Cine Gear Expo Opens Today — Here’s What You’ll See

If you missed going hands-on with the latest camera and lighting gear at NAB — or maybe you were there but just can’t get enough of this stuff — you’ve got another chance to get up close and personal with cutting edge acquisition technology as Cine Gear Expo opens today at The Studios at Paramount in Hollywood, CA.

If you’re going, you should know that there will be no entrance to the expo from the front gate on Melrose — instead, park in one of the Paramount parking structures on Gower, Van Ness and Lemon Grove (or even at Hollywood Forever next door) and keep in mind that left turns into parking structures will not be allowed. Parking is limited, so carpool if you can; shuttle buses will be running to help you get around.

The main entrance and registration are at the Lemon Grove Fire Gate at the intersection of Lemon Grove and Van Ness Avenue. Exhibits are open from noon to 8 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow, with registration opening one hour in advance. The expo is followed by a sold-out lighting workshop on Sunday. If you’re not pre-registered, be prepared to pay a $30 cash-only admission fee at the gate.

This evening, the Cine Gear Expo Industry Reception and Awards Ceremony kicks off beginning at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theater and Paseo Grounds. New this year is the Pioneering Women in Cinematography Award, which will honor six ASC cinematographers as pioneers for women across the industry — Ellen Kuras, Reed Morano, Nancy Schreiber, Amy Vincent, Mandy Walker and Cynthia Pusheck. The Cine Gear Technical Achievement Lifetime Award is going to Carl Zeiss SBE, and awards will also be announced for this year’s film competition, which was held May 31.

Check the map, below, to get the lay of the land at Paramount — or click through to the Cine Gear Expo web page for all the info you need — and then read our round-up of some of the technology you’ll see on display.

Anton/Bauer will debut its new Dionic XT line of Li-ion batteries. Available in V-Mount and Gold Mount, the Dionic XT90 and Dionic XT150 are 14V batteries that can deliver up to 12 amps of continuous power, A/B said. Both batteries have an estimated life of 1,200 cycles. Booth #15 [Vitec].

Band Pro Film and Digital is presenting a Friday-afternoon 4K screening of short films “Dialogue” and “Tokyo Dance,” followed by a Q&A with filmmakers Gary Adcock and Randy Wedick. The free screening begins today at 12:15 p.m. in the Paramount Theater. You can see what else Band Pro brings to the show at Booth #70.

Cooke Optics is showing its line of S7/i full-frame lenses at Cine Gear, which are designed to cover the full sensor area of cameras including the Sony Venice, the Arri Alexa LF, and the Red Weapon 8K, with its 46.31mm image circle. Also on hand will be Cooke’s Panchro Classics and Anamorphic/i lenses, including the “Special Flair” series. Booth #67.

DigitalGlue is demonstrating its new //Breathless storage appliance, an all-flash NVMe system offering up to a half-PB of storage in a 1RU form factor. Each of 36 NGSFF SSD bays connects directly to the motherboard over PCIe to maximize performance. It’s part of DigitalGlue’s new Creative.space line of storage appliances. What’s most unusual about the offering is the pricing — it’s an on-premise managed storage system sold at a fixed monthly rate based on a one-, two-, or three-year contract. The company is targeting it at 4K, 6K and 8K uncompressed workflow, high-end VFX, and OTT content delivery. It starts at $2,495 for 16 TB of SSD on a three-year contract, which gets you 24/7 monitoring, technical support, and next-day repairs. Booth #B115.

ETC is bringing new LED fixtures and lighting control consoles to Cine Gear, including the Source 4WRD Daylight Gallery 5600 K light, its ColorSource Pearl fixtures (available in PAR, linear and spot variants) and ColorSource Cyc five-color LED cyclorama, and the Eos Ion Xe control console. ETC’s booth will also be the home for Hog consoles from High End Systems, which will be shown with v3.9 software. Booth #S103B

Fujifilm is hosting a slate of optics-centric speakers at its both, including representatives from Duclos Lenses, Arri Rental, Otto Nemenz, Keslow Camera, Sim Digital and Hot Rod Cameras. They’ll be talking about issues including chromatic aberration, ramping, breathing, pin-cushioning, barrel distortion, and more. Fujifilm will also be showing its MK Series of E-Mount lenses — including the MK18–55mmT2.9 and MK50–135mmT2.9 — and third-party accessories like the Duclos Lenses FZ mount and MTF Services MFT mount. Also on hand will be the Fujifilm X-H1 camera and MKX18-55mmT2.9 and MKX50-135mmT2.9 X-mount cinema lenses. Also available is a free “check and clean” program including firmware updates and sensor cleaning for owners of Fujifilm’s X Series or GFX system products. Booth #S206.

