Last week, San Francisco rental house extraordinaire Videofax took delivery of Sony F65 #15, and on Thursday BandPro’s Jeff Cree came up to show off the camera to local DPs, ACs, and DITs. I was able to shoot some photos and take some notes, which I have pulled together and annotated, in a somewhat scattershot manner, for your viewing pleasure.  [Update 2012.01.29: typo & terminology fixes]

While all the attention is focused on large-single-sensor cine-style camcorders, Panasonic has come out with a line of high-quality 1/3” 3-MOS handhelds that leave little to be desired. The HPX250 is a handheld version of the shoulder-mount HPX370, while the AC160 and its simplified sibling, the AC130, bring the same fundamentals to the AVCCAM (AVCHD) world. [Update 2012.01.30: SDI out is 10-bit only on 250, not 160.]

If you’re in the market to rent or buy “affordable” PL-mount primes (e.g., under $10,000/lens), you won’t want to pass up this test.

Sony has three E-Mount primes coming out right about now, and I had a chance to play with prototypes of them attached to an NEX-FS100 LSS camcorder. Here are my impressions, and a short test.

[Update 9 Dec: ASG Large Raster Workflow seminar Tuesday in San Francisco.]

1) Media Solutions and Sony present Sony PMW-F3/NEX-FS100u Demo and Workflow Solutions this Monday, 12 December, at Meets The Eye Studios, San Carlos CA (Northern California, between San Francisco and San Jose).

Last Thursday, Canon announced the EOS C300 (EF mount) and C300 PL (PL mount) “Cinema EOS” camcorders in a much-heralded rollout at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Saturday, I had a chance to visit Paramount and see it for myself. [Update 2011-12-16: fixed malformed movie embed code.]

Next week I’ll be involved in two public events, one in Burbank (a panel on production technology) and the other in San Carlos CA (our shooting stages open house). Come by to visit, to ask questions, to complain, or to throw things. Also: what’s in the pipeline after that.

You can tell a camera has struck a chord when its users start turning out aftermarket accessories that are themselves objects of desire.

Cine Gear Expo, “the film, video, and digital expo with focus”, offered the usual kid-in-a-candy-store experience, and introduced new light-emitting plasma (LEP) instruments, new cameras, and a revolutionary new electronic shuttering device that gives digital cameras better motion portrayal capabilities than even the best mechanically-shuttered film or digital camera. [Updated 2011-06-11: removed erroneous “12 Hz” shutter rate reference.]

The chart at the top of the page shows the chromaticity coordinates of the wide-gamut LEDs used in the DSC Labs NorthernLights chart at the end of this video clip. The LEDs get around the problem of making highly-saturated reflective patches and allow you to test the limits of a camera’s saturated-color handling ability.

Here’s the coolest “new thing” in lighting I saw at the show: Photon Beard’s Nova, a focusable Fresnel-type instrument using a LEP (light-emitting plasma). It’s unlike any other lighting instrument we use—other than the sun—in that it doesn’t pass electricity directly through the light-giving element (tungsten filament, diode junction, rarefied gas surrounded by phosphors, carbon arc, etc.).

Steve Hullfish has already nicely described the Single Chip Camera Evaluation that Robert Primes, ASC organized at Zacuto’s behest. I just have a couple of comments to add, along with images of the three charts of actual numbers that emerged from the tests.

There wasn’t one overall theme to the NAB camera announcements. 4K cameras and HD-resolution LSS (large single sensor) cameras shared the spotlight with workaday small-sensor cameras packing ever more features into the same sorts of form factors we’ve seen for years. But Sony did make a leap into uncharted waters with the NEX-FS100, while Ikonoskop’s A-cam dII throws out all the rules, rethinking camera design from square one. [Updated 2011-04-30: corrected F65’s sensor size.]

Another NAB, and more camera support kit for cameras big and small. Here I look at just a few things that caught my eye.

