David Williams

NAB 2013

David — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:03:20 +0000

A lot of interesting news and gear came out of NAB 2013. Adam Wilt has compiled a decent rundown.

NAB 2013 Reflections

The Firebird

David — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:46:42 +0000

A short film I shot is doing the rounds at Cannes, with Official Selection at Artisan Festival International, and also on show in the Cannes Court Métrage. Written and Directed by Antonis Tsonis, it has won a few awards already, with more to come no doubt.

The website has more information.

Ficino Films – The Firebird

Sony F5 & F55 Scene Files

David — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:40:17 +0000

Abelcine have posted some scene files for the F5 and F55.

Sony F5 & F55 Scene Files

Convergent Design Odyssey7 Family

David — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:56:05 +0000

Convergent Design have just announced their next generation HD-SDI based solid state recorder.

It looks to have most areas covered. 7.7in OLED screen, RAW, RGB and YCC input, HD, 2K, LUTs, Waveform, Vectorscope, a second version with 4K input and recording, to many specs to cover.

It’s also has rent-able upgrades, for RAW for example. Very impressive so far.

Convergent Design Odyssey7

Prores And Windows

David — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 04:46:34 +0000

Apple’s never ending attempts to stay incompatible with the computing world at large have caused many a problem with cross platform projects. Not every application you need runs on a Mac, a PC, Linux, or numerous other less common platforms. Being able to transfer your image source from one platform to another transparently can be critical.

The popularity of Prores has caused Windows users in particular many problems, as Apple refuses to allow native Prores encoding through Quicktime on Windows. Now there is now no need to avoid the general clunkyness, gamma issues, lack of metadata, etc, that Apple’s clinging to Mov wrappers introduces.

Cinemartin have released Cinemartin Cinec, a free application which can encode Prores on Windows, amongst many other formats. One less problem to deal with in post on cross platform productions.

Cinemartin Cinec

Kubrick’s Lenses

David — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:27:40 +0000

The lenses Kubrick had specially remounted for Barry Lyndon are somewhat legendary. At F0.7 they had a unique look, required a specially rebuilt non-reflex camera, were used only in one film, then locked away for nearly forty years.

With modern digital cameras it’s possible to use these lenses with a relatively simple mount. All they had to do was secure the lenses.

Kubrick Collection

Production F55 Rundown

David — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 23:36:24 +0000

Abelcine have a rundown of the current firmware functionality of the Sony F55, which has just officially hit the shelves.

Introduction to the Sony PMW-F55

New Alexa Models

David — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:16:06 +0000

Big news from ARRI, with new models and major upgrades available for all current models.

Internal RAW recording was mooted by ARRI some time ago with the modular internal design. Codex has filled that gap. This is a nice step forward in usability.

Interestingly, all the new models have the 4:3 sensor.

New Alexa Models

Codex ARRI RAW Internal

Log Gamma

David — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:26:52 +0000

In a discussion recently on the formerly useful DVInfo Forums I was trying to explain to some self appointed experts that they had the wrong impression of how Log Gamma encoding works.

Some misleading marketing graphs gave them the idea Log crushes the highlights, giving you even less information than than regular gamma curves, rather than evenly distributing the information giving roughly the same amount of data bits per stop. Effectively linearizing the stop per data bit bucket.

I gave up on the discussion quickly as it was evidently pointless, but I wish this Art Adams article had been available then.

Log VS RAW

Samurai Firmware Update

David — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:10:46 +0000

A new firmware version is out for the Atomos Samurai. It adds more DNxHD functionality largely.

Samurai v4.1