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Filed under: 3D •Cameras •Post Production •Production •

Band Pro Presents Three Days in LA

December 17: The Band Pro Open House

Band Pro’s open house (which they’ve been doing for several years now) isn’t, at first glance, any different from other reseller-sponsored mini trade shows, like the ones that Professional Products puts on in the Washington DC area, Snader presents in the San Francisco area, or Alpha Video holds in the midwest (I mention these specifically because I’ve attended them either as an exhibitor or as a customer). If anything, it’s a bit smaller than those other shows; Band Pro doesn’t rent an exhibition hall or convention center, they simply set up a tent in their parking lot and have their vendors arrayed within.

The big tent stayed full well into the night.

Two things set the Band Pro event apart: the food and the toys.

Band Pro doesn’t merely have a snack table, they turn their showroom into an all-day catered buffet, with plenty of sitting and standing room (and a bar), so that attendees can eat their fill and network with each other.

In the Band Pro showroom: Middle Eastern food and drink, lots of discussion.

This year the food was Middle Eastern. Everything I sampled was top-notch, and the dolmas were quite possibly the best I’ve ever had. [Disclaimer: remember what I said about journalists and free food!]

As to the toys: Band Pro has the unfair advantage of being the exclusive US distributor for a lot of fancy digital cine stuff (like 2/3” Zeiss DigiPrimes and DigiZooms) and being situated next door to Hollywood, so there’s a lot of high-end production gear at Band Pro’s event that isn’t available for those other shows and/or doesn’t make a lot of sense to demo in their local markets.

Band Pro’s Randy Wedick shows Director / DP Joe Murray and DP Jordan Valenti the F35.

For example, how many places will you find Sony F35s sitting around? Band Pro had a couple. Band Pro was also showing off the SRW-9000 camcorder, which has seen some changes since it was unveiled at NAB.

The SRW-9000 at Band Pro in December…

...compare to the prototype SRW-9000 at NAB last April.

Something else you don’t see every day: Astro’s 56” 4K LCD monitor (which I don’t have a picture of, because, really, with a 619-pixel-wide photo, what am I gonna show?), which with the right material—a wide shot of a cherry tree in bloom, where you could see each petal of every blossom—made 1080p HD look as bad as HD makes SD look.

Cine-tal was showing their 42” Cinemage monitor, which is the on-set display I want on my next shoot… heck, it’s only $18,000-$22,000!

Randy Wedick demonstrates the SI-2K’s touchscreen interface for Joe Murray.

The SI-2K was there, too, so folks could get a first-hand look at its UI and its integrated copy of Iridas SpeedGrade for look creation.

And I don’t mean to dismiss the other vendors, a list of which may still be available here.

A New Line of PL-mount Primes

At about 2pm, Band Pro’s founder Amnon Band called for quiet…

Michael Bravin and Amnon Band stand ready to make an announcement.

He introduced Dr. Andreas Kaufmann of ACM, a company that may be best known in the USA as the majority owner of Leica.

Dr. Andreas Kaufmann of ACM describes developments.

ACM has been working for several years on a new series of lenses, for which Band Pro will be the worldwide distributor.

Finally, the unveiling…

...Mystery Primes revealed!

The crowd gathers ‘round.

The “Mystery Primes” are so called because of certain legal waiting periods that need to be observed (trademark registration or the like); we should learn their real names in mid February.

Michael Bravin told me that the goal of the Mystery Prime project was “Master Prime quality at a lower price”. It’s encouraging to see new lenses coming out aiming primarily at high performance instead of striving first for a low cost. The market isn’t entirely caught up in “a race to the bottom”, as many doomsayers keep saying (but make no mistake: I don’t dismiss or disrespect what Red, UniQoptics, Cooke, and Zeiss are doing to make PL-mount primes more affordable).

The 40mm T1.4 Mystery Prime on an F35.

From 6 feet to infinity, all Mystery Prime distance scales are the same, making focus-pulling easier.

With T1.4 max apertures, these lenses have large exit pupils.

The lenses are compact, dense units with huge exit pupils—think of lightweight titanium skins shrink-wrapped around large hunks of fancy aspheric glass.

40mm of T1.4 goodness in the hand: three pounds of glass and titanium.

The prototypes I handled has silky-smooth iris and focus rings, with no trace of slop or binding. Sweet! I’ll be very interested to see how the lenses perform once they start shipping next summer.

Three more prototype Mystery Primes.

Here, unedited, is Band Pro’s press release about the new lenses:

Band Pro offers new set of 4K “Mystery Prime” Lenses

Burbank California, December 17, 2009—At the One World on HD event, Band Pro Film and Digital introduces a groundbreaking new brand of ultra-high performance PL mount prime lenses, designed to deliver optical performance for true 4K imaging and beyond.


After three years of design and prototyping, the new T1.4 lenses, still code named “Mystery Primes” within Band Pro, are fully developed and 3 focal lengths are due to be demonstrated on the F35 camera at the event. The series of prime lenses, available exclusively worldwide from Band Pro, will eventually total 15 different focal lengths, ranging from 12mm to 150mm. Delivery of production models of eight of the lenses will begin in early summer of 2010.

“A unique use of aspheric technology and cutting-edge mechanical cine lens design provides the “Mystery Primes” with unmatched evenness of illumination across the entire 35mm frame and into the corners with no discernable breathing” said Michael Bravin, Chief Technologist of Band Pro. “Suppression of color fringing into the farthest corners of the frame is superior to any lenses I have ever seen.”

The entire set of “Mystery Primes” features unified distance focus scales, common size and location of focus and iris rings, and a 95mm threaded (for filters) lens front—all allowing quick interchange of lenses in a busy production environment. Another unique feature is an integrated threaded net ring in the rear of the PL mount. 

Designed to be light in weight yet rugged on the set, the mount and lens barrel are manufactured using lightweight high strength titanium materials. For example, a typical Mystery Prime weighs just 3 lbs (1.4kg).


The core set of “Mystery Primes”, which will start delivering by June 2010, includes 16mm, 18mm, 21mm, 25mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 65mm, 75mm, and 100mm lenses. Additional focal lengths will be delivered in a second phase.

The first 25 sets of lenses will be delivered to Otto Nemenz International. Their experienced team provided invaluable user input from the beginning of the design process.

Contact Band Pro for more information.

16 CFR Part 255 Disclosure

Band Pro offered me (and other out-of-town journos) two free nights at the Burbank Courtyard Marriott hotel to come and cover their open house. I paid my own flight costs from San Jose to Burbank, covered two additional nights at the hotel to attend the additional events, and rented a car for one day to get to the F35 training (the other events were within walking distance), a sum totaling $454.04. It’s not like I got a free trip out of the deal.

Jeff Cree reviewed and approved my use of some of the slides from his presentation, which I photographed off the screen, but he hasn’t reviewed my writeup. Any errors are mine alone.

I have known Michael Bravin for about 20 years, since we were both at Abekas Video Systems. I have known Jeff Cree for about 10 years, since he was with Sony and taught a colleague all the ins and outs of the HDW-700. I have met other Band Pro folks at shows (NAB, CineGear), but I haven’t yet been a customer of the company, just a tire-kicker.

Aside from the two free nights in the hotel, Band Pro has not influenced me with payments, discounts, or other blandishments to encourage a favorable article.

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