It only feels like it was NAB 2019 last week, but we are already nearing the end of the year. Our very brief time in the beautiful streets of Amsterdam for IBC2019 flew by last week but as always there’s a lot to talk about! This year’s show was dominated by two very large camera releases from two big players in the camera world, so let’s start there…
Canon C500 Mark II
Canon had their latest entry into the Cinema EOS range, the C500 Mark II on display in several configurations. We managed to get our hands on the camera last week, so if you want to hear our full thoughts make sure to check out our overview video here and our first hands-on here.
Talking about Canon, CoreSWX released the first BP-A series 3rd party battery that communicates with Canon’s cameras and doesn’t require an unreliable D-Tap to DC cable to power the camera. The Nano-C98 is a 98wh battery with a single Smarttap P-Tap out and a 5v USB out. The battery can be charged via either the P-Tap or with OEM Canon chargers. Core makes some fantastic batteries and I know this is something that so many Canon XF705, C300II and C200 owners have been waiting for.
Sony PXW-FX9
The long-awaited update to the massively popular PXW-FS7 was also on display this year on Sony’s huge stand. It was nice to get some more hands-on time with the PXW-FX9 as our session at Pinewood Studios was pretty limited, you can watch our initial impressions here. Sony also had the new 16-35mm T3.1 E-Mount servo lens on display. This is a redesigned version of their excellent G master lens. This could be a very good option for people wanting the usability benefits over a stills lens. We will be doing a review on this lens as soon as we get our hands on one so make sure to watch our social feeds for that.
We are excited to get some more hands-on time with both the FX9 and C500ii and to do a full comparison and in-depth review of both of the new systems. Let us know in the comments which one you would choose!
ZCAM Updates
ZCAM also had their updated F6 & S6 on display. They have made a few changes to the body design over the E2. The body is larger and now features an interchangeable lens mount system. They have also improved the buttons. They all now have a more tactile click to them instead of the slightly mushy feeling ones on the E2. They are also developing an E-ND mount which would be very handy for a lot of run and gun shooters!
On the ZCAM booth, they also had Tilta’s new NPF to V-Lock backplate. This takes what FXlion did with theirs but brings the battery out further from the camera and also allows you to use the HDMI on the back of the camera without needing a right angle adapter. So if you’re wanting to rig your E2 out this may the best way to add a v-lock mount currently.
Sigma FP Mirrorless
This camera is quite interesting for a few reasons, but one of our favourites is the director’s viewfinder options. Because of the full-frame sensor, you will have the ability to crop into the specific field of views of different camera formats. Couple that with the short flange of L mount you will be able to put a huge range of lenses onto the camera. Sigma has also made several accessories for the FP, the main ones being a range of grips and the LVF-11, which is an LCD viewfinder to really make the director viewfinder experience complete. At the theoretical price point of under 3000 dollars, this could be a very good option for people wanting a reasonably priced digital full-frame directors viewfinder.
The camera itself felt extremely solid in the hand and has such a great small form factor. One thing I wish that Sigma could add would be GPS for the director’s viewfinder mode for previs and the ability to import LUT’s. Overall this camera looks to be a very interesting option but it’s hard to say exactly where it’s going to sit in the mirrorless line up until the specs, price and image are fully finalised. As soon as we get our hands on one we will let you know! Talking about Sigma let’s move onto some lenses!
Sigma Classic
The Sigma Classic series were announced in July and I’ve been dying to check them out ever since! These new lenses take the already fantastic Sigma Cine line of lenses but with tweaked coatings. These coating changes aren’t just the front and the back of the lens. Each focal length has different coating changes throughout the lens to keep the image and T stop consistent. If you look side by side you can easily see the difference between the two. The classics have a shiny silvery glow.
Obviously evaluating a lens on the show floor is very difficult, but from what I could see, the overall contrast has been lifted and the flares are completely different from the original Cines. The lenses now flare very easily and the flare consists of a lot of rainbow flares. I really like the image of these, and we are planning on doing a full review as soon as we can get our hands on them! Along with the Classic’s, Sigma also showcased their new L to PL adapter and their existed Sigma Cine lenses with an update to add Cooke i/Data. If you own a set currently there will be an option to have this installed. For more details please contact your account manager.
Sirui 50mm 1.33x Anamorphic
Affordable anamorphic is an expanding section of the market currently and Sirui, who previously made tripods, are now entering the lens game with their 50mm F1.8 1.33x anamorphic prime lens. Their new 50mm prime is the first in a planned set made Sony E, Fuji X or MFT mount. They will cover APS-C sized sensors, feature a 1.33x squeeze, have a close focus of 0.85m, weigh roughly 560 grams and be a pretty compact size of only 10.6cms. From the very brief time I played with the lens, the image looked alright considering the price point of around 700 dollars. The only thing I would say is the flares may be a bit much for some but this is pretty normal for budget anamorphic but this was a pre-production unit so hopefully they can refine it a bit more and add some lens gears to the solid housing. Again considering the price this lens is really interesting and I can see this being a very popular lens for the low-end market!
