Come one, come all, to the madhouse, step right up…there’s bound to be somthin’ for everyone!!

We’re thrilled to be hosting the first party to be held in our newly (partially completed) renovated space this Thursday.

The concept of “studio madhouse” takes our regular office and studio spaces and converts everything into an “ol’ goodtime-y variety show funhouse” .  There will be live comedy, “Psychic Nikki”, tons of games, drinks, a scotch ‘nosing’, homemade food, fresh musical vibes and tons of fun.  The best part is,  all of the proceeds will go to supporting the Motionball / Special Olympics.  

Along with our day-to-day operations and work schedules we’ve been planning party events, hiring entertainment, and organizing the space to be more conducive to hosting such a great soiree.

We’d love to see you!

Check this thing out. “Wow” is right. A compelling new entry into the market, this Black Magic Cinema Camera had people doing double-takes as they passed its booth at NAB, and for good reason. There’s a lot of great technology packed within its slick body. The Black Magic boasts a wide dynamic range, shoots in 2.5K uncompressed and comes with it’s own DaVinci Resolve colour correct software, and UltraScope (a software app for waveform monitoring). More good parts: It’s sexy design is eye catching, retro (kind of like a Leica), while at the same time being modern. Glass-wise it can take either EF or ZE mounted lenses, it stores footage to a built-in SSD drive and perhaps the best part is its exceptional price point — $2,995 USD — which includes the software.

Now the not-so-good parts: although the image above makes it look small and sleek, the Black Magic is actually quite large, quite heavy and felt really bulky when we were given a chance to hold it . Out of the box (meaning without their peripheral “cinema handle” – which they sell for an additional $195) it would be difficult to actually hand-hold this on a shoot without bumping the many side buttons or brushing against the touch-screen on the back (and inadvertently changing the settings).

In the end we’re going to hold off on buying this puppy, though we’re not opposed to renting it in the near future and taking it for a test-drive ….Until then, here are a few more angles — bask in it’s uber-coolness…

The Canon Booth - NAB 2012

We’re back from NAB and finally able to process what exactly happened in our whirlwind time there.  One of the big draws for us was to stay up to date in the constantly morphing world of camera technology.  In the market for a “go between” that bridges the gap between our Canon DSLRs (a 5D Mark II and a few 7Ds) and larger, more robust systems like the RED ONE and ARRI ALEXA, we were not disappointed with what we were able to see.  In the next few posts (starting with today’s) we’ll let you know what we saw, liked, and, maybe, just maybe, have plans to purchase…

Canon – We love Canons because of their image quality, price point, and ease of use.  Some of their not so good qualities: their compressed h264 movie files are not the best with greenscreen or colour correction, and they often have issues with moire.  We were really excited to see three of their new entries.  First the C300, and the C500 .  These really are cinema cameras, without the DSLR look and feel —  both of them are either equipped with PL or EF lens mounts.  The C500 is the highest-end model which shoots 4k (10 bit uncompressed RAW), and seems to be aimed squarely at (about $25,000 USD) chasing the RED dollar. The third one Canon was touting was the 1DC  which looks quite a bit in line with the 5D and the 7D, but this little guy shoots 4k as well — with an estimated price of $15,000 USD — our thoughts are that they are looking for outfits just like us to upgrade from our DSLRS.  Who knows, we just might…

A Canon 1DC on the floor at NAB