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Sony's fall and Japan's hang-ups | Brooke Crothers | C|Net
Brooke lived in Japan from 83 to 93, and offers a list of reasons why he thinks Japan is having difficulty competing in technology; and why Sony is having financial problems:
Software: Japanese companies have never had a firm grasp of the importance of software. Or the art of fusing hardware and user-friendly software into an appealing coherent whole, a la Apple or even a company like IBM and its mainframe culture. And this is a corollary to the obsession with monozukuri. When I lived in Japan, the message was clear: software really isn't that important. It's only hardware that matters.
It seems odd that Sony is having difficulties. But when you think of the number of products they make compared to, say, Apple...perhaps one of their problems is too much diversification?

I don't agree with his final sentence:
Well, I really can't think of any Sony product that I would want to buy today. How times have changed.
I'd quite like an NEX-FS700, PMW-F3 or an F65!



The Tao Colorist | Patrick Inhofer | Newsletter
A shortened newsletter this week due to NAB, but Patrick offers some interesting insight on the new Smoke release:
Existing Smoke owners were underwhelmed with this release
But almost all of them understood what Autodesk is doing. Smoke is too good a product to have such a small user base. It's a situation that needed to change for that product.


The new Black Magic Design Cinema Camera - A talk with John Brawley
| Daniel Freytag | Blog
An interview with John Brawley, who has been able to shoot a bit with a pre-production Blackmagic Cinema Camera:
Many people complain that the chip is smaller than the S35 chip in most new cameras, which results in a big crop factor. What do you think about this?John: Well S35 would have been nice but they tell me they are very expensive sensors. BMD were chasing the best they could for DR and low cost. This sensor was a good choice for this. The so called crop factor shouldn't really be an issue for for most unless you want ultra wide angle Or are chasing ultra low dof. You can still put very fast primes on an get most of the way there.
This site shows the physical size of the sensor compared to other sensors:
Blackmagic Cinema Camera Sensor Size | Justin O'Neil | RoyalGalactic




Philip Bloom tests Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 | Todd_Kopriva | ProVideoCoalition
An interview from Adobe with Philip Bloom:
Adobe: Why did you start looking at Adobe Premiere Pro for editing?
Bloom: With the more recent Final Cut Pro releases, I felt the hardware wasn’t being utilized to its full potential and the software should have been faster. Time is important and doing things quickly is a huge benefit in my line of work. I started exploring alternatives and purchased Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.


Sneak preview – 5D Mark III Zeroed AA Filter – First footage for download
| Andrew Reid | EOSHD
Andrew removed the anti-aliasing filter from his 5D Mark III, and claims there are no issues with moiré, and it increases resolution:
This clip is shot with my modded 5D Mark III without the anti-aliasing filter softening the image. The clip was shot on the softest setting with no in-camera sharpening. Removing the AA filter also makes the camera sensitive to infrared light and gives you a bit of extra detail in the shadows, but you will need an IR-cut filter on your lens for electric lighting and black fabrics. Canon recently produced a 60Da for astro-photography and with this mod the Mk III becomes a 5Da!


NAB 2012: AJA KIPRO QUAD 4K EXTERNAL RECORDER AND $249 T-TAP THUNDERBOLT 10-BIT HD-SDI AND HDMI BOX | Matt Allard | DSLR News Shooter
Sone more info on AJA's announcements:
AJA were showing their new KiPro Quad 4K external recorder at NAB this year which should work well with new cameras like the Canon C500. It takes the 3G SDI 4K output and records it to edit friendly 4K Prores files.
And Richard Harrington interviews Bryce Button of AJA:
In-Depth Interview About All the AJA New Products | Richard Harrington | Blog




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