Another year, another Cine Gear. Is there any other show that brings together so many unusual film and video toys?
Cinematographers have the best selfie sticksDado Valentic, grading for an audience
The ACES Central grading theater was held in an open, light-blasted tent in B-tank. It may not have been an ideal grading environment given the poor black level control — but what would I know?
Cinematographers have the best dashcams, like this GSS C516(In Hollywood, everyone drives a Lamborghini)Is there a rule that all camera carsmust be wrapped in matte gray?The Enola Gay Grenade Co.? Why, colored smoke canisters, of course!A cable-cam traversing the New York Street SetAngénieux Optimo 40mm T1.8 prime. Brian Hallett has the storyShiny 14mm Sigma cine prime, one of a set of polished-barrel display lensesShape brings new meaning to “lens shades”The view through an SLR Magic Hyperprime 35mm T0.95SLR Magic Micro Primes. Now that Veydra Mini Primes are gone, these are the only dedicated MFT spherical cine-style primes.SLR Magic’s tiny MFT-mount 8mm f/4 prime (designed for drone work)The view through the SLR magic 8mm f/4 drone prime, using a GH5
Also in MFT lens news, Chinese company Vazen is launching three MFT-mount 1.8x anamorphics. I didn’t see them, but Matt Allard at NewsShooter did.
Infinity Photo Optical‘s Michael Bosold shows off a MikroMak “Nelsonian Optics” lensIt’s essentially a deep-focus microscope lens that focuses to infinity3D printed mockup of Gravity Laboratories‘s Moxie lens motorMoxie app mockup: up to 3 axes of control, via smartphone or handheld unit. $500 / axis. Coming soon on KickstarterBuried deep inside a building on South Chicago street, CUBIX showed off their workstationsLiquid cooling is the thing: here, one circuit handles CPU and GPUThe coolant jacket for a GPUThis beefier beast has two separate cooling systems. They share radiator space under the vented top panelIt’s really two systems in one box: a CPU/storage system with its own PSU and cooling, and a GPU expansion chassis with a separate PSU and cooling.CPU and memory have their own cooling systemA different loop cools all four GPUs
Sadly, most CUBIX systems aren’t quite as colorful; transparent piping encourages the growth of bacterial nasties after a while. Production workstations use opaque, un-illuminated cooling systems — but they stay just as cool, even at full throttle.
CMotion builds elegant FIZ systems. They’ve been using this wooden camera since before Wooden Camera was a thingNote the minimalist UI (only five buttons, two of which probably lock and release the mag) and the unusual cooling vents on the film mag. The size of the shutter disk suggests 35mm or even 65mm, but the width of the mag implies 16mm. Sadly I can’t find any references to this camera in the tech sections of IMDB or ShotOnWhat so format, frame rate, etc. remain a mystery. I can however report that it’s very quiet in operation — no blimp required!The CineMoves Matrix 4-axis gimbal claims to eliminate gimbal lock. It looked pretty flexible panning and tilting from aimed straight up through straight down, and its control system dynamically assigns the “pan”, “tilt” and “roll” controls to different axis motors depending on orientation, so the controls always feel “upright” and correct. I never saw it lock or tumble, but some of the axes slewed pretty quickly to avoid singularities, and I might have seen a slight wobble at one pointHive Lighting demoed the new Super Hornet 575-C full-color LEDHive got their start with plasma lights, and plasmas still comprise 20% of sales. Here’s the Plasma 1000 lampheadCanon demoed Sumire primes the right way, with pinpoint background lights for pleasing bokehAtlas Lens Co., makers of Orion anamorphic primes, also had the right ideaCoverage isn’t complete without the canonical Lower East Side Street banner shotSize does matter, according to The Rag PlaceOne sees a variety of graphic styles cheek-by-jowl: here, FOCUSBUG and RatworksSome people really like their lenses!
Disclosure: I visited Cine Gear Expo on my own dime, and none of the vendors portrayed offered me any payments, bribes, free food, or other considerations in return for coverage. Darn it.
