KitPlus | Articles

The Red Epic has landed

Finally the Red Epic has started to appear in facilities companies around the world, S+O Media is one of the first in the UK to receive a handmade Epic-M. I’ve taken the camera out on a couple of shoots and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I’m sure everyone is aware of the Red One, the first camera from Red. Billionaire Jim Jannard decided he co...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

Production Profile with Polecam

What brings an innocent young Swede into the competitive high-adrenalin business of television production? In my case, it all began at school. I developed an early fascination for photography and created slide shows that were presented as end-of-semester happenings to my fellow students. Unlike television, you can actually watch a live slide-show a...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

Using Panasonic AG-AF101 HD Camera

Introduction When award winning film maker and photojournalist Fiona Lloyd-Davies announced her latest project to embark on a journey to The Democratic Republic of Congo, she described the place as “probably one of the toughest environments that a camera can work in - very hot and very, very dusty” but, this was to be just one rigor amongst many du...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2011

NAB and the format wars

By the time you read this article you may be sitting comfortably on the plane ready to take-off to Vegas. Every year the show comes at a strange time – just after the shooting season has started in the northern hemisphere. As a result, most of the camera companies at the show will have already sorted their purchasing needs for the year ahead, espec...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

A day in the life of a Royals videographer

Times have changed; no more phone calls, telexes or faxes, - remember them? Now it’s E-mails; what would we do without them?A quiet day in the office-come-edit-suite, the FCP rendering yet another set of archive clips, and the other Mac illuminated with Thunderbird, when ‘ping’ (the Mac version of “You got mail”) wakes one up from the hypnotic tran...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

Mobile Cameraman Extraordinaire

I had wanted to work in television since my teens and, at 20, started as a trainee assistant cameraman at Mersey Television on 'Brookside' in Liverpool and then joining Thorn-EMI Facilities in London. Thorn-EMI put me in charge of a studio used to shoot links for companies like Children's Channel using very bulky early tubed Betacams. Five years la...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

Production Spotlight

On Friday 10th September, Fluidmoves Video Productions, filmed a new outfall pipe leaving Shoreham Harbour on the Sussex coast. The 1.8 kilometre pipe was towed out to sea through the open lock gates round to Newhaven Harbour, a distance of 15 nautical miles, on behalf of Southern Water and its contractor 4Delivery. The outfall is part of Southern...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

3D camera mirror rigs

3D camera mirror rigs will be around for a long time to come and contrary to popular belief, shooting in 3D is very easy with the right equipment. Entry level 3D mirror rigs made in the UK are now available, such as the manual Hurricane Rig developed by Alistair Chapman and the fully automated 'BINORIG' developed by us at Teletest Ltd. The key to a...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Expert battery advice

1. Why do some manufacturers sell NiMH batteries?NiMH batteries have a number of clear advantages versus other cell chemistries and we believe and see that this cell chemistry complements the standard Li-Ion range. Indeed some customers choose to use only NiMH. The main areas of benefit are weight and balance. A strong minority of cameramen see cam...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

Lighting Q and A

I AM SETTING UP A STUDIO WHAT IS THE MOST EFFICIENT AND PRACTICLE WAY TO LIGHT IT Modern studios and current camera technologies have changes the way efficient image capture can be achieved. No longer do we need huge 5K and 10K lamps in our small to medium studios, but a new generation of lighting tools is now available, and has actually been aroun...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2011

HotTips on how to be a better lighting cameraman.

First up, don’t worry too much about HDFor most of my early career I shot with film, not video, so I usually approach things from a film point-of-view. This means I don’t see an awful lot of difference between SD and HD. In my opinion, the extra definition has more of an impact on the make-up team and the set designers because, regardless of what l...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2011

Around the globe with Q-Ball

The bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin was celebrated during 2009 by a variety of TV programmes studying the background to his 1859 book 'On the Origin of Species'. One of the most ambitious tributes was a 35-part series planned and produced by Dutch broadcaster VPRO. Rather than hire a studio, they commissioned the three-masted clipper Sta...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2010

Underwater DSLR Video Capture

Needless to say, DSLRs and their newly found HD video capability are a hot topic nowadays but many of us used to traditional video/film cameras are finding the transition a little vexing. The problem is that for years we’ve been able to immerse ourselves within that snug, comfortable viewfinder and get on with the job at hand. All of a sudden we ar...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2010

To buy or not to buy that is the question

When it comes to buying or leasing your equipment, should your head be in the clouds or your hands in your pockets? Azule’s Peter Savage investigates... As the theme of this month’s issue is archiving and storage, I thought it would be a good time to take a moment and look at different ways of acquiring the IT based storage and archiving assets on...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2010

Polecam Production Profile

I have been working in the film and television industry since 1989, starting as a news cameraman and editor at the Manitoba Television Network. MTN is a local independent television broadcaster in my home town of Winnipeg. In 1991 I joined the French television service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a sound man and advanced to EN...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2010