WELCOME TO our 24-page NAB Headline News section, where we take you through some of the highs of the show, whether new products, features, concepts or even new market positioning from key industry vendors. This was one busy show: of course the registered final
Blackmagic Design
New camera a bridge to post workflows
By Fergal Ringrose
NOT FORthe first time Blackmagic Design CEO Grant Petty stole NAB headlines, this time by announcing the $2,995 Blackmagic Cinema Camera with 13 stops of dynamic range, high resolution 2.5K sensor and built- in SSD recorder. At an NAB press conference
Petty said the camera “was born from the problems we encountered with cameras. With a lot of cameras the screens are hidden. RAW recording isn’t available; it seems like every new camera that comes out is a custom format.”
“Most video cameras clip the
range — it’s frustrating for us,” he said. “The lenses are built in, and we feel that interchangeable lenses are important. “There are three key things — higher than HD resolution, wide dynamic range and colour correction. That’s what we wanted to see.
“On our Cinema Camera there’s
LCD metadata entry just like a smartphone. The camera itself has a very creative feel, and Thunderbolt is built-in. It’s all designed so that the whole post production workflow goes really smoothly.” “People relate to cameras in different ways,” said Petty.
“Some are very creative; some like a solid studio look; and some want a rugged news style. There are three personalities in the way people relate to cameras and we feel we’ve covered these three different ways,” he said. “We think it has a creative modern design and is very comfortable to use.” Blackmagic’s Simon Westland
told TVBEurope “we’ve spent years plugging cameras in; we understand the outputs. We’ve worked with all the camera manufacturers and we know the issues. People love the shallow depth of field, the 24p look and the optics of DSLRs — but they
Grant Petty introduces the Cinema Camera at a packed NAB press conference on the show floor
dislike the heavy compression and that the video is clipped. These cameras are designed for stills, not for grading or matching in post production.” Post Production President
Peter Barker added, “Cameras like the 5D are smaller and more affordable and create opportunities — but they create problems as well. We wanted to be uncompressed for visual effects and grading. We thought, let’s design the camera the way we would like it to be.”
According to Barker the Blackmagic Cinema Camera could become “a companion to the 5D-type cameras, that’s the way we see it. You can mount the disk to any computer, and access your content straight away.” The camera has open file
format support, colour correction with full version of DaVinci Resolve and a built in LCD with metadata entry, all in a compact design for US$2,995. www.blackmagic-design.com
attendance figure of 91,932 released by NAB is meaningless, as the NAB folks don’t count us in first time we arrive at the show — unlike IBC. So their big figure actually includes ‘registered attendees’ and they have no idea how many of these people actually showed up at the Las Vegas Convention Center! Anecdotally, we can confirm that this was the busiest NAB
show in years: if you cannot get a sandwich or a drink anywhere in the show at lunchtime, thanks to the huge queues for everything that moves, you know it’s a busy show. There was a new, healthy
dynamic at the show — maybe because despite the battle to incorporate second screen and social media in ‘linear’ schedules, there is a realisation
that broadcast television remains robust, compelling and commercial. We expect that dynamic to carry through the summer into the IBC period to follow. This month: headline news from many of the big brands at the show. Next month: analytical perspectives on what it all means for Europeans from the TVBEurope writing team at the show.