Atomos Samurai Blade – new affordble disk recorder with 720p IPS panel

Atomos updates the Samurai, their famous SDI harddisk recorder, and adds a high quality 720p lcd screen on top making it a true solution as a monitor / disk recorder combination.

We have checked out the Atomos products several times in the past as they offer an affordable solution to get more quality out of our large sensor cameras. These devices allow you to record the live hdmi or SDI feed from your camera directly into a high quality format, widely used Apple ProRes among others.

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Odyssey 7 – next generation 7″ field recorder + oled monitor

Convergent Design, maker of the famous nanoFlash & Gemini 4:4:4 just announced a new recorder that looks very nice and promising. This field recorder + oled monitor is targeted at HDSLR indie filmmakers as well as professionals with a codec license lease system.

Many filmmakers, especially in documentary are often struggling with too much gear hanging from their camera rig and cameras taking too long to setup. Harddisk recorders and monitors could be built into cameras, but so far the camera manufacturers have not come up with a device that fulfills those needs. Once again a gear manufacturer wants to make our lives easier:

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An LCD loupe for EOS C100 / C300 / C500. Why not.

Remember Sebastien Devaud’s Canon C100 introduction film (LINK) in September? Well he’s back and he shows us a product that might be a pretty useful and affordable alternative to one of those fancy electronic viewfinders.

The Deitygear 4″ high quality loupe makes us nostalgic and lets us relive the times when we put LCDVF‘s on the rear of our 5D mark II’s. The Deity goes on the EOS C’s flip out LCD and transforms it into a good viewfinder.

I haven’t found the specs for the EOS C’s LCD resolution. But it must me somewhere in between 640×480 and 800×600, probably closer to the former. It’s an important point to consider if the original display resolution is sufficient. Because the loupe won’t give you a sharper image, just make the dots bigger and block out external light.

Official website: www.deitygear.com

via Cinescopophilia

IBC 2012 – FSI’s affordable grade-1 monitors [UPDATED: 5% off]

We thank our sponsor B&H who
has made cinema5D’s news
coverage of IBC 2012 possible.

Get your gear through B&H to support this platform: www.bhphotovideo.com

[UPDATE 27/09/12]:
5% DISCOUNT for cinema5D readers on any new FSI equipment:
Use the following coupon on checkout: “CINEMA5D” (LINK)
(valid until October 31st)

Here we found a company that produces some really really nice color correction monitors: Flanders Scientific Inc.
Their grade-1, 10-bit 17″ full HD panel (CM107W) is $3300 while the very popular (LM2140W) 21,5″ panel (8 bit) is $2490.

These monitors looked really really nice and in terms of the size I’d prefer the 21,5″ or the very similar 23″ model. It is 8-bit, but it looked superb.

Up until now the company offered their free of charge calibration service to US customers only, but coming December they’ll have established a European office that offers the same service to FSI customers in Europe.

[UPDATE 27/09/12]:
Bram told me that even though their large monitors don’t have an hdmi input, they do have a DVI connector. So you can use a simple DVI to hdmi adapter to get hdmi connectivity. (LINK)

I also did some research on 8-bit vs. 10-bit panels as I wasn’t sure if I’d get a Canon DSLR-looking image on the LM-2340W panel when grading 10-bit footage. Apparently most computer monitors and also television sets are 6-bit, even my Macbook Pro is 6-bit. See, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera footage looks just fine on the Macbook, so I take it 8-bit will be just fine for basic color correction that doesn’t have to be ultra spot on. All the new FSI monitors just received a firmware update to now support 12-bit processing by the way. Great job Bram, keep up the good work.

Check out their stuff on the website: www.ShopFSI.com