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Blackmagic Cinema Camera: Can It Run with the Big Boys | Marco Solorio
| Creative COW
A look at the upcoming Blackmagic camera, focusing on green screen work:

I seriously cannot wait to start shooting serious chromakey footage with this camera. For this application, DSLR cameras aren't even in the city of the ballpark this game is playing in. I dare think a Sony F3 or Canon C300 is even in the parking lot. For chromakey production, can this little $3000 camera play at a level with the likes of ARRI Alexa, RED Epic, and the Sony F65? From what it reads on paper, it sure does seem like it and seems like fair game. Time will tell once serious chromakey productions are lined up.

Drobo 5D Introduction | Drobo | YouTube
Drobo announced a couple of new drives today, the 5D for desktop use, and the Mini for mobile use. Both add support for Thunderbolt. The 5D has two Thunderbolt ports and one USB 3.0 port, will cost under $850 and the release date will be announced in July:

Learn about the exciting new features of the Drobo 5D. The Drobo architecture has been redesigned from the ground up to meet the data storage needs of today's media creators and demanding professionals. It includes both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connectivity, along with an innovative use of solid state drives (SSDs).

The State of the Union of Final Cut Pro | Scott Simmons | ProVideoCoalition
A year on from the release of Final Cut Pro X, where do things stand:

So who’s using FCPX? A lot of one-man-band videographers I think; smaller operations doing “same day edits” usually seem very enthusiastic about FCPX’s speed as long as their originating format is supported. Wedding videographers seem to have really taken to FCPX. Apple does have an in-action section for FCPX on their website that highlights some higher end use.

How-to: $14 Lightweight Over-the-Shoulder Snorricam (Body-Mounted Camera Rig) | indymogul | YouTube
I love working with PVC pipe, and here's a cheap shouldercam solution:

In this DIY build episode, Griffin designs a $14 third-person body-mounted camera rig out of PVC pipe for his GoPro Hero2 camera, to capture unique over-the-shoulder shots during the Warrior Dash.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6: Latest Release Supercharges Performance, Debuts SpeedGrade | Oliver Peters | Creative Planet Network
A look at Premiere Pro CS6:

Importing a sequence from one project into another also imports some associated master clips, even though they already exist in the project, which results in duplicate master clips in the project browser. If you delete the duplicates, the imported sequence is negatively affected. Going back and forth a few times like this would result in a lot of unnecessary extra clips and potentially some real problems.

The Best Action Camera | Brent Rose | Gizmodo
Gizmodo looks at four action cameras: Drift HD, Ion Air Pro, Contour+, and GoPro Hero 2, and judges the Hero 2 to be the best:

In terms of image quality, the Hero 2 simply won out. It's about on par with the Contour in terms of sharpness, but when it comes to colors, the Hero simply dominates. It also handles contrast better than the others. All of the kits come with a waterproof housing, which keeps the camera dry up to 197 feet deep.

Tiffen Steadicam Smoothee for iPhone 4 | Joshua Goldman | C|Net
It's been out for over a year, but here's a look at the Smoothee; oddly, it's "highly recommended":

Regardless of how well it works, for most iPhone users the Smoothee is overkill. Its size and weight pretty much kills the whole convenience of shooting video with your iPhone and using it well requires more effort than just taking out your iPhone and shooting a clip.

I reviewed the Smoothee here: Steadicam Smoothee Review



Hands On With The New Canon 40mm f2.8 STM Pancake Lens | Dan Carr | Blog
A YouTube video that looks at this new lens from Canon, which seems to be getting positive reviews:

I’m pretty excited about this lens since I’m always trying to shave some weight off the gear that I carry and I’ve never been satisfied with ANY of Canon’s 50mm offerings. A pocket sized 40mm might just be the ticket so I ordered one right away.

Canon 40mm Pancake – How Did They Do That?? | Roger Cicala | LensRentals
Though Roger notes that manual focusing is difficult:

My first impression was the build quality was better than I expected. It has a metal mount, not plastic. The aperture blades appear more curved than most of the Canon 7 blade aperture rings, making a more circular opening. The little STM motor is not silent, but it’s pretty quiet. It’s also not lightning fast (as expected) but autofocus is certainly quicker than a Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens. And it’s amazingly tiny — the rear lens cap is about half as big as the lens.

Movie studio groundbreaking scheduled at Devens | Hiroko Sato | Lowell Sun
Really? A film studio in Massachusetts? Seems hard to believe:

The groundbreaking will be for the first phase, which involves the construction of two buildings -- one with four sound stages, each of which would be 18,000-square-foot, and the other building with 20,000-square-foot mill/shops and equipment storage area. Once built, the space will be rented to production companies.