It’s that time of year again — Cine Gear Expo, your best chance to get hands-on with the latest and greatest production equipment without leaving L.A. for the likes of Las Vegas or Amsterdam, runs through this weekend at The Studios at Paramount in Hollywood, CA. Here’s a rundown of what you need to know before you go, followed by a look at some of the products that will be on exhibit or debuting at the show.
The first thing to be aware of is the layout is a little different this year, with the main entrance moving back to the South Van Ness Fire Gate, near the southeast corner of the lot. Show organizers are encouraging attendees to share rides or take public transportation (the Line 10 bus goes by The Studios on Melrose Avenue all day, including weekends) when available because parking is limited. If you must drive, don’t try to come in through the main entrance on Melrose. Instead, you can try parking in one of Paramount’s own parking structures on Gower or Van Ness, or at Hollywood Forever Cemetery to the north. (Shuttles will run from the Gower and Hollywood Forever lots to the Cine Gear entrance.)
Exhibits open at noon on Friday, May 31, and at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 1. Badge registration opens one hour earlier. Sunday, June 2, is Master Class day — check the Cine Gear website to see what’s sold out. Look at the map, below, to get the lay of the land at Paramount — or just 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.
This floor map is fully searchable at the Cine Gear Expo website.
Source: Cine Gear Expo
Colorfront will focus on two big issues facing both production and post: 8K workflow and HDR color management. On Friday, Colorfront CTO Bill Feightner will moderate a panel discussion titled “Creative Look Management – From Capture to Delivery” featuring speakers from Cintegral, Arsenal, Light Iron and Efilm discussing LUTs, SDR/HDR workflows; Feightner will also talk about OpenFX-based interoperability between Colorfront products and other post-production systems, such as Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve and Foundry Nuke. Meanwhile, Colorfront will demo products including Transkoder 2019 and Express Dailies at its Cine Gear booth.
Cooke Optics 50mm Anamorphic /i Full Frame Plus lens
Cooke Optics
Cooke Optics plans to emphasize full-frame cinematography. It’s coming to Cine Gear with 18mm and 180mm S7/i spherical lenses, which are heading into production later this this summer along with a 27mm version, completing the line-up. It’s also bringing its new Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus series of lenses, which are available with or without Cooke’s special flair coating for exaggerating lens flares. Panchro/i Classics will be represented in the full-frame category thanks to the new 65mm 2-1 Macro, which also covers a full-frame sensor. And Cooke will continue its push to emphasize the importance of lens metadata, presenting the latest version of its /i technology, /i3, which accommodates distortion mapping at the level of the individual lens.
Creamsource SpaceX 1200W LED toplight
Creamsource
Creamsource will show off its new SpaceX, a 1200W toplight with six LED engines that it says puts out the equivalent of a 5K Tungsten spacelight. It’s adjustable from 2,200K to 15,000K with green/magenta control, and has a typical CRI of 95 from 3200K to 6500K, the company said. Also along for the ride will be the Micro Color, a small and silent light with typical CRI and TLCI values above 95, Creamsource said.
EditShare intends to prove that Cine Gear is not just about shooting, bringing demonstrations of its EFS storage platforms and Flow media asset management system to the exposition. What’s new in Flow? New storage vendor support along with remote-editing and multicam capabilities. Also coming along will be EditShare’s Qscan HDR compliance verification system for Dolby Vision-certified post houses and its Flow-based back-office project and user-management system for Adobe Premiere Pro CC, HelmutFX.
ETC will show its Source Four LED Daylight HD fixture, which generates variable white light from 4000K to 6500K, and the Relevé Spot LED fixture, with a four-color additive mixing system, along with ETC-owned High End Systems’ SolaSpot 3000, an automated spot light with more than 37,000 lumen output, and the TurboRay effects fixture with radial diffusers.
Fluotec will highlight its LED CineLight line of constant-output tunable LED panels, which come in 4×4 foot, 2×2 foot, 4×1 foot, 2×1 foot and 1×1 foot versions.
Panavision will show the new six-stop LCND (that stands for liquid crystal neutral density) filter system, a battery powered filter that lets shooters dial in degrees of ND filtration with a push of a button or using the Preston MDR controller. In other words, you can now now control the light hitting your sensor during as a shot progresses without stopping up or down. Panavision’s tag line is obvious: “Ride your filter, not your iris.” With Light Iron, Panavision will present its new Link HDR system, which is meant to help guarantee color-critical viewing opportunities at every step from acquisition to post — a critical factor in helping DPs gain confidence in creating HDR imagery. Key components of the system include a monitor cart on set with HDR display and QC options as well as dailies delivery in both HDR and SDR and the ability to view and export in HDR and SDR during the edit.
Pursuit Aviation has a couple of aerial innovations ready to go. First, it’ll be showing its Whiskey Wheels — a system developed in collaboration with UAV service provider XM2 that allows camera operators to operate an aerial camera system like the Shotover K1 using traditional camera control wheels rather than a joystick system. And second, it’ll be showing that Shotover K1 carrying an Arri 535 35mm film camera loaded up with a 1,000-foot magazine of film, rather than the standard 400-foot mag. That will allow filmmakers to shoot 2.5 times as long before a landing and reload is required.
Schneider Optics agrees that full frame is the trend for lenses this year, and it will bring its Xenon Full Frame Prime series to the show. The German-made lenses covering a 43.3mm image circle are engineered for 4K capture and come in six focal lengths, ranging from 18mm (T2.4) to 100mm (T2.1).
Sigma will have its cine lens line-up in full force, including the three newest introductions: the 28mm, 40mm and 105mm T1.5 primes. That makes a total of 10 lenses in Sigma’s FF High Speed Prime line-up. Sigma offers a single full-frame zoom lens, its 24–35mm T2.2 model, along with two Super 35mm zooms: the 18–35mm T2 and the 50–100mm T2.
New wireless monitors from SmallHD.
SmallHD
SmallHD will premiere its 1303 HDR Bolt Sidekick and 1703 P3X Bolt Sidekick — its first 13-inch and 17-inch monitors with integrated Teradek wireless receivers. That means they’re wireless at line-of-sight distances of up to 500 feet from a Teradek 500, 1000 or 3000 Bolt transmitter. The 1303 HDR is a 1920 x 1080 10-bit Rec. 709 display with 1,500 nits of brightness for daylight viewability, while the 1703 P3X is a 1920 x 1080 10-bit DCI P3 display with 1,000 nits of brightness — still not bad for viewability. The monitors each have two SDI inputs and outputs and one HDMI output, both run SmallHD’s OS3 software, with tools such as HD waveform, vectorscope, false color and more, and both support unlimited 3D LUTs via SD card.
Steadicam M-2
Tiffen
Tiffen is bringing its new NATural ND Graduated Filters to the show, along with an array of diopters and diffusion filters and even some lighting — the Lowel TotaLED daylight source and the Fresnel Pro Power Bi-Color LED. But the star attraction is likely to be the latest Steadicam, the M-2 modular stabilizer. Steadicam’s Volt stabilization technology is built into the top stage and gimbal to make a more compact design, and the rest of the rig is highly customizable — including many components that are interchangeable with the Steadicam M-1. Also new at Cine Gear will be the Steadicam Steadimate-S, introduced at NAB as a kind of upgrade option for the popular DJI Ronin-S. Combining a vest and arm that wraps around the neck of the Ronin S with a counterbalancing weight at the bottom of the unit, it lets the Ronin-S be used more like a traditional Steadicam.