IRIX Cine
IRIX has been making stills lenses for a while now, but they have just entered the cine lens game with their rehousing of their 11mm T4.3 and 150mm T3 Macro. They had both of these lenses on display on the show floor and we managed to check them out. The 11mm is a rectilinear wide-angle lens with a 43.3mm image circle to cover full-frame, a front diameter of 95mm and your standard 0.8 gears. The build quality felt really solid and iris and focus movements felt smooth and consistent.
This goes for the 150mm Macro also. Out of the two, I would say the 150mm is the one I am more excited for. It looked very good optically from what I could see at the show and there are only a few macro lenses that are designed for video or cine use, so more competition in this space is great! We should be getting a couple of test units into the office for us to test asap so keep an eye out on our website for more details!
DZO Optics
We first saw the DZO MFT zoom back at NAB and since then they have gained a lot of hype in the mirrorless filmmaking community. These affordable cine zoom lenses are looking to bring the cine zoom lens experience to the MFT filmmaking community and at a decent price point. We have checked out the 20-70mm T2.9 before but not the 10-24mm T2.9, which I think will be the more popular out of the two due to the 2x crop factor of MFT sensors. The build quality of these lenses is pretty solid and the image from what I can see looks decent considering the price. DZO has been kind enough to lend me a 10-24mm to test so I will be doing a full review on them both very soon so make sure you’re subscribed for that.
Aputure
Aputure seems to be releasing new products every single show recently but this year they released two new products. The first was the LS 300x. The 300x is a bi-colour version of the extremely popular 300D Mark II. This fixture can now go from 2700K to 6500K. It has kept the same ballast as the 300D MKII but with the addition of a CCT dial. However, the convenience of having a bi-colour fixture does come with one compromise which is the brightness. Between 4400k & 5600k it is as bright as the 300DMKI and either side of that it is as bright as a 120DMKII.
The second product was announced on the Sunday on the stand and that was the 600D. This new fixture is capable of outputting almost twice the amount of light as the 300DMKII and is rated at 600W output with a 720W draw. The light itself has shrunk in length but has gained some width, the ballast is however considerably bigger due to the now 4 v-locks batteries required to power it at full output without mains. The unit on display was a pre-production unit and Aputure have said that they are working on making the ballast as small as they can before the full production release. This light is interesting because it produces nowhere near as much heat as previous light sources of this output. This can only be a positive when you’re on set and we are super excited to get one into fully test!
Tentacle Sync Track-E Recorder
Tentacle has seen great success with their Sync E and their latest product on display at IBC looks like it could become a very popular one! The Track E is a pocket-sized audio recorder with a Sync E built-in. All you have to do is pair this with a Sync E on your camera and you have perfectly synced audio in a very small and easy to use package. The device’s design is really simple with a few led notification lights and a locking Sennheiser jack for use with a range of lavalier microphones. You can use the device with their app to control levels but it uses 32-bit floating technology which essentially means you can record at any level and then adjust the levels in post, kind of like RAW for stills & video. It also records to a user-accessible Micro SD, has a USB-C port for charging and data transfer and has a battery life of at least 10 hours! They should be shipping early next year and we can see this system being very popular.
Blackmagic
As you would have expected from Blackmagic, Founder Grant took to their YouTube channel on the 13th of September to delve into their IBC2019 announcements. Over this hour several new products as well as software updates where explored. The most exciting ones to me being the new ATEM Mini, new 12G 5 & 7-inch video assist recorders & the new Blackmagic RAW updates. Blackmagic released a new Blackmagic RAW benchmark tool which will allow you to evaluate the playback of different compressions, resolutions and framerates of BRAW your system can handle. With this though came an even bigger announcement, a plugin that enables native BRAW editing and playback for Premiere Pro! Before this, you had to purchase a 3rd party plugin called BRAW Studio but now you have the same controls as you have in Resolve in Premiere which is awesome!
They also announced the ATEM Mini, a tiny addition to their already popular switcher line up. This Mini takes a leaf out of the Web Presenter book as when you connect it via the USB-C it will appear as a webcam which will make compatibility with streaming software easy! The market for this is huge because of its MSRP of only £255 plus vat and the huge amount of users that low budget streaming applies to and how much production value a switcher with this feature set can add to those productions.
