4:2:0 MPEG Long-GOP 35Mbps blah blah blah. Shut up, watch this video embedded below, and count how many seconds it takes you to stop thinking about specs…

(Via @jameswebbtv)

The PMW-F3 is currently available for pre-order from B&H at $13,300 for the body, or $18,950 for the F3 body and a three-lens PL kit, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm. The above video was shot using the stock Sony PL lens kit. Purchases via that B&H link help support FreshDV at no cost to you.

Last year when Zeiss introduced the affordable line of CP.2 lenses, we were intrigued at the possibilities they offer with their unique interchangeable lens mounts. In our video interview from NAB 2010, Rich Schleuning gave us a full rundown on the new lenses and mount possibilities. It’s a powerful package, with user-interchangable PL and Canon mounts, and available in discounted multi-lens sets (starting at around $11,500 / €8,200 for a three-lens set).

Today we learned that Zeiss have expanded the usefulness of the Compact Prime 2 series with the addition of MFT (Micro 4/3″) mount and E-Mount (Sony’s new mount for the NEX cameras and the new FS100) options for the CP.2′s. Very cool news indeed!

This lens set allows an owner/operator to invest in glass that will work on a wide variety of camera systems, from DSLRs, to the AF100 and FS100, to the PMW-F3, Red Epic and Alexa, to whatever comes next. More and more, Zeiss CP.2 looks like a fantastic future-proof option for long-term lens investment. We’ll be catching up with Zeiss again at the NAB 2011 show for another full video interview, and will get the skinny for you on the latest from Zeiss.

In the meantime, here’s our NAB interview from last year. In it, Rich and Kendal talk about the history of the popular ZF lens line, ZE lenses, and now the CP.2 line. Watch below:

freshdv_nab10_zeiss

In news that nobody saw coming, CineForm has been acquired by GoPro. Yep. That GoPro. The guys that have been rocking the extreme sports video world with a $300 camera that just plain works, have now bought a professional acquisition and intermediate codec company with deep ties in the production world. Very, very interesting. We’ll check in with them both at NAB and get the scoop on this.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at the new HD Hero 3D dual-camera housing, and some more info from the press release:

“The first new GoPro product to incorporate CineForm’s technology is the soon to be released 3D HERO® System, an expansion accessory for GoPro’s 1080p HD HERO line of cameras. The 3D HERO System allows consumers to combine two 1080p HD HEROs into a single housing to capture synchronized 3D photos and video. A synchronization cable joins the cameras via an expansion port on the back of each camera.

Based in Solana Beach, California, CineForm will become a division of GoPro and will continue to develop and support its award winning line of professional software products while contributing to the development of new GoPro products. The company will join offices with GoPro’s existing staff in San Diego.”

Director and RedCentre podcast contributor Jason Wingrove was kind enough to send along a few behind the scenes images from a recent fxphd training shoot collaboration with Mike Seymour and Stu Maschwitz. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful behind-the-scenes photos by Stu Maschwitz follow…

fxphd.com, the online vfx, production and post-production training program led by industry professionals, is launching a new series of courses featuring the RED EPIC camera.

Filmmaker, photographer and visual effects industry leader Stu Maschwitz is returning to teach at fxphd.com for the new term. Maschwitz recently returned from a week with fxphd.com co-founders Mike Seymour and John Montgomery in New Zealand. The crew shot with the brand new 5K (IMAX resolution) EPIC camera from the Red Digital Cinema Camera Company, in a huge variety of setups from Helicopters to Flywires (flying fox).

The new EPIC classes at fxphd will deal with all aspects of working with the camera, and will showcase helicopter plates shot in New Zealand, Steadicam moves, greenscreen, beauty work, parallel stereo rigs, HDR, slow motion, car mounts, as well as the post-production workflow. And this is just one of the 40+ professional courses on offer in the new fxphd.com April term.

At the NAB Show, representatives from fxphd.com and its sister site, fxguide.com, will be presenting sessions at the Post Pit covering the EPIC camera, DSLR filmmaking and stereo production, on Tuesday afternoon of the show. The new fxphd.com courses will be officially announced on April 1st (USA Pacific time).

Heads up, SmallHD customers and fans. They are putting on a NAB customer appreciation event on Monday April 11th at 6:00pm, and will be showing off their newest product there as well. Food and a dozen monitors being given away, so get registered now while there is still space. Here’s some more info from SmallHD:

There will be great food, over a dozen SmallHD monitors given away, and you’ll be the first to see our newest product. Our design team has been very busy over the past few months and we are very excited to give you a first look, so don’t miss it! Drop in anytime between 6:00pm and 9:00pm—grab some food, have a chat with SmallHD’s product designers, and take home some SmallHD swag (t-shirts, etc).

If you plan to attend, please register so we will have enough food and the correct shirt size waiting for you. Also, if you are a DP6 owner, you’ll receive a special new accessory for your monitor. It must be picked up in person, so if you can’t be there, we suggest you send a very good friend to pick it up for you. You must register by April 4th to be guaranteed entrance, so check your calendar and let us know as soon as possible. Register at http://www.smallhd.com/Events/NAB_2011_rsvp.html

Location: Flamingo Garden View Terrace (2 min from Flamingo Tram Stop)
Date: Monday April 11, 2011
Time: 6:00pm-9:30pm
Customer Prizes: SmallHD Shirt / Special Gift for DP6 owners / Raffle for chance to win one of our new products.

On the heels of Jim’s recent shipping schedule update, Red has announced another supply chain delay, due to the situation in Japan:

“…there are 18 parts (out of 18,000) of EPIC-X that come from Japan. More specifically… northern Japan factories. If you are not brain dead and have been watching the news, you will understand that this is bad news.

