR inputs for pro audio gear and no HD-SDI for pro monitoring gear.  In the mean time Canon’s competitors have released cameras

RED Prepares To Sue ARRI ?

Unlike the continual patent infringement bickering between the major player in the mobile industry, the digital cinema and even photographic industry is a lot quieter on the legal front.  This week though a story of Hollywood proportions is beginning to unfold when it was revealed that ARRI’s ex VP of Market Development Michael Bravin has pleaded guilty to hacking into the e-mail account of a rival camera company called Band Pro Film and Digital, a company with close ties to RED Digital Cinema.  Mr Bravin is an ex employee of Band Pro and in his plea agreement filed last week

RED To Begin Shipping Canon Epic Mounts On Sept. 9th

Red announced today that the long awaited Canon mount for their EPIC cameras will begin shipping on September 9th to the first people who pre-ordered them.  Further orders are being taken now for a price of $2000.  The mount itself is machined out of solid titanium and features a safe locking ring to further solidify the connection between camera and lens.  Right out of the gate it looks as though they have firmware programmed to work with a majority of Canon lenses, with more to be added very shortly (and some third party ones like Sigma). When a supported lens

New Angenieux 45-120 T2.8 Zoom

Now granted this is not a lens that many people outside of rental houses can afford but I couldn’t resist taking a look at it.  Angenieux cine zooms are acknowledged as amongst the best PL mount zooms in the business, if not THE best.  Lightweight (relatively speaking) and compact they are a hit with many DPs.  This week at NAB sees the introduction of the new 45-120mm t2.8 Optimo zoom which will set you back a whopping $55,000.  If you’ve never held or felt a proper cine zoom then you are probably wandering how it can be worth that much money.  These things are made to a standard that you can’t even begin to imagine until you see and feel it for yourself, truly incredible.  They had it mounted to a Red Epic and it was a perfect match for size and weight, fantastic for a steadycam rig.

They also have 1.3x and 2x teleconverters/extenders to go with it for approx $4000 each! (Pictured below)

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

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

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

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

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

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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NAB Show Report Index

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

RED Epic finally in the hands of film makers

RED’s new flagship camera, the Epic has finally started to ship in limited quantities.  A few months ago RED announced that a limited number of hand machined and hand assembled Epics would be available slightly before the regular production run begins.  The so called Epic-M was available to order for $58,000 and that package included a 5″ touch screen, the Bomb EVF and a 128 GB SSD module + a Redmote.  Overall, the premium for getting one of these limited hand assembled versions is about $10,000 but people jumped at the opportunity and the very first one shipped to OFFHOLLYWOOD