The Global Cinematography Institute (GCI) is presenting a roundtable discussion on Saturday, June 2, beginning at 10:15 a.m. in Screening Room #5. Moderated by GCI President Yuri Neyman, ASC, the panel on the “Future of Cinematography” will feature Bill Dill, ASC, Chris Probst, ASC, David Stump, ASC, Geoff Boyle, NSC, FBKS, Josh Pines, Rob Legato, ASC, Andrew Shulkind, Brian Pohl, David Heuring, Dori Arazi, Jay Holben, Marty Shindler, and Ron Fischer. Subjects for discussion will include new forms of artistic expression, virtual/computational cinematography, and other subjects.

The International Cinematographers Guild organized a panel discussion, “The Reality of Creating Unscripted Looks,” featuring camera, lighting and sound crew members discussing the state of the art in aesthetics for nonfiction TV programming, including reality TV and awards shows. ICG’s Michael Chambliss will moderate the panel, featuring camera operator/DP Derth Adams (Cutthroat Kitchen, Fear Factor, The Chair); DP/camera operator Michael Dean (Survivor, Planet Primetime, Meet the World, Eat the World); lighting director Oscar Dominguez (The Voice, Shark Tank); audio supervisor Keith A. Garcia, CAS (Bald Sound, Hell’s Kitchen, Project Runway, MasterChef); and camera operator/DP Gretchen Warthen (Operation Change, The Real L Word, East LA Interchange). 10:15 a.m., June 2, Sherry Lansing Theater.

Litepanels is showing the Gemini 2×1 soft panel and Astra 3X and 6X daylight and bicolor panels, including the Astra Bi-Focus Daylight, which allows users to dial in coverage from a 15-degree spot to a 48-degree flood. Booth #15 [Vitec Group]

Mark Roberts Motion Control is debuting Bolt Jr., a six-axis compact robot arm that’s being offered as a lightweight, compact alternative to the Bolt for use on set and in small studios. It can handle a camera payload of up to 12 kg, has a track speed over 3m/sec and an arm reach of 1.2m, and weighs less than half its bigger brother. Booth #14.

As usual, Matthews Studio Equipment will follow the show on Sunday with its annual Garage Sale and Open House at its West Valerio Street location in Burbank. If you plan to attend, Matthews asks that you register online. At Cine Gear itself, Matthews will have the Dutti Dolly mobile platform and DuttiDock camera docking sled, which is said to convert a lighting stand into camera support. The new Vator III series of cranking stands will also be on display. Booth #145.

NBCUniversal and Cineo Lighting will show the LB800, the latest fruit of their partnership on LED production lighting technology. The LB800 is a 24-inch-by-48-inch fixture that, like other LightBlade fixtures, combines phosphor-converted white light LEDs and saturated color LEDs for a balanced spectrum. It uses the same GUI as the previously released LB1K and can be configured in 10 independent, DMX/RDM-controllable zones. Booth #S107.

OConnor is coming to Cine Gear with new wheeled dollies, the DCM (for OConnor 30L and 60L tripods) and the DCL (for OConnor Cine and Cine Baby tripods). Also on demo will be the company’s fluid head line-up, including the 2560, which is billed as “baby brother” to OConnor’s flagship 2575D. With a maximum payload of 53 lbs.at 8 in., it’s designed to handle the Arri Alexa in a portable configuration, or lighter digital cinema cameras in studio configurations. Booth #15 [Vitec Group]

Outsight will preview the Creamsource Micro Colour LED luminaire, an 80W fixture that uses an RGBW LED array to produce white light in a range from 2200K to 15,000K at a CRI of 95+ and a 20-degree beam angle. Units are expected to begin shipping in July at a starting price of $1,295. Booth #30 [The Rag Place]

Panasonic will be promoting its cinema cameras, including the StudioDaily Prime Award-winning AU-EVA1 as well as the VariCam LT with its latest CineLive capabilities — broadcast shading and multi-camera control plus tally and return video management. The company is also presenting seminars during Cine Gear, including “EVA1 Show & Tell,” featuring cinematographers Johnny Derango, Elle Schneider, Ben Meredith and Pietro Villani screening clips from their work from 4:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m later today at the Paramount Theater. Tomorrow, Panasonic will be back in the Paramount Theater, where Mathew Frazer, the company’s national training manager for imaging products, is leading a 10:15 a.m. panel discussion on the Lumix GH5S with filmmakers Jacob Schwarz and Sam KJ; at 11:30 a.m., Panasonic Cinema Product Manager Mitch Gross will talk “Raw Capture with VariCam and EVA1” with Atomos CEO Jeromy Young, Codex SVP of Business Development Brian Gaffney and Foster Boy cinematographer Ben Kufrin. Booth #S211.

