I was shooting recently with the FS100UK with the kit 18-200 lens, a Litepanel mini plus, a Sennheiser wireless receiver, and a Shotgun microphone in a poorly lit ‘”run & gun scenario”. The stock “handle” was not up to the task of supporting all of these accessories and required quite a few black hair elastics just to keep things from bouncing around. When I got back and reviewed the condition of our FS-100 handles in rentals, I said, ‘There has to be some better way of handling this’. With locking screws stripped and parts on back order from Sony, a simple repair was not the best solution. Enter Caleb Crosby of Shot Grip with his Wood & Aluminum handles for the FS100. (http://shootingmachine.net/) I immediately took a liking to the handles, and worked quickly to outfit our rental cameras with this accessory (featured in our showroom). Why worry about the plastic breaking again when we could replace it with something that provided a better end-user experience, more functionality, and more mounting options — not to mention a pretty sweet look too! We took advantage of Shot Grip’s stub clamps to re-mount the stock microphone, and a few others stub clamps for lighting accessories and a wireless transmitter. The package was complete! Caleb came by recently and we chatted about development of a new product he unveiled at NAB. Caleb will be getting us some more handles from craftsmen in a shop just north of us in Maine. I’m so grateful for such an easy and elegant solution to this problem. Adam Van Voorhis, Equipment Manager adamvanvoorhis@rule.com
Observations from NAB 2012
Each year that I attend NAB I usually end up having two or three words that sum up the most popular or most discussed trends at the show. This year I would have to say Thunderbolt and 4K were the buzzword winners. It was also interesting to see companies suddenly dive into market segments that used to be “reserved”. Blackmagic Design is suddenly a camera manufacturer and Canon is suddenly a production monitor company. Go Pro offers WiFi and high speed goes handheld with the TS3Cine. was everywhere this year. The AJA Ki Pro QUAD, Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera, and of course drives of all sorts. There was even a 30 meter optical Thunderbolt cable from Sumitomo.
The term “4K Capable” means that external 4K recorders can be attached to such cameras as the Canon EOS C500 and 1D C, Sony FS700, F65 and others. Canon showed a prototype of a 4K production monitor that looked remarkable. LED lighting is now ready for production use. Notably absent this year – 3D! Fujinon showed a lightweight 19mm-90mm PL cine zoom lens with a detachable servo drive unit
Angenieux also showed a Servo unit compatible with thei lightweight Optimo line : Optimo 45-120, Optimo 28-76, Optimo 15-40 for Film and Digital cinema, Optimo DP 16-42 and Optimo DP 30-80 for Digital Cinema.