NAB 2011 – Day 2
The biggest mystery of the day – how did they know my name at Starbucks? I paid cash, and they never asked my name, but somehow my name was written on the cup when my grande americano appeared. Is Starbucks using RFID? Does my credit card have an RFID chip in it? Hmmm…
(UPDATE: I discovered at day’s end that my NAB conference pass has an RFID tag embedded.)
Today the Sony F65 digital cinema camera was outed. After resolving some technical difficulties with the playback system, we watched ‘The Arrival’, a short film by Curtis Clark. This is apparently the first film to be shot with the new camera, which is still in development. To be honest, I wasn’t blown away. Yes, a remarkable dynamic range was demonstrated. But we have already seen similar abilities exhibited by the Arri Alexa and, to some extent, by the Red Epic. Yes, the detail in the picture was impressive. But, based on the size of the projection screen, only viewers in the first couple of rows of chairs would have been able to tell the difference from a 2K project. If the F65 is priced at around the same point as the F35, I’m not sure whether the subtle differences of ‘true’ 4K capture will matter to that many productions.
I very much enjoyed the presentation by Douglas Trumbull, VFX supervisor on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, and many other films. Doug talked about his experience with the development of Showscan. In developing this system, experimentation revealed that frame rates of around 66fps could provide an illusion of reality. Lessons learned during these experiments are very relevant with recent announcements by Peter Jackson and James Cameron about their plans to shoot projects at frame rates higher than 24fps. Doug is currently developing a digital version of Showscan. He has also recently shot a music video that utilized the Phantom 65 camera system with the Z3D Zepar lens system. This system allows the capture of 2K 3D material using a single camera.
