Welcome to the Silly Season

The next few weeks will be exciting ones with rumors and news about several new cameras and video products. It's the traditional rollout of professional gear leading up to NAB in mid-April, though don't be surprised if there are some interesting announcements after the show.

Sony already got into the act last week with a restricted presentation of several new cameras, and they have already confirmed they are set to rollout new cameras in their NXCAM, XDCAM and CineAlta families. This includes two 3D models, one in the NXCAM family and a shoulder-mount 3-D camcorder.
BroadcastEngineering: Sony aims to reclaim acquisition status
BroadcastEngineering: Sony unveils professional 3-D camcorder

There's a lot of interest in the forthcoming NXCAM Super 35mm camera, the baby brother of the large-sensor PMW-F3. Just today Cinescopophilia reported that it thinks the camera will be named the FS100, (though some people are questioning it.)
Cinescopophilia: FS100 NXCAM S35mm Sony Camera Has A Name


Canon
Panasonic and Sony have received a lot of attention with the AG-AF100 and PMW-F3, but what about Canon, who arguably created this rush to large sensor video cameras with the 5D Mark II? There's been a few hints here and there about a 5D Mark III, but nothing to suggest an announcement was imminent.

Now EOSHD claims that Tim Smith of Canon has said that the 5D Mark III will use the 4-2-2 MPEG2 compression in place of H.264. If true this is an interesting development both because it should represent an improvement in compression quality, but also if Tim Smith is saying this, then the announcement of the 5D Mark III is probably only a couple of months away.

Other questions are sure to follow; a better codec is one thing, but will Canon improve the image scaling to improve image quality and reduce moire and other problems? I guess we'll just have to speculate wildly until more details are revealed...
EOSHD: Canon 5D Mark 3 to feature new MPEG variant 4-2-2 at 50Mbit

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