GTC RED, Alexa and 3D workshops
The Guild of Television Cameramen is organising day-long workshops on the RED One, the Arri Alexa and 3DTV.
Its RED workshop (A RED Day Out) will be on October 22, at Molinare, London, and will cover the technology and workflows involved, with camera shooting tests (including very low light) and an introduction to the Baselight grading facility with a demonstration of working with RED material. Talks and demos will be done by Molinare and 4K London.
The Alexa Camera workshop (16 November 2010), will take place at Arri Media, Uxbridge, near London, with morning and afternoon sessions (numbers limited to 15 in each), to allow everyone get their hands on the cameras, go through usage and workflow, and ask questions.
On December 7 there will be 3DTV – The Emerging Picture, at Telegenic, High Wycombe. It will cover: an overview of the development, principles and shooting techniques of stereoscopic 3D; and offer hands-on time with a range of 3ality active 3D rigs and, if available, a tour of one of Telegenic’s dedicated 3D OB trucks.
The GTC workshops are free to GTC members – non-members are welcome, if there’s space, for £80 (more than membership costs), but the 3D day is sold out.
The Guild recently held its 2010 Awards at the British Film Institute in London – full details at: www.tvbeurope.com/main-content/full/gtc-announces-2010-award-winners
www.gtc.org.uk
www.molinare.co.uk
www.4klondon.com
http://arrimedia.com/
www.telegenic.co.uk
MacVideo Expo on 19th October
Dedo Weigert (pictured), the inventor of the Dedolight, will be giving a 45-minute lighting demonstration at MacVideo Expo in London next Tuesday.
There will be numerous other talks and demonstrations from manufacturers and users, covering: camera technology, editing, encoding, lighting, sound, motion graphics, and of course, video on the Mac.
Blackmagic will be showing off its new Da Vinci Resolve colour grading suite; Autodesk is demonstrating Smoke on the Mac; G-Technology will address storage for content creation; and Avid will show how Media Composer 5 works on the Mac. There will also be short talks from Holdan (looking at AVCCAM and iPod teleprompting) and Corbis Motion, the footage library.
These and others, such as JVC, Matrox and Atomos (with its new Ninja ProRes recorder), will also be exhibiting.
The MacVideo Expo will take place at The Royal Society of Medicine (One Wimpole Street, London W1G 0AE), starting at 4:30pm with the exhibit area. The main show runs from 6.30 to 10pm. Tickets are £10.
www.macvideo.tv/events/
Transvideo wins Cinec Award for 3D monitor
Transvideo has won a Cinec Award for its CineMonitorHD 3DView, the first HD-SDI monitor with a synchroniser for 3D D-Cinema field use. It was one of only six awards made, and Transvideo won in the Camera Equipment category.
The CineMonitorHD 3DView is currently being used by Wim Wenders and Alain Derobe on the forthcoming feature film Pina, as well as several other movies around the world, including Harold & Kumar and Darkest Hour.
The CineMonitorHD family includes monitors with a synchroniser to enable users to shoot 3D films with two DSLRs or other non-genlockable cameras. It also includes some wireless units that give freedom to the stereographer on the set. The 3DView includes several modes to help the operator to correlate cameras and to preview the image in false colours mode. It also features multi-format inputs (HD/SD-SDI, HDMI and composite video) and a useful genlock analyser that precisely analyses the synchronisation status of the cameras in a graphical way. The 3DView family comes with 6- to 15-inch screens.
Transvideo has also made Tiffen International its official UK distributor. The agreement, completed at IBC, covers all Transvideo products including monitors and the Titan HD video link system.
Tiffen will use its affiliate, The London Filter Company, as its UK shop front for Transvideo products. “This is the perfect addition to our range and we know the Transvideo products very well. The field HD and SD monitors are already a popular choice for Steadicam and other location monitoring with our customer base of camera assistants and Steadicam operators working in film or HD acquisition. Transvideo provides the high quality product required for in-field monitoring and to generally withstand all the knocks and bangs of everyday production. They always provide good pictures in all conditions,” said Carey Duffy, Operations Director at LFC (pictured).
transvideointl.com/
www.tiffen.com
Lensbaby Tilt Transformer
Panasonic AF101 and Sony Handycam NEX-VG10E users who want to create a tilt/shift effect with their cameras will be able to fit a new Lensbaby Composer with Tilt Transformer, which will allow them to mount any Nikon lens and tilt up to twice the amount of standard tilt-shift lenses.
The adaptor will initially fit any Panasonic or Olympus digital camera using a Micro Four Thirds mount (such as the upcoming AF101) and will also come in a version later in the year for A-mount cameras such as Sony’s NEX range, priced at $250 and $350 respectively.
The Tilt Transformer allows users to capture pictures that have a slice of focus through the image, bordeRED by a soft blur. Lensbaby already makes relatively inexpensive, lower-quality Optic Swap lenses allowing interesting tilt/shift type effects, but the ability to fit a higher quality lens make them even more interesting.
“We got excited when we realized that the Lensbaby Optic Swap system could be extended to include Nikon mount camera lenses, including primes, fisheyes, zooms and macro lenses,” said Craig Strong, Lensbaby Co-Founder and President.
Tilting a Nikon mount lens on the Tilt Transformer will place the slice of focus in different orientations within the image. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal slices are possible depending on the direction the lens is tilted. Objects in both the foreground and background can be in focus within that slice. For example, a user can focus on one person close up in the left portion of the frame while also focusing on someone standing much further away from the camera on the right side of the frame. The ability to focus on several items at once (while blurring out the rest of the image) when each item is placed at a different distance from the camera, is typically possible only with traditional tilt-shift lenses or view cameras. It can also be achieved in post, but that is easier for a single frame than for a video clip.
The size of the slice of focus is dependent upon the aperture used. For example, f/1.4 will produce a very thin slice of focus with abundant blur. F/22 will produce a very wide slice of focus with just at tiny bit of blur. Also, when tilting extremely and shooting at a very wide open aperture like f/1.4 the slice of focus will appear even thinner than when shooting at f/1.4 with minimal tilt.
There is also a built-in mechanism that allows Nikon G lenses to function properly at all apertures. Nikon G lenses do not have an aperture ring on the lens itself. This mechanism allows the aperture to open and close by manually rotating the lens.
The Tilt Transformer is also compatible with the Lensbaby Optic Swap System and ships with a Double Glass Optic installed, while other optics can be swapped in and out, for different effects (such as Pinhole or Soft Focus).
