Today I tried to focus more narrowly than on previous days.  I decided to concentrate on cameras, projection and post production systems.

Cameras Systems



As I headed toward the first company I intended to visit I bumped into Jeff Kreines (seated) demonstrating the Kinetta 4K Film Recorder.  I found Jeff actually moving from booth to booth as he was asked to leave one then the other.  The camera is an actually brilliant design.  This is a digital camera, believe it or not, which is extremely small and modular.  Jeff refers to it as “chip agnostic.”  He also refers to the camera as a camera designed by filmmaker for filmmakers.”  Jeff’s an Interesting guy and the camera looks brilliant.  Look for it.



I saw the Kodak Vision2 HD System.  The point of this system is to allow the cinematographer to shoot a single film stock (Kodak Vision2 HD Color Scan Film 7299) then to control the look of it with a modified version of the Kodak Look Manager System.  Then the image is fed through a KODAK  VISION2 HD Digital Processor which converts the image a look that can be viewed and recorded by any device in the REC 709 color space.  Clearly this system is intended for broadcast only.  Still I can see others using the system to get to a print from the HD master.   I have mixed feeling about this system.  I think Kodak is sending two wrong messages.  The first is “Fix it in post rather selecting a film stock before production.”  With the system you can actually delay this decision until post.  The second is that this decision can be taken out of the hands of the cinematographer.



The Arri Booth had two beautiful things there.  They were showing the Arri 235, their very small, lightweight 35mm camera.



It’s typically Arri, elegant and beautifully designed. 



They were also displaying the Arri D20 Digital Camera.  The most important part of the specs of this camera is that size of the imager is width of the imager is the same as the super 35 format.  This is the same concept as the Panavision Genesis Camera.  Unlike the Genesis, however, the D20 has an optical reflex viewfinder system.  After all, Arriflex did invent the motion picture reflex viewing system.  

The demo images that were displayed at the booth on a Panasonic plasma display were extraordinarily film-like.  The depth of field and image clarity were impressive to say the least.



Believe it or not, the other camera which I found extremely impressive was the little JVC GY-HD100U.  I mentioned it yesterday but I got a good look at it today.  I want to be very clear about something.  I do not think that the image quality of this camera is acceptable for serious production, even serious student production.  I think serious student production should be done on 16mm or 35mm.  However, I think this is a superb learning tool for the young filmmaker.  I did see the image created by this camera and I felt it was perfectly acceptable for this purpose.  The form factor makes this a wonderful little camera.  It has a native 16X9 native 1/3” chip.  The lens is removable.  The camera was displayed with a full studio rig.



The camera was displayed with a full studio rig.



You could even put high quality prime lenses on it.  It was even displayed by JVC in this configuration.  They're using the P+S Technik Mini35digital adaptor.

The one reason I can see that you might want to do this would be for the ability of these lenses to change focus without breathing.  Also close focus might be a desirable thing.  

The camera seems great for handheld work and it’s capable of shooting in the HDV format, 24P format and a variety of other formats.



It uses inexpensive DV tapes.  This camera is the greatly superior alternative to the Panasonic AG-HVX200.  This is the closest Panasonic would let anyone get to it.



Yep, that’s it, safely encased in plastic.

The final impressive thing I saw was the new storage device announced by Thomson for the Viper FilmStream (what, exactly does that mean?) Digital Camera.  This would allow for an extremely portable, extremely high quality digital camera package.  The data sheet shows the level of quality of the image created by the Viper.  The newly announced Venom FlashPak now allows for a camera configured like a film camera with a mag on it.  The recording capacity is 10 minutes in FilmStream mode and 18 minutes in 422 HD mode.



I looked for the Dalsa 4K Digital Cinema Camera.  I called the company and the receptionist said they were not displaying at NAB this year.  I’m going to continue to check on this camera.

Projection Systems

I spent some time at the Christie booth.  I saw the Christie Roadie 25K Projector.  It created an image of great detail, clarity and fidelity.  It had great detail in both shadows and highlights.  When I arrived at the booth they were showing animation images which I always suspect.  By the time I had left, they were showing some very demanding live action images which the projector handled perfectly.  I was also looking at smaller projectors that we might use in our classrooms.  I saw images created by the Christie DMK6K.  This is a relatively small projector.  However it’s a 3 chip DLP with a xenon lamp.  The images created by this projector were of the same class as the 25K only smaller.

I saw images from the Sony 4K SXRD Projector - SRX-R110 again today.  The image detail was extraordinary.  However, it had real problems handling the tonal range of the image being displayed.  This implies that the performance of this projector is highly setup dependent.  This is a real problem.  You should be able to setup a projector once and leave it.  Load up you images and go…  Kind of like a film projector…

Post Production

At the end of the day I saw a terrific demo of the Thomson Spirit 4K Datacine.  The Thomson system is well integrated and extremely powerful. This includes the Spectre FS for color correction.  The Bones post system is a software based image manipulation system much like the Discreet Lustre.  The other part was LUTher Color Space Converter.  This is a real godsend for the cinematographer in that it allows for the color of the image to move from one device to another with the LUTher essentially creating a look-up table to solve the color space incompatibilities from one device to the other.

Okay so that was my day.  Pretty productive.

Bill