I spent the last 24 hours in vegas lustily coveting the sexy lines, the smooth shapes and the mind blowing abilities of the models on display. They were everything i wanted and more. They were pricey though. those pretty young things; hot on the scene, ready to please. I was ready to give it all up to take one home with me. Like every newcomer to Vegas: I was setting myself up for heartbreak. I sit here now, in my hotel room, 2 cold showers later: out of money, out of hope. They played with my heart. They took me for a fool. 

Pathetically, i’m talking about electronics gear. Not women. 

Oh and in case you were wondering: I’m here in Vegas for NAB. (National Association for Broadcasters). 2.9 million square feet of GEAR. (video, computer, audio). So lame right? It’s like Comic con except that instead of star wars costumes people wear suites and instead of arguing about whether firefly was a better show than Battlestar galactica they spend Billions of dollars on running your life and telling you what to watch. 

Everyone is here: Sony, Panasonic, Canon, JVC, Adobe, Autodesk, (not apple, they are gay), Grass Valley, Google, etc. I’m eating this all up. This is pretty glorious to me. I never could justify travelling down to Vegas just to go to basically what boils down to being the biggest, baddest, most expensive Futureshop in the history of the world… But now i’m here, thanks to my employer: doing information-gathering and checking out the latest and hotest products. 

If your interested in gear. here are some things i found interesting/horrifying:

External Monitors for your 5DMK2: I’m really not sure how practical this is. Definitely it gives you more ability to monitor what your Canon is shooting but… defeats the ease of use aspect of having a DSLR that shoots video when you need to use a monitor that is bigger than the camera itself to see what it is doing. For well-constructed shots I can see the use of this application, especially when dealing with the hair-thin focus on some lenses. Marshall has a massive line of preview LCD’s for any application you can think of. Price is around $700 i think.

Yes you just saw that: a Segway steadicam. In Steadicam’s never ending pursuit to get you the most steady shot in the universe, they have often pionered insane robotic devices meant to be grafted onto the human body to reduce camera shake. The Pilot which attaches itself to your chest, the Archer which makes you look like a nut with a pogo stick from hell,  or the Clipper which up until now was the champion of steady-ness which basically took that pogo stick and attached it to your sternum. THIS, blows them all out of the water. This man, whoever he was – piloted his segway steady cam (or Johnny 5 as i like to call it) like a champ. He could dip and dive, pull a 180 like no ones business and looked completely bored the whole time. Leave it to the video production industry to consistantly make devices that cost more than your yearly salary yet make you look unbelievably gay while using them. I’m not sure of the price. probably more than a brand new Honda Civic.

In their pursuit of steady-perfection I expect Steadicam to create a fully-functioning exo-skeleton robotic suit a la “The Matrix 3″ or “Aliens 2″ that runs on plutonium and makes an earthquake look like smooth zoom… and yet causes whoever is using it look like the bigges idiot in the world. Until then we will have to make do with these:

More To Come from NAB!
- including: RED Cam! New Panasonic! 3D without glasses!