Check it Out: The Profoto Pro-B4 1000 Air Generator

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The weather’s getting nice, so let’s bring those cameras outdoors! If you’re setting up strobes on location, Adorama recommends the Profoto Pro-B4 1000 Air Generator: the fastest, toughest, most precise battery generator on the market. At lower power settings, it fires up to 30 flashes per second, while the recycling time on full power is less than a second.

With flash durations down to 1/25,000s, the Pro-B4 offers the shortest flash durations of any generator on the market. It is now possible to freeze motion in a way that was not possible before.

The battery can fully recharge in less than 45 minutes and can be recharged while in use. This means that the pack can be used continuously.

The Pro-B4 offers an 11 f-stop power range and has two independent outlets with individual and intuitive controls and displays.

The unique Air system is the fastest radio sync system in the world. Control the Pro-B4 from your camera, your computer or from the palm of your hand.

YOUR KIT INCLUDES:

Profoto Pro-B4 1000 Air Generator
Profoto Li-Ion Battery
Profoto Prohead Plus UV 500
Profoto Zoom Reflector
Sync Cord / Phono – PC
Light Stand
Medium Umbrella

KEY FEATURES:

Extremely fast recycling: 0.03-0.99s
Unmatched flash duration 1/2,000s-1/25,000s
Huge (11 f-stops) power range (1-1,000Ws)
Tough and Robust
Exchangeable, high capacity Life (Li-Ion) batteryC
220 full power flashes from a single battery
45 minutes battery recharge with standard quick charger
2 individual lamp head sockets with precise control in 0.1 f-stops
Integrated Profoto Air remote control and sync
Up to 500W model light

RENT THE PROFOTO PRO-B4 1000 HERE

Are you working with the Profoto Pro-B4 1000 on location? How do you like it? Let us know in the comments!

Adorama Hosts NAB Spin-off

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We’re still not done with NAB! If you missed out on April’s trade show–or even if you didn’t–this is your second chance to check out the new gear that debuted in Vegas. It’s all the things you love about NAB and nothing you don’t.*

On May 9th from 1-8pm Adorama is hosting a mini-trade show at its new event space at 55 West 17th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in New York City. The “spin-off” is open to the public and feature up to 20 different vendors including AJA, Sony Electronics, Blackmagic Design, Red, Canon, Convergent Design, JVC, Newtek, Panasonic, and TV Logic.

We hope to see you there! You can find more information HERE, and don’t forget to check out all of ARCblog‘s NAB wrap-ups for a sneak of some of the stuff you can expect to find at the event:

NAB Wrap Up: Lenses

NAB Wrap Up: Cameras

NAB Wrap Up: Lighting

 

*this event is not officially associated with or endorsed by the National Association of Broadcasters.

SMPTE-NY April 2013 Meeting: Digital Cinema Lenses & Technology

SMPTE APRIL 2013

Guest post written by Steven E. Landon-Smyth, a freelance writer, director, and cinematographer.

This past Wednesday night Adorama hosted the New York chapter of the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers‘ (SMPTE) April meeting titled “Cinema Lenses and the Technology for a New Breed of Digital Cinema Cameras”. Delivering presentations to a packed house of over 100 attendees were Angenieux’s Jean-Marc Bouchut, Canon’s Larry Thorpe; Cooke’s Les Zellan, Fujinon’s Thom Calabro, and Schneider Optics’ Don Shafer and Paul Cousins.

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Check It Out: Canon’s EOS-1D C

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One of the big hits of NAB 2013 was the Canon 1D C. The funny thing about that is the 1D C was teased in late 2011 and impressed in 2012 with Shane Hurlbut and Po Chan’s “The Ticket”, yet launched in March 2013 to very little fanfare. It seems that people didn’t quite know what to do with a DSLR that shot 4K video. (The $12K body-only price tag is potentially intimidating.) Perhaps it was the announcement of an April firmware update that allows it to capture 4K at 25 fps or that more people just got to put their hands on it that the camera finally started to click. (more…)

Check it Out: Ampex Unveils “the Amazing VPR-5″

Ampex is known mostly for their premium audiotape stocks, but they’ve also been in the videotape business since the mid-50′s. Now they’ve partnered with Nagra to bring that same premium fidelity to location videography with the Amazing VPR-5. At 15 pounds (including 20-min. reels, battery and cover), the VPR-5 is the world’s lightest and most portable one-inch Type “C” VTR.