The last product that caught my eye was the two new video assists. These new recorders feature a new 2500 nits screen with P3 coverage. The brightness of the old video assist screens was one of the biggest downsides when comparing them to other recorders on the market so this is a great feature to add. The battery type has also changed from LP-E6 to Sony L series which again is a great choice due to the different sizes of L Series available. You can record up to UHD60p in either ProRes or DNx formats and also now BRAW when using a supported camera which is currently only the Panasonic EVA-1 or Canon C300 MK II. Fingers crossed they add some more options for this as it may give ProRes RAW a run for its money!
SmallHD
SmallHD had a range of new and interesting kit on display this year. The main pieces being their new line of on set and post-production 4K monitors. There will be two different series, Vision & Cine. Both of these series will have a 13, 17 & 24” version. The vision series is designed with image quality as the primary focus and the Cine series is focused on being the go-to on set monitor due it’s high brightness of up to 2,500 nits. Both monitors feature a range of inputs with the newest being 4 individual 12G-SDI inputs. The Vision series has over 2000 local dimming zones & 114% DCI P3 coverage. Whereas the Cine series uses an edge-lit panel that will have a daylight viewable brightness of 1000 and 2500 nits and 100% DCI P3 coverage. Both are built very well and will feature ambient light sensors to adjust the brightness of the monitor depending on the lighting scenario. The image looked nice on both of these and I’m excited to see what the retail on these are and what the image quality is like when paired with one of Teradek’s 4K systems.
The Cine 7 was released at NAB earlier this year and has been received very well. At release, the Cine 7 was able to control ARRI cameras but at the show, SmallHD announced the release of their RED camera control pack. This is a fantastic update because it could be a very interesting option for a lot of owner ops wanting a more versatile monitor that they can use across systems instead of being tied down the RED’s monitor range. The Cine 7 is also a decent amount brighter than most other RED monitors with their 7” Ultra-Brite being the exception. However, this is £3500ex vat whereas the standard Cine 7 is £1575 and you also have the benefit of getting a range of built-in Teradek receivers which again add to its versatility. We managed to check out the update at the show and the menu looks really clean and well laid out and you can control every single part of the RED menu system. The only downside to using this is that the monitor takes up your CTRL port, it would be great if Creative Solutions could create a CTRL port multiplexer so you can use both the monitor and another source. Also, the Cine 7 physical button attachment looks really nice and will give end users who don’t want fingerprints all over their monitor an option to use the Cine7 still.
Teradek
Teradek also had a few new products and they look really exciting! They are mainly aimed at the higher end of the market but should pair with SmallHD’s new 4K monitors really well. Teradek Prism is a rack-mounted 4K HEVC encoder/decoder system for live production and broadcast, it can process up to 4k60 in 10-bit 4:2:2. The other two new systems fall under the Orbit name. With this Teradek have announced both a PTZ version and regular version. The Orbit system is designed to transmit a 4K HDR lossless 10-bit 4:2:2 image with < 1ms latency up to 2km (line of sight). The PTZ version does exactly the same but it’s limited to 1000ft away and has been designed to mount onto the bottom of a range of PTZ cameras and will allow you to control the camera using RS422 or RS232. There will be both an HD version and 4K version of the PTZ version. This setup will make mounting and cabling an absolute breeze when using PTZ systems and I can see it being a very popular option. The regular Orbit also has a 7-pin LEMO connector which also offers RS-232 and RS-422 for control, it also uses the same iOS and Android app for pairing and configuring.
Well, that was our very brief overview of IBC2019 and all though we have mentioned a lot, we do have some honourable mentions didn’t make it into the full article.
- Aaton Wooden Hand Grip
- Atomos Shogun 7 3000 Nits Update
- ARRI Orbiter
- Bright Tangerine C500 MK II Cage
- Bright Tangerine Misfit Kick
- Cartoni Maxima 50
- Cmotion CPRO Camera Control Update
- Flowcine Xpine Gimbal Vest
- Fujinon 80-250mm T2.9
- FXLion 98wh Nanon
- iFootage Komodo F7 Head
- Miller CiNX 5 & 7
- OConnor 1040 + Flowtech System
- RED Ranger Gemini & Helium
- Rotolight Titan X2
- Samyang Xeen CF
- Soonwell PH-70 Power Handle
- Tokina 135mm T1.5 Vista Prime
- Vaxis 7″ Wireless Monitor
We have a dedicated web page just for new releases so if you want to order anything that I have mentioned here head over to – https://cvp.com/catalogue/tag/ibc2019new
There is also an IBC aftershow event being held at our Studley office on the 3rd of October where we will be showing off a bunch of new kit from the show. If you would like to sign up please follow this link – https://cvp.com/events/ibc-aftershow-at-cvp-midlands
