Trip to the Netherlands II

here's the report from my 2nd annual trip to the BUT Film Festival in Breda, and to IBC in Amsterdam.

the film I produced that's been making the festival rounds: EARTHLING, took home the best feature jury prize!



Its a 2-hr multi-stop train between Amsterdam and Breda, so I had to made a quick day trip to and from there to get back for the festival awards show. Luckily, the IBC floors are pretty tightly squeezed next to each other allowing one to cover lots of space quickly. Unluckily, however, is that the show floors didn't seem to have air conditioning!

highlights:

Zeiss LWZ.2 Lightweight Compact Zoom lens w/ Canon EF mount on a 5D!


The ARRI Booth had plenty of Alexa's set up, allowing anyone to get in some good gun time. The camera seems ridiculously easy to use. The electronic viewfinder literally looks as good if not better than an optical finder. The embedded ProRes4444 workflow and (future) higher res workflow will be the things that push this cam into the mainstream rental pool for higher end work.


The newly announced Canon XF100/105 was on display in the heavily touted Stereo mode. The cams have built-in adjustments for creating 3D stereo images. The rig here is beta unit by RedRock Micro.


Canon also showed a low budget way to display 3D w/ 2 low cost projectors


Panasonic showed their new 152 inch(!) 4K Plasma. w/ four HD-SDI inputs. You couldn't help but stare at this thing for awhile.


Panasonic also debuted their long awaited DSLR-sized sensor AF100 cam! Its shown here with a Zeiss CP.2 prime. The camera will ship in december (w/o lens) for under $6K. It's got just about everything 5D/7D shooters want combined with the traditional cam features one would expect from a pro panasonic cam (TC, HD-SDI, XLR audio..etc.) the only thing missing is the SDHC capture codec (its AVCHD), but ----


that's where the new AJA Ki-Pro Mini will come in to save the day. The Mini has HD-SDI in (and HDMI) and will work great as a 10-bit 4:2:2 recorder for the AF100. Its shown here along with the original studio style Ki-Pro.


and here's something you dont get to see at NAB:




And we now have a final answer to the Avid vs FCP debate: The Steenbeck! Steenbeck was back in full force in the post-production hall showing a new(?) Super8mm rig, the ST822!