NAB 2023 Report
This year's NAB experience was unlike any of the previous ones I've attended. Having been there around 10 times, mostly working at a booth, I never had the chance to explore the non-gear-related tracks, such as seminars, workshops, panels, and mini-conferences. However, this time around, I made it my mission to mix it up. I hope this summary will make up for my lack of daily reporting as CML’s representative on the showroom floor. To read in a browser, click here.
I found myself constantly on the move, running from sessions to the expo floor, averaging about 15,000 steps a day. With so much to see and experience, I barely had time to eat, and the FOMO kept me going. On the last day, when most attendees were rushing to leave, I decided to stay back and attend one more session on AI and Machine Learning, where I conceived of the idea of using Chat GPT to proofread this report ☺ . It was after that session that I had the pleasure of meeting Gary Adcock, who curated the Director of Photography Creative Conference, and some of the organizers. I found out that this mini-conference was happening in person at NAB for the first time. Meeting Gary left a favorable lasting impression on me, and I'm grateful for all his hard work.
My most engaging workshop at NAB was "The Behind the Scenes ASC Cinematography Workshop" led by Roberto Schaefer, ASC, AIC. He shared clips from 5 of his films, along with extensive shot lists, floor plans, and still photos, and discussed his creative and technical process. The four-hour session flew by, with interactive Q&A that kept the conversation flowing. I could have spent two days just asking questions, discussing solutions to different challenges and learning from Roberto’s wisdom. He is gracious and kind, and obviously put a lot of effort into creating the workshop. Having taken the master class years ago, it was like the first day there. Roberto stimulates both the mind and the imagination, sparking innate and infinite curiosity.
Shout out to Stephen Lighthill for guiding the conversation and Alex Beatty to feeding the footage to JZ who was projecting it, and of course Kristin Petrovich for producing.
I’m really content with the ease I had in obtaining gear from the different vendors I have come to know well after all these years in order to film Roberto’s session. Everyone just gave me their gear, trusted me, and I gathered a camera, sticks and a mic in like 60 minutes. Shout out to Michael Bulbenko from Fuji, Alex Dummer from Videndum and Leo from Comica. Their willingness to help and trust in my ability to use the equipment was truly appreciated.
To “start” with the headlines, three things that stuck out to me the most are:
Virtual Production On-set Image-Based Lighting, DJI’s Inspire 3 and more Women!
Virtual Production / Volume -
Virtual Production and the use of LED walls were the hot topics at a recent expo, with many companies exhibiting their related technology. Sessions covered the basics for the curious, as well as deeper conversations on where the technology is headed and how it can be used in more ways. Attendees and speakers also delved into the technical specs and current issues surrounding the field.
Among the notable innovations showcased is On-Set Image-Based Lighting, brought to us from the VFX / CG world by Tim Kang of Quasar, and Frieder Hochheim of Kino. This concept uses high-resolution images to capture the lighting and environment of a location for pixel mapping onto hard and soft light fixtures to create higher spectrum precision lighting and higher output (vs. the LED panels) which is most crucial on skin tones. Check out Quasar’s deep geek dive including e-books on the subject here.
Pixel mapping images in RGB onto lights with a TV instead of an LED wall in the background, utilizing Accsoon, Seemo, Chromalink and Prolycht were demoed by Mitch Gross, providing a cost-effective solution for less intensive needs. More on that below.
EZ Track -
There are many new accessories and devices to work with VFX and CGI like the EZTRACK which is a hub for the camera and objects tracking in real time. A small camera mounted box helps integrate live action with CG or plate environments. Interfacing with Cooke Optics lens data, this device goes on the camera, and gives you real time info from the lens metadata which allows you to see the CG backgrounds in the shot you’re looking at live on the monitors. It’s too intricate to do it justice here so please go to the website to see demos.
MagicBox
Magicbox is a new pop-out Volume-type traveling studio in a semi-trailer that can bring the virtual production to any location. If you are shooting far from a production center that offers an LED Volume to shoot in they can come to you. There will be two sizes, one 42’ and the other 52’ long. It is big enough to hold an automobile on its motorized turntable.
Waterbird
There were many other interesting pieces of kit like the Flexible Track Waterbird from Waterbird Systems offering bendable rail systems featuring a 6-axis motion controller among others. Super cool!
As the technology advances, there is great anticipation for further developments in Virtual Production.
Drones -
The DJI Inspire 3 with an 8K sensor is all the rage. The camera's capabilities have been put to the test in a short film shot by Claudio Miranda, ASC, showcasing the incredible results it can produce. CineD has also highlighted the camera's impressive features in a detailed review
Sony unveiled new accessories and advancements for its Airpeak S1 Drone that give it a strong upgrade including a new battery that increases the flight time from 16 to 26 minutes, a lighter gimbal, and “Real-Time Kinematic”, which is a GPS correction technique that provides real time corrections to location data while the drone is capturing imagery (like the Inspire 3 has) providing increased stability in flight, hovering and landing.
Women –
The recent NAB conference showcased a significant increase in the number and diversity of female-focused activities. The Society of Camera Operators, Women in Media, and Gals N Gear were among the organizations prominently featured, offering hands-on workshops, panels on virtual production, discussions on indie filmmaking, networking events, and even a leadership conference. It was just incredible to stand in the sidelines and watch young women get the opportunity to learn, hands-on, from esteemed female operators. Sharra Romany, who helped put together the SOC hands-on training said “I saw the look in their eyes as if they’re discovering the rest of their life’s trajectory.” The generosity and warmth with which knowledge was passed down made NAB a truly groundbreaking event. While the conference boasted many impressive developments, this focus on female empowerment was a standout feature, leaving a lasting impression on all who took part.
