Adam Wilt is a software developer, engineering consultant, and freelance film & video tech. He's had small jobs on big productions (PA, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", Dir. Robert Wise), big jobs on small productions (DP, "Maelstrom", Dir. Rob Nilsson), and has worked camera, sound, vfx, and editing gigs on shorts, PSAs, docs, music vids, and indie features. He started his website on the DV format, adamwilt.com/DV.html, about the same time Chris Hurd created the XL1 Watchdog, and participated in DVInfo.net's 2006 "Texas Shootout." He has written for DV Magazine and ProVideoCoalition.com, taught courses at DV Expo, and given presentations at NAB, IBC, and Cine Gear Expo. When he's not doing contract engineering or working on apps like www.adamwilt.com/cinemeter, he's probably exploring new cameras, just because cameras are fun.
The HPA Tech Retreat is an annual gathering where film and TV industry folks discuss all manner of technical and business issues. I’m taking notes during the sessions and posting them; it’s a very limited transcription of what’s going on, but it should at least give you the flavor of the discussions. This fourth day covered replacing SDI with Ethernet,…
The HPA Tech Retreat is an annual gathering where film and TV industry folks discuss all manner of technical and business issues. It’s the sort of conference where the chap next to you spends his time editing a six-camera show in FCP 7 on his MacBook Air. I’m taking notes during the sessions and posting them; it’s a very limited…
The HPA Tech Retreat is an annual gathering where film and TV industry folks discuss all manner of technical and business issues. The first full day is a “supersession”; this year the topic is: THE NEW NORMAL IS ANYTHING BUT – HOW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY FROM CREATION TO CONSUMPTION IMPACTS EVERYTHING [As always, my stream-of-consciousness notes capture the framework of the…
The HPA Tech Retreat is an annual gathering in the desert east of Los Angeles (in a posh resort, mind you; it’s not like we’re out sitting in the hot sun among the Joshua trees) where film and TV industry folks discuss all manner of technical and business issues. There are two parallel Monday sessions, an ATSC meeting and a…
The HPA Tech Retreat is an annual gathering in the desert east of Los Angeles (in a posh resort, mind you; it’s not like we’re out sitting in the hot sun among the Joshua trees) where film and TV industry folks discuss all manner of technical and business issues. There are two parallel Monday sessions, an ATSC meeting and a…
Accessories don’t get no respect. Zacuto’s Z-Finder EVF is a perfect example: it’s a dinky little 3.2″, 800×480 LCD monitor in a lumpy plastic case that looks like something RED’s mechanical designers would make if they worked for Fisher-Price. To add insult to injury, it’s not a primary accessory, it’s an add-on to an add-on: it’s a monitor designed to…
REDs for the rest of us? The $1995 Blackmagic Cinema Camera and $995 Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera are interchangeable-lens, single-sensor cameras with raw recording capability, capturing wide-dynamic-range, log-encoded images to CinemaDNG files. They also record ProRes422(HQ) and (for the Cinema Camera) DNxHD Quicktime files using either log or Rec.709-compatible encoding, for those preferring a more direct, edit-friendly format. [Updated 2014.08.22:…
REDs for the rest of us? The $1995 Blackmagic Cinema Camera and $995 Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera are interchangeable-lens, single-sensor cameras with raw recording capability, capturing wide-dynamic-range, log-encoded images to CinemaDNG files. They also record ProRes422(HQ) and (for the Cinema Camera) DNxHD Quicktime files using either log or Rec.709-compatible encoding, for those preferring a more direct, edit-friendly format. The cameras…
Last Friday saw the release of Version 2.0 firmware for the Sony PMW-F5 and F55 Large Single Sensor cine cameras. The new firmware brings many enhancements such as higher frame rates, ‘scopes in the EVF, and 2K XAVC (disclosure: Art Adams and I have been playing with beta versions for a while; Art’s just shot two projects exploiting the new XAVC and…
Ikan’s D7w is a 7” field monitor with SDI and HDMI inputs, 1080p compatibility, and a variety of useful display modes: false color, clipping guide, pixel-for-pixel mode, focus peaking, waveform monitor (WFM), RGB parade, vectorscope, and more. At a mere $1300, it looks like an incredible bargain. Is it? I took the plunge; here‘s what I found. Ikan showed an interesting lineup of affordable, good-looking monitors at NAB 2013. At Cine Gear Expo LA 2013 in early June, they were offering several of those monitors at show-special prices. I took a punt on a D7w, which had been enticing me since NAB: I’m in need of a decent set of engineering ‘scopes for HD work, and the D7w looked like a great way to get ‘em on the cheap.