KitPlus | Articles

BSC Expo 2019 Report

BSC Expo returned to the Battersea Evolution on Friday February 1st and Saturday 2nd. It is a busy and friendly event though this year in need of some temperature control: exhibitors around the entrance area were uncomfortably aware of the wintry conditions outside and the main hall was in need of cooling. BenQ showed examples from its range of mon...

Submitted by Paul MacKenzie

Published 21 March 2019

Sennheiser Memory Mic User Review

The Sennheiser Memory mic, adding to the new generation of semi-professional equipment that is helping the need for high quality audio in parallel markets that until now, did not have the budgets to achieve ‘great’ results. As part of training to be a General Practitioner, trainee doctors have to be observed interacting with patients. This is essen...

Submitted by Dr Anthony Willman

Published 21 March 2019

Streaming - Shut up and Sit Down

Twilight Imperium is a board game all about strategy and backstabbing. Known for its length of gameplay, the team behind Shut Up and Sit Down decided to deliver a mammoth 10-hour live broadcast, streamed to Twitch. Matt Lees is here to tell us how it went down. Having recently begun streaming live to Twitch, our audience naturally asked us to play...

Submitted by Matt Lees

Published 21 March 2019

Flexible Connectivity Hits Europe

The low-latency Dejero CellSat network was launched in Europe in January of 2019, which is excellent news for European broadcasters who can now benefit from the same flexibility CellSat provides North American Dejero customers, such as World Racing Group (WRG). The production teams at WRG, the premier sanctioning body for dirt track racing in North...

Submitted by Yvonne Monterroso

Published 21 March 2019

State of the Nation - January 2019

I’m writing these thoughts on the morning of 20 December. From my desk in Tunbridge Wells I am normally gently aware of air traffic at five thousand feet, lining up to land at Gatwick Airport. Today it is silent: since 9.00 last night some idiot has been flying drones across the runway. An airport is a finely tuned machine, with all the interconnec...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 24 January 2019

Viva La Microphone Evolution

2018 marked the twentieth year of Sennheiser Evolution microphones - a range of wired and wireless live performance microphones and wireless systems that took Sennheiser from relatively small-volume broadcast manufacturing to a prime position on stages around the world. Last November, Sennheiser UK marked this auspicious occasion by holding an even...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 24 January 2019

An Epiphany Moment

I had been negotiating the sale of my company and had reached the really hard end of the bargain. We were close to agreeing the final sum after a lot of too-much-give-and-not-enough-take negotiation. The solicitors were calling me, keen for a deal. It had come down to one sticking point and, in my hard ball “I am the Wolf of Wall Street” guise, I w...

Submitted by Peter Savage 2

Published 09 November 2018

Sony HDC-4800 Review

First announced at NAB 2016, the Sony HDC-4800 is a studio camera system capable of shooting 4K/UHD at up to 8x or full HD at up to 16x. With a price point upwards of £250,000 it is a very high-end product with a wide feature set. In Sony's own words, "This is the future of live production, designed to satisfy the storytelling aspect of modern spor...

Submitted by Andy McKenzie

Published 09 November 2018

GoPro HERO 7 Review

When I heard I was filming a nature restoration project in the pouring rain this week I was excited. WHY? No Cameraman enjoys the rain, surely but this time I was enthusiastic because I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to try out the brand new GoPro Hero 7 Black Edition. Scythes, water, and wildlife that excrete things are not normally co...

Submitted by Tim Bearder

Published 09 November 2018

AI in Media and Entertainment

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term appearing everywhere these days. What is happening in media and entertainment (M&E) that makes the industry ripe for AI? In other words, why does the M&E industry need AI?In virtually every industry, AI is claiming a growing stake in the supply chain, creating both operational enhancements and business efficie...

Submitted by David Candler

Published 09 November 2018

Giving Welsh sport a global audience

From the Ospreys Rugby Union team, to the Football Association of Wales, as well as national cycling, swimming and boxing coverage, Port Talbot based Buffoon Film and Media has been heavily involved in putting Welsh sports on the world stage. Focusing mainly on platforms including Facebook Live and YouTube, the team has already live streamed to mor...

Submitted by Adam Amor

Published 09 November 2018

The Biggest Toy Shop in the World

When Nigel Woodford started his career at BBC Wood Norton in 1962, television was black and white and BBC Two had not yet been launched. In 2018 Nigel will retire, and Richmond Film Services, the pro-audio equipment rental company set up by Nigel in 1973, can count numerous contributions to iconic moments in British cultural, sporting and film hist...

Submitted by Emma Morrison

Published 08 September 2018

Fast-moving productions need multi-cam RF reliability

Wireless acquisition creates a level of freedom not possible with any other form of filming yet only a decade ago the technique was barely possible. The technology enabling live real-time connections over radio frequencies has advanced leaps and bounds such that there is barely an entertainment, documentary, sports or news format today that doesn’t...

Submitted by Darren Bilton

Published 08 September 2018

How machine learning might affect media

Why has AI suddenly becoming interesting?I have a curious relationship with technology. I’ve been doing it all my life and I see topics come and go over the years. This is the 3rd time around that I’ve seen Artificial Intelligence become trendy and this time, I think it will stick. There are 4 things that are different this time around and they are...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 18 July 2018

Dedo DLED3 Microlighting Kit Review

Having recently had the immense pleasure of getting my hands on the new Minisoftbox adapter ring for the Dedo DLED3 that takes the soft box that fits the standard DLH4 & DLED7. Size matters here! I discovered that there is only about a half stop difference between the DLED7 and the DLED3 output at the surface of the diffusion fabric which is amazin...

Submitted by Jonathan Harrison

Published 18 July 2018