Well the week is at an end and NAB 2013 is over. So what do we take away from this years gear fest? Well, I for one was pleased to see less new cameras being announced. RED has started to finally upgrade cameras with the Dragon sensor, which gives a huge 15 stops of dynamic range (or maybe slightly more). Arri and Ikegami announced the HDK-97ARRI, a joint venture to bring large sensor cinema technology to the broadcast industry, which is controversial in many areas, but should be very interesting. Although I wouldn’t like to get stuck operating one of those on a CU with an 86x on the front! There were to many ‘octo-copters’ to count and lots of baseplates, cages and general add-ons needed to make the new generation of toy cameras work properly!
Blackmagic stole the show again by announcing a 4k version of their cinema camera, but will we ever see it? Sony announced the PMW-400, a 50mbps shoulder mount CMOS camera, which I am sure will be widely welcomed by many owner operators. The Phantom flex 4K camera will give us an all in one solution for production in 4K at high-speed and normal frame rates. Then there was Movi. The handheld digital gimbal camera stabiliser that everyone has been talking about all week. I think once the dust settles, we will start to think about the drawbacks of this type of system, but for now, I think its very cool, and will see a lot of use on certain types of production.
I think with all the new cameras that have been spewing out over the last couple of years, a slow down on releases was definitely needed. The market is saturated and while choice is a good thing, maybe a little time is needed for everything to stabilise before the next big thing comes along.
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