RED’s 8K Helium Sensor wows DxOMark with a whopping score of 108, which is the highest score the camera and lens image quality review site has ever awarded. It is quite staggering when you dig in to the details of this review and you see just how good this sensor is according to them. In particular, its score of 4210 in the low light test was so good, that the authors of the review were stumped as to how RED had achieved it. To pack so many photosites (about 3.65 microns each) onto a 29.90mm x 15.77mm sized wafer (only 2/3 the size of a full frame sensor) is amazing. To do that and still produce clean images, with a dynamic range that is “higher than the best of the full-frame sensors in our database”, is just mind-boggling. We can’t wait to put the Helium 8K sensor through our own lab test as soon as possible, and of course we will share all the results with you. Over the past few years, Sebastian Woeber’s lab tests at cinema5D HQ in Vienna have received a widespread reputation of being completely unbiased, and we do not shy away from putting ourselves in hot water when manufacturers’ claims don’t live up to our results. You may wonder why a stills camera review like DxOMark would bother to test a digital film camera at all, particularly one that costs $49,500. Indeed, a quick look at the comments section of the review itself reveals several disgruntled readers who want to know why DxOMark have found the time to review a non-stills camera like the ‘Weapon’ and yet haven’t got around to scoring the behemoth that is the Pentax 645Z, which would surely be a shoe-in for a 100+ score. Still Photography from 8K Video I know several RED owners who use their cameras to capture high resolution stills, opening up incredible flexibility and new creative options to them. The very fact that a camera designed for film capture can churn out sixty 8192×4320 16-bit raw stills every single second is frankly a massive slap in the face for Canon, Nikon and Sony. RED used to be perceived as a pixel pusher who considered image quality of lesser importance to raw power, but with the Helium sensor, even the most ardent ARRI fan must admit that RED have come a long way with their sensor technology. Read the full review by clicking here. Specifications for RED WEAPON 8K S35 35.4 Megapixel CMOS 29.90 mm x 15.77 mm (Diagonal: 33.80 mm) 60 fps at 8K Full Format (8192 x 4320), 75 fps at 8K 2.4:1 (8192 x 3456) 16-bit REDCODE RAW + Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHR/HD 16.5+ stops of dynamic range (DxOMark pegged it at 15.2 Evs in their tests) 300 MB/s data speeds

We’re happy to announce that today, we are launching a month-long collaboration with our friends from Filmstro, “Music Month”. Music Month is a 3-part video series teaching you about the relationship between Music and Film. Filmstro is a brilliant piece of software that makes scoring for movies easy. We’ve used Filmstro on my rhino preservation documentary “Through the Thick” (watch here) earlier this year. Watch the first episode below!! Film Scoring Competition Please head over to Filmstro.com for details on how to enter the competition. Using the Filmstro app, you will be able to score one of 5 pieces of sample footage. The submissions will be reviewed by a jury and the best submissions will win the following prizes: RØDE Boompole Pro, SM4-R, NTG4+ and Newsshooter Kit Zhiyun-Tech Crane-M Camera Stabiliser Gimbal Zacuto $650 Gift voucher 10 FilmConvert licenses 4 x $250 bundles from Mister Horse 10 Filmstro For-Profit Licenses All the details on the Filmstro page! Music Month Episode 1 – Seeing Music And now without further ado, please join Seb Jaeger from Filmstro and me for the first episode of “Music Month”. We sit and analyse the fundamental building blocks of music: momentum, depth and power. Using example scenes from famous movies such as Harry Potter, Transformers, Star Wars and many more, we dissect how these building blocks work and how they interact. Join us and enjoy! On next week’s episode, we will put into practise what we learned today, and score footage using these three musical elements. Watch episode 2, “Seeing Music”, by clicking here. Watch episode 3, a tutorial of the upcoming Filmstro Premiere Pro plugin, by clicking here.  Seb Jaeger from Filmstro with Nino Leitner from cinema5D talking about musical scores of movies during Episode 1, “Seeing Music”.

Christmas season is the time when most of us finally have the time to spend with loved ones and indulge in long-neglected hobbies like overeating or excessive movie watching. It also gives us the time to sit back, relax and to watch behind-the-scenes documentaries about movies and filmmakers we love. The Weinstein Company has released a wonderful 40-minute conversation with two of my all-time favorite directors, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, recorded on Christmas Eve in Tarantino’s very own basement theater at his Los Angeles home. Most of you know cinema5D as a very gear-centric website and we don’t spend a lot of (or enough) time talking about the content of films. Be that as it may, I found it liberating to watch the conversation between these world-renowned filmmakers geeking out on numerous classic films that were shot and/or projected on 70mm film, only to prove their point that is the superior format to digital and 35mm projection. Particularly Tarantino’s encyclopedic knowledge of films is staggering, but that comes at no surprise – his films are like minefields of references to an uncountable number of film genres and particular classical films. For cameramen/cinematographers who never had the chance to shoot in 70mm (that would be 99.99% of us) it’s also very educating to hear for what creative reasons in particular these filmmakers value the scope of the 70mm over anything else. (Christopher Nolan, Tarantino, JJ Abrams and other filmmakers managed to “save” the production of 35mm film stock just over a year ago.) What is much more surprising than Tarantino’s knowledge though is the fact that he has succeeded in convincing a number of theater chains (like AMC) to bring back 70mm projectors to project his new film “The Hateful Eight” in this very format, which oftentimes meant necessary adaptations to the screening rooms that involved cutting additional holes in the projector walls in some cases. In the second half of the conversation, they turn to the score of “The Hateful Eight”, which was composed by none other than Ennio Morricone, who hadn’t composed any Western score since the early seventies. It’s particularly noteworthy as this is the first time that Tarantino uses an original score in one of his movies. He recounts the day he visited Morricone in his Rome apartment to sit down with him discussing the film and music, which is particularly entertaining. Happy holiday viewing!