Panavision will show its 8K Millennium DXL2 camera system, along with four new sets of large-format lenses, including the H Series spherical lenses, available now; the T1.4 PanaSpeed, which Panavision says will be the fastest large-format lens on the market when it ships in Q3; the Primo X lens series designed for use on drones and gimbals (coming in 2019); and the Ultra Vista series of 1.6x anamorphic optics covering the full height of the DXL’s sensor at an aspect ratio of 2.76:1 (also due in 2019). Also new at Cine Gear is a motorless, dynamically adjustable liquid crystal ND filter, or LCND, that’s said to adjust up to six stops (0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.2, 1.5, and 1.8) with a single click or ramp. The LCND system is scheduled for 2019 availability. Panavision will also be showing a DXL-M kit designed to help users Panavise Red’s DSMC2 camera line-up with motorized lenses, wireless timecode, Panavision’s Primo HDR viewfinder, Light Iron’s LiColor 2 color profile, and the DXL menu system (via iPhone app). Those options are coming in Q4. Booth #S102.

QuickFX is demonstrating its WebStudio platform, billed as an online VFX production portal for content creators. It allows producers and directors to get same-day quotes, upload elements, review and approve jobs, and download composited VFX shots using a web-connected PC or mobile device — basically, it’s a streamlined, web-based front end for VFX house Engine Room Hollywood, which is promoting green- and blue-screen compositing, screen replacements, set extensions and similar FX work as production services not unlike any other. Booth #T110A.

Radiant Images said it will demonstrate Meridian, a new immersive capture system it co-developed with light-field specialist Visby, at Sony’s booth (S212). A VR rig using 24 Sony RX0 4K action cameras mounted inside modular panels, Meridian is designed to capture live-action footage with what’s called six degrees of freedom, or 6DoF — viewers wearing VR goggles can move their heads forward and back, from side to side, or up and down and register the appropriate depth and parallax. Radiant said the synchronized, equidistant cameras are mounted inside panels that capture light from multiple angles, creating a realistic immersive environment. Also utilizing Sony’s action cam is the Radius, a scalable bullet-time camera array with as many as 70 RX0s. The Radius was recently used to shoot an underwater bullet-time sequence with genlocked Venice cameras; Radiant co-founder Michael Mansouri and Stargate Studios founder Sam Nicholson, ASC, will present a seminar on that shoot Saturday afternoon from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. in the Sherry Lansing Theater. Booth #S212 [Sony].

Red will be at Cine Gear to display its new, streamlined DSMC2 camera line-up and to demonstrate 8K workflow, including looks at Redcode Raw, HDR, and the company’s IPP2 image-processing pipeline. At 12:45 p.m. today and 11:45 a.m tomorrow in the Sherry Lansing Theater, cinematographer Christopher Probst, ASC, will discuss shooting his short film “Epoch” with the Red Monstro sensor and finishing at 4K. Booth #S101.

Rosco will show the Mix lighting fixtures that made a colorful splash at NAB 2018. They combine six LEDs to produce accurate Rosco gel matches or allow users to mix their own color. This is the fixture that drove StudioDaily contributor Barry Braverman to wonder, “Is lighting gel obsolete?” Booth #S105.

Schneider-Kreuznach will show its new True-Streak Gold filter, which adds horizontal streaks in golden tones, available in four different intensities. It’s the latest in a series of True-Streaks that already includes Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange, Green, Violet, Pink, Clear, Rainbow and Confetti filters. The True-Streak Gold comes standard at 4×5.65 with other sizes available via special order. Booth #46.

Sony is kicking off Cine Gear with a Friday-evening screening of Annihilation, the ambitiously cerebral science-fiction adventure movie directed by Alex Garland. Cinematographer Rob Hardy, BSC, will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A. Admission is free, but Sony asks that you arrive early to get a seat before they’re all gone. The show starts at 6:30 p.m. in the Paramount Theater. Booth #S212.