Super-hi FPS cameras are the holy grail of extreme sports and most indie filmmakers. It is amazing how anything can look roughly 500 times more epic when slowed down to a fraction of realtime. While still completely out of the range for most people price-wise, the cost of cameras like these are slowly but surely dropping; hopefully making high FPS cameras a possiblility for the enthusiast.
Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category
NAB (cont)
22/04/2009
Posted by Clint Omelaniec 
One of the great things about NAB is the amount of gear you get to see that will never, ever be practical for another 5-10 years. Think of it as a concept car show, except less sexy design and more calculators. This camera you see above me is made by evolution, a Japanese company that has its sights set on creating the most beautiful hi-resolution images and having a product that absolutely no one in their right mind would buy.
This camera shoots in 8k.
Some of you will have no idea what this means.
Remember back to your days shopping at futureshop for your new HDTV: the one that all your friends told you to MAKE SURE it was 1080p. Most people have no idea what that even means. in a nutshell, 1080p stands for 1920×1080 which is the pixel dimensions of your image: 1920 pixels wide, 1080 pixels high. Standard defination television back in the days was a scant 720 pixels wide by 480 pixels high.
Think of the clearest HDTV that you have seen, the nicest, most gorgous image. that was probably 1080p resolution. This camera shoots in a quality that is roughly 8x that. take 1080p, multiply its hi-res goodness by 8 times; now you have 8k: 8k is roughly 8192 pixels wide by 6224 pixels wide.
to run 1080p from your xbox elite or PS3 to your TV you need a lovely HDMI cable. To get the image from this camera to the screen we were watching took the equivelant of 16 HDMI cables plugged into the display at once .
If you are not impressed or blown away by the information I have just told you; worry not, you are most likely an average human being who has betters things to do than fantasize about image sensors and pixel aspect ratios. You gear nuts out there take warning however: Any unsuspecting techno-geek that stumbled into this booth was quickly overcome by euphoric tremors of ecstatic glee followed by massive amounts of saliva secretion and a release of bowels. Comparitive reactions such as this are only found in burnt out rock stars as they are overdosing on heroin.
I wonder what Microsoft thinks when they purchase booths at tradeshows such as NAB. None of their products really are of any broadcast use (even the pathetic silverlight) so I always amuse myself with wondering what sort of angle their reps would take: “the same groundbreaking creative minds that brought you WORD, EXCEL and POWERPOINT are hard at work creating the next generation of software packages that will bring your content to every home in the world!” -It’s just not gonna happen. When you share the same aisle with someone like autodesk whose products have been used in every feature film since computers became useful… sometimes its best just to shut up.
NAB: this ain’t comic con. well maybe.
20/04/2009
Posted by Clint Omelaniec 
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!