We are late shipping EPIC for many reason up to now… mostly due to us. We have made changes, had no idea how difficult this project was… yada, yada. Now that we know what we are doing and are ready to rock, including building a complete production line in Irvine… this happens.”

He goes on to talk about the possibility of making EPIC-M (hand-built versions) available to EPIC-X customers and suggests that they can still deliver all EPIC-X orders “…by summer’s end but it will be “back-end” weighted. April and May will be ‘light’.”

(Via @VisionWrangler)

There’s been a few folks talking on Twitter recently about HDR video using DSLRs. It’s a bit of a misnomer to call DSLR video “HDR,” but I supposed that’s the best description for what’s being tested.

Anyway, I’ve seen several proof of concept “HDR” videos posted, but nobody is sharing tutorials. After talking with Jesse Rosten about this, I was delighted to see today that he’s got a post up on Tone Mapping video. Presumably others are exporting image sequences and combining multiple exposures using HDR stills tools. But Jesse is doing it rather simply, using the Shadow/Highlight filter found in After Effects and Premiere. The main reason why I’m delighted? Because it nicely shows how ugly the HDR look is, even more so in video than stills. As a side note, one reason why you’d want to do this in a video program vs a stills HDR program? You’re bound to run into final video flickering issues if you run a batch of stills through an HDR processing app.

His results definately evoke that distinctive tone-mapped “HDR look.” To be clear, and Jesse explains this, it’s NOT High Dynamic Range, you are still limited by the DR of the sensor. This is simply a method of tone-mapping, of better showing the full range of data in the video. And it’s not always pretty, but it’s a great proof-of-concept and example of the technique. I’ll let Jesse explain, he does a much better job than I. Check it out the post, as it’s also a good read on what HDR really is.

Bottom line…you want good HDR on the cheap? Too bad. In the tests I’ve heard of, DSLRs are around 10 stops of dynamic range at best. DSLR shoots will have to live with a workaround like this for the look, or bite the bullet and go rent an Alexa or an Epic to get (real) high dynamic range. The Epic even does a true HDRx in camera, combining multiple exposures to render The Impossible Shot possible. I bang on Red a lot, but that’s innovative stuff.

Video embedded below.

Just a heads up…here at FreshDV, we’re planning on ignoring any April Fools Day pranks and fake news. We’ll probably just avoid posting anything all-together, as 4/1 really seems to bring out the crazy rumors and hijinks amongst bloggers. So you have my word that if we do happen to post anything on 4/1, we’ll do our best to vet it fully. Now back to your regularly scheduled Monday morning procrastination…

The order of days of the week is one of the exciting facts you’ll learn if you watch Rebecca Black’s music video “Friday.” You’ve probably heard of it…and I’m not going to link it here, or I’d feel obligated to cut my wrists with a rusty knife. Anyway, for a little fun, Dylan Reeve did some detective work on it to discover the skyline used as a backdrop in the film. Clever post…

Keep them happy, because a good editor is always working to make you look better. Here’s a few thoughts on the subject.

Richard Harrington has posted a short tutorial on how to get color bars on a DSLR, for external monitor calibration. Watch below.

Just learned that B&H is now taking pre-orders on the Panasonic Lumix GH2 stills/video camera, in either black or silver. The kit is $999 USD, and would pair nicely with the new Lexar 128GB SD media that just started shipping recently.

Purchases via the above links help support FreshDV at no additional cost to you.

Here’s a little Red Epic footage worth watching, compliments of Dir Jason Wingrove. From the video description: “Epic M #123, 120fps, 10, 40, 65 & 180mm master prime. Nikkor 8mm fisheye. All non HDRx.”

If you’ve been keeping up with Jason’s work, he has previously posted a series of Sea Pool shorts shot on the Canon 5D MKII and also the Sony PMW-F3. Watch below…

Compulsion – Shot on Sony PMW-F3:

collaroy – Shot on Canon 5D MKII:

sea pool – Shot on Canon 5D MKII:

narrabeen dawn – Shot on Canon 5D MKII:

mona vale – Shot on Canon 5D MKII:

Just watched this long, detailed overview of the NEX FS100 camera from Sony, compliments of Den at F-Stop Academy. There are few surprises with this new approach from Sony. Very very interesting. Looks like the AF100 and DSLRs finally have some competition in the sub-10K price range.

Want to blow your client’s mind the next time you are on-set? Hand them an iPad with a live wireless video feed from your camera. That’s exactly what you can do with the Teradek Cube, and with almost no latency. Very, very cool tech.

The Cube acts as an Adhoc wifi network, which your iPad can connect to. You can then stream live video from the device to as many as three iPads at the same time. Depending on the model of Cube you have, you connect to your camera by either HDMI or HD-SDI. But really the best way to show this is with Teradek’s demo video…watch below.

Here’s some additional info from the press release:

Teradek Cube, the world’s first camera-top HD video encoder is now streaming live video over WiFi to the Apple iPad with latency lower than one-quarter second by using the OPlayer HD app, which is available in the app store for only $2.99. OPlayer HD works on both older and newer generation iPads.

Cube now features a dedicated iPad setting in the menu system that optimizes the video stream for iPad. This makes it extremely easy to set-up an on-set video monitoring system with up to three iPads simultaneously. Cube can also stream two simultaneous iPad streams plus one stream to record proxy video files when using a RED Digital camera. This means that RED users can view live video on iPad, then switch from OPlayer to AirVideo to view instant dailies playback.

Teradek also recently announced direct Cube integration with Livestream…with a USB-equipped Cube, you can attach a Verizon 4G modem directly to the device and broadcast live via Livestream. More info and a demo video on that tech here.