The way we make images is being democratized as videotape becomes more accessible to enthusiasts and pro-level consumers (let’s call them “prosumers”), and being able to bring a videocamera outside without being tethered to a switcher or a rack is about as liberating as you can get. Right now it looks like this recorder only works with Ampex cameras, and there’s no word on whether or not Ikegami or Hitachi compatibility is on the horizon.

Pricing and availability are unknown but we’ll be sure to keep you posted as soon as they are in stock!

SNL DoP Alex Buono Launches “The Art of Visual Storytelling” Tour

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Cinematographer Alex Buono‘s feature credits include films like 2005′s Green Street Hooligans and the 2008 documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster, but he’s best known for heading up the SNL film unit and for sharing his behind the scenes stories and production knowledge with the online digital cinema community. (His blog features a fantastic “How We Did It” column.)

Now Buono is taking his knowledge on the road with a series of summer workshops and lectures focused around The Art of Visual Storytelling.

THE VISUAL STORYTELLING TOUR delivers an intense educational overview of the artistic elements and core principles of cinematography… Designed for both DSLR and Cine-style camera users, this workshop will teach you advanced techniques for lighting, lens selection, blocking, camera movement, audio, workflow, camera settings, visual structure, and more.

The program is broken up into three tracks: a daytime cinematography workshop, a hands-on hour with “cutting edge gear” like the MōVI stabilized camera gimbal, Hive plasma lights, and a 4K digital workstation, and then an evening visual structure seminar based on Bruce Block’s book The Visual Story. Tickets for the day and evening tracks may be purchased a la carte or as a package, and all ticket holders will be admitted to the hands-on.

The tour runs from June 3 to August 4, 2013. Will you be attending?

[photo via Alex-Buono.com]

New Footage From the BMD Pocket Cinema Camera

Australian cinematographer John Brawley shot some footage of his local farmer’s market with the Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera and used it to make a short video, which is now up on his blog. He has this to say about the experience:

You do get to see what one man can do with a pocket cinema camera and a 12-35 Panasonic m4/3 zoom. I guess for those that like to shoot discretely, guerrilla or documentary style, this will give you a good sense of what you’re going to get.  The same great DR and look has been inherited from the BMCC.

All this footage was shot using the FILM look.   I set my exposure by ETTR and using the 100% zebra to indicate clipping.  I had IS on all the time.  I had a Hoya ND16 on as well to keep me at a slightly nicer stop.  I set the rear monitor to VIDEO and then used focus peaking all the time.

The camera was set to ISO 800, recording ProRes at 25 fps. The footage does look nice–particularly the sequence with the cutler–but has a slightly less cinematic quality than the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, owing to the deeper focus of the PCC’s Super 16-sized sensor. The piece was graded in Resolve by a guy named Captain Hook. (Check out the Captain’s site, which has custom BMCC LUTs available for download.) Brawley promises something more “finished” in the way of a narrative piece, but for now this gives us a pretty good idea of what to expect when the cameras (hopefully) ship in July.

Watch Garrett Brown Demo Two New Steadicam Designs

Tiffen is getting ready to release two new iterations of Steadicam. First, the Solo: a lightweight post and platform for cameras under 10lbs that mounts to a stabilizer arm or can be handheld, and also transforms into a monopod. The Curve is a miniature version of the Merlin design for GoPro cameras that also converts into a hard mount. No information yet about pricing and availability.

The Solo is a great concept and is kind of a throwback to one of Garrett Brown’s original Steadicam designs, which was just a center-balanced post mounted to a handheld gimbal. At first glance, the Curve seems a bit silly and the Solo even looks a bit cheap, but in the hands of a master like Brown you can see just how well they actually work.

Check out this video below, courtesy News Shooter. Brown shows off both the Solo and the Curve, and the way he handles both makes the MōVI look like a set of training wheels.

editoriARC: Are We Ready for 4K In Our Homes?

This editoriARC is written by Iain Marcks, a filmmaker and writer living in New York City. All opinions are his own.

At NAB 2013, both Sony and Samsung vied for a huge chunk of your living room real estate with the debuts of their 4K home theater displays. But how many Ks are too many?

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