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Nikon D800E video samples show stunning resolution in 1080p | Andrew Reid
| EOSHD
Andrew reports that the D800E [$3,299] without the anti-aliasing filter is probably the one to get:

I wasn’t expecting fine detail to be this clean on the E… Removing the anti-aliasing filter seemed like a recipe for disaster. But this footage is very encouraging. When you also bear in mind this is compressed footage from in-camera, rather than via the Atomos Ninja, it truly seems like a very nice result from the rare ‘E’ version.

Lenses and putting the life back in – Why expensive is not always better
| Andrew Reid | EOSHD
Andrew also sings the praises of odd, old lenses:

I have never felt compelled to look at MTF chart when buying a lens, rather, I look at the images it produces on Flickr. Here’s an example of something unusual… a vintage cinema lens, the Cooke Kinetal 12.5mm.

It is far from technically perfect. The coating is 1950′s technology. There’s a rainbow all over the right hand side. The bokeh is very textured with halos around it that somehow emphasise the presence of the bokeh, rather than making everything creamy clean and boring.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 - First Impressions From A Longtime Final Cut Pro User
| David Lawrence | Creative COW
CS6 rolled out today officially, and here's more first impressions of Premiere Pro CS6:

Then there's playback. It's important to understand how Adobe approaches playback, rendering and output, as it's different than Apple's approach in Final Cut Pro 7. Adobe prioritizes real-time playback during editing, transparently doing whatever's needed to keep playback as smooth as possible the entire time. Rendering is usually unnecessary to see effects or transitions. Add an effect and see results instantly.

And also from Toolfarm: NVIDIA Releases Mercury Transmit Plug-in for Adobe CS6 Support
Alert! Red Giant CS6 Updates are here!



Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 New Features & Resources! | Michele Yamazaki
| Tool Farm
And here's a features and resources page from Toolfarm:

As you may have heard, Adobe Creative Suite 6 came out today. This article focuses on Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. Note: We will be updating this page as we have more information so bookmark it and check back often! Updated May 7, 7:00pm EST

VFX roll call for The Avengers | Mike Seymour | FXGuide
After Effect's was used for pre-visualization on The Avengers:

Using Maya and After Effects as their main previs tools, The Third Floor worked on many iterations, including for the incredible New York battle. “It was important creatively to keep all the Avengers involved and not feel like we were leaving any one character for too long,” says Markel. “We also needed to keep logistics in mind so that the action stayed in specific areas within the digital set build.”

ikan Shows off Their New 7" IPS Monitor and Introduces a 2-In-1 Travel Bag
| Joe Marine | NoFilmSchool
A lot of people have nice things to say about iKan's monitors:

The video does not do any of the monitors justice, but the IPS display is on par with any other IPS displays out there. The ability to do waveform, vectorscope, and RGB parade on the slightly more expensive D7w is a welcome feature, and something we should expect from all monitors at this price range. Here are the specs on the 7″ D7 and D7w, taken from the official ikan blog:

NAB Recap pt. 1: Cameras and Lenses | Vincent Laforet | Blog
Vincent lists some of the things he liked at NAB:

Zeiss CZ.2 70-200mm
Like the CP.2′s this lens has interchangeable mounts, from PL to EF, and is intended to be a Zoom companion to the compact prime set. It is encased with cinema style lens gearings and hard stops so that it works like a cinema lens lens. Unlike its photographic counterpart (the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8), this lens opens to a T/2.9 – which is pretty much identical (T stop measures tend to be more accurate than f-stop FYI.) This lens is available sometime in Q4 of this year.

ALEX HOLDRIDGE: “I’LL NEVER GO TO LOS ANGELES AGAIN” | Nick Dawson
| Filmmaker Magazine
A filmmaker sells a script in Hollywood, but goes to Berlin to make a movie:

Holdridge: Yeah. I think that this is really hard to beat because now we have such a good team – on the producing end, on the d.p. end, on the post end. We have this really tight crew. It evolved over the course of the shooting but once we found it, boy oh boy, it’s really hard to beat creatively in terms of the things you can capture, the places you can capture – you can do things with these tiny light-weight cameras and now they’re even having a 4K camera.

Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling | Gendy Alimurung
| LA Weekly
More on the end of film:

This year, for the first time in history, celluloid ceases to be the world's prevailing movie-projector technology. By the end of 2012, according to IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service, the majority of theaters will be showing movies digitally. By 2013, film will slip to niche status, shown in only a third of theaters.

How ‘Mad Men’ Landed The Beatles: All You Need Is Love (and $250,000) | Dave Itzkoff & Ben Sisario | New York Time
I'm a Beatles fan, so I found this interesting:

To win the company’s approval in this case, Mr. Weiner said, “I had to do a couple things that I don’t like doing, which is share my story line and share my pages.” He added that he received the approval from Apple Corps last fall, about a month before filming started on the episode.