Camerimage Lodz 2009 – Equipment & Industry News { 0 }
In the hall of the Grand Theater during the festival there were several exhibitors of camera and lighting equipment. Moreover everyday there were presentations, conferences and meeting about specific piece of equipment or general cinematography subjects.
Some of the interesting news were:
A new range of Hawk anamorphic lenses with 1.3 squeeze ratio for HD cameras.
Lots of LED lighting including one of the the ARRI solutions to it, a very small, practical LED unit with different lenses easily interchangeable and a control board capable to switch between different sources, color temperatures and all the possible gels on the market.
And at least a 3D rig, brought in by Panavison, celebrating all the fuss in the last year and still to come about the great comeback of 3D.
I followed the presentation by Bill Lovell, ARRI Media’s Head of Digital Department, of their new range of camera systems called Alexa. As he was explaining they went for less pixels resolution for more ISO/latitude (800 ISO), having a 3.5 K sensor (16:9 or 4:3 size) that it will be outputting 16:9 HD or 2K, so that the rest of the sensor can be also dedicated to show the surrounding image area in their digital viewfinder, adopted for the first time in the history of Arri.
Especially the “middle of the range” model A-EV Plus looks very interesting, and I’m sure it will be loved by all the operators and camera assistants, thanks to a clever and tidy set of built in connectors and an integrated wireless remote control that can be used for monitors as well, basically less cables less velcro on the camera!
Apart from the camera mock-up, in a dark corner a silver box was containing the actual sensor showing really crisp and noiseless images in no light conditions. Lovell also showed a promotional and comparative video that Arri produced in which you could see amazing quality especially in some night tests, but as always they show us what they want us to see, then on set is always another story.
Finally it was very interesting to attend the Imago Forum, following the invitation of president Nigel Walters BSC. In this seminar and panel discussion were raised and discussed important subjects as author rights across Europe, the possibility of the cinematographer to be recognised as co-author, and thanks to the presence of a lawyer as well, the issues of changing working conditions were analyzed.