More lenses! Crikey, RED builds an affordable PL-mount camera, Sony and Panasonic bring out even more affordable PL-capable cameras, and suddenly there are PL-mount (or interchangeable-mount) lenses everywhere!

I’m a Chauncey Gardner when it comes to 3D: I like to watch. But as long as stereo 3D requires a bulky mirror rig, or a data cart like the one below, watching is all I’m likely to do. Fortunately, NAB shows that I’m not the only one who feels that way: there were plenty of [somewhat more] practical solutions for shooting stereo.

If NAB had an unofficial theme this year, it was “the year of compact on-camera digital recorders.” And the subtext? Suddenly, silently: ProRes everywhere.

UK company FilmLight is packaging their high-end color-grading system Baselight as an “under US$1000” plugin for Final Cut Pro. They’ve also announced the new Blackboard 2 soft-key control surface, and they’re now the non-US distributor for Visionary Archive.

The folks over at DSLR News Shooter found that Ikegami is making a 4/3” PL-mount camcorder—Ikegami, fercryinoutloud!

Panasonic’s Jan Crittenden Livingston shows off some of the 3rd-party accessories for the large-single-sensor, interchangeable-lens AF100 camcorder.

900x506 QuickTime movie, 1 Mbit/sec h.264, 38 Mbytes.

Panasonic’s Steve Cooperman discusses the upcoming HPX250, a handheld camcorder with a 21x zoom recording AVC-Intra to P2 cards, as well as all flavors of DV, DVCPRO, and DVCPROHD. Think of it as a full-res HVX200 or HPX170 for the Modern Era.

900x506 QuickTime movie, 1 Mbit/sec h.264, 13 Mbytes.

Steve Cooperman of Panasonic describes the 1/3” 3MOS AG-3DP1 3D P2 camcorder. It should be available later this year, but pricing has not been announced.

900x506 QuickTime movie, 1 Mbit/sec h.264, 12 Mbytes.

Panasonic’s Steve Cooperman talks about the AJ-HPX3100, a 2/3” 3CCD camcorder costing less than US$20,000.

900x506 QuickTime movie, 1 Mbit/sec h.264, 19 Mbytes.

[Corrected 2011-06-06: CCD, not MOS]

Some quick notes from Arri’s Monday press conference, plus some from-the-floor photos.

Sound Devices introduced two new solid-state video recorders, and FFV showed off one, too. Also: a very cool camera testing chart from DSC Labs, and name tags that display video.

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Sunday night, Sony lets a few journos in to see what’s new before the doors open Monday morning.

Sony’s Juan Martinez shows off some of the features of the NEX-FS100 “NXCAM Super35” camcorder, as well as a new viewfinder attachment for the PMW-F3. I also grabbed a quick pic of the dustproof / splashproof HXR-NX70 camcorder enduring watery indignities.

900x506 QuickTime movie, 1 Mbit/sec h.264, 44 Mbytes.

On Sunday I sat in on several classes and sessions, to get a feel for the non-show-floor goings-on at NAB. Herewith, my fragmented, barely-edited notes.

The Las Vegas Convention Center, where NAB is normally held, and what goes on there on the Saturday before the show starts (clarification: DCS sessions are in the South Hall meeting rooms, not North Hall as my narration might imply).

900x506 QuickTime movie, 1 Mbit/sec h.264, 17 Mbytes.

This image of the “NXCAM 35” camcorder is lifted from a promotional email for Sony’s Super 35mm Seminars at NAB (more below).

Jon Fauer shows a different configuration from his Japan trip along with his un-embargoed writeup.

This past Monday, Art Adams and I went up to Chater Camera to have a quick look at the tonal-scale renderings of the PMW-F3 and AG-AF100, two new large-single-sensor (LSS) interchangeable-lens camcorders, and to torture them with resolution, aliasing, and IR sensitivity tests. [updated 2001-03-19: RED M vs M-X aliasing comparison.]