Top picks from the showroom floor -
The winners of the NAB awards can be found here. I disagree with this notion, however, the feedback from attendees suggests a general feeling of disappointment with the lack of new and groundbreaking innovations. In response, many shifted their focus to identifying their favorite pieces of gear on display. While some struggled to identify standout products, with unenthusiastic facial expressions, others were able to share their thoughts, and the search for exciting new technology continued. From my perspective, there is so much gear and so little time. People leave after a day or two, and I can’t get enough of it, and can “NAB it up” for a week, no problem. Especially if it meant that I could get more than 4 hours of sleep a night.
In addition to the aforementioned, here are my favorite products:
Fuji X-H2S & Frame IO – NAB Winner –
Truly the future, Camera to Cloud continues to evolve to new heights. You would have to buy the grip to enable the super cool frame IO feature which is how DCS and CineD went about getting their daily reports to the hungry public. For that kind of quick turnarounds, it’s really perfect. 200 mb/s Wi-Fi antenna built in plus an Ethernet port on it.
If you don’t need that in the foreseeable future, of course, skip the extra battery grip ($1000) and go for the camera, saving $1500 and Frame IO separately. The X-H2s is $2,500, which is $500 more than the X-H2, has a better sensor with 1 more stop of dynamic range, 4K @120fps. What differentiates it from the others I ask? It has the best looking 709, using the Eterna Film Stock Simulation. It’s been said that the log output cuts nicely with Sony and Arri. Michael Bulbenko tells James Mathers about it all here.
Teradek provides the actual hardware that gets the footage from the camera to the cloud. You need an encoder, Wi-Fi router and the uploader. Prism Mobile is the on-camera device that has the cellular modem built into it, alongside the Cube encoder.
Nanlux Evoke 900C RGBLAC LED – NAB winner –
What stands out to me most is the ability to shoot with super high frame rate, it’s waterproof and the modifiers / accessories make the light very flexible as a hard and soft light. It’s about 75% of the power of the 1200, as math would have it. Ron Sill summarizes it by saying “You can control the beam, you can shape the beam, and have all the colors that you need.” As far as I am concerned, what sells it to me along with everything is the SSI rating of 95. Cine D expands on this here.
In addition, the Evoke 1200 Bi-color does high speed up to 1.7M fps Not sure how that’s possible, or relevant, but cool! Its power is equivalent to 5k tungsten or 2.4 HMI. It costs $3K with all the modifiers to make it soft light.
Accsoon -
Anytime our own Mitch Gross is involved with something, we all pretty much know we should be paying attention. Finally, I was able to see all the things he’s been up to under one booth.
The Accsoon SeeMo Pro, which converts video into an encoded signal that can be read by their free iPhone & iPad app, thus turning your chosen iPhone / iPad / Android into a monitor that can receive SDI and HDMI inputs. It can even record an HD proxy. Optional and advised is the adjustable Powercage for some iPad models. Zacuto partnered up to make an EVF, a custom Zacuto Z-finder and dedicated phone mounting solution.
There’s a demo version of ChromaLink, the free lighting control app for Prolycht lights. The demo version can read the SeeMo signal and use it to control the color & relative intensity of our lights, thus creating a low cost intuitive Image-Based Interactive Lighting Control system. ChromaLink lets you pick up to 8 targets on the screen, each of which is adjustable in size and sensitivity. Each target can control multiple lights, so you could have a hard highlight as well as a soft ambient fill. As the image changes under each target the relative intensity and chroma is averaged and sent to the corresponding lights. Seeing it in person is highly recommended, but for now – check this Newsshooter video out.
Litemover -
The “How does this not already exist” find is from Matthew’s Litemover. The First Automated, Universal System for Remote Light Adjustment. As in control the light remotely from far away with smooth pan, tilt and spot/flood focus control. Operated via the manual hand control, or DMX, RDM or wireless DMX with its built-in CRMX. 3 precision motors quietly respond directly to the operator’s input even while the fixture is actively in use on a stand, crane, jib arm or other set hardware. Standard or inverted underslung configuration, convenient when working on stands and a studio lighting grid, aerial lift or telehandler. Pretty nifty. Battery powered for wireless operation or may be cabled to suit the setup. The issue: crazy expensive @10K. Yikes. Newsshooter video here.
Lenses -
Relatively affordable lenses were all over the show this year. Some new, some already seen. The standouts were the Dulens sets of primes. The classic looking vintage look, the silver finish and the black finish that you can change to a brass burnished look by sanding or rubbing all sharing the same T2.4 optics. So far they have 31, 43, 58, 85mm with more to come. Currently priced at around $1000/per lens.
Meike showed many sets of lenses including a choice of full frame (16, 24, 35, 50, 85, 105 and 135mm) or super-35 coverage T2.1 optics in PL, EF, RF, E or L mount (12, 18, 25, 35, 50, 75, 100mm). They also offer a set of Mini Prime Cinema lenses at T2.2 in an M43, E or X mount (8, 10, 12, 16, 25, 35, 50, 65, 85mm depending on the mount). They also offer mount adapters and mounts with drop-in filter slots. The lenses are currently priced from $600 to $1000 each.
NiSi Athena Prime full frame lenses with either PL, RF or E mounts (14, 25, 35, 50, 85mm all at T1.9 except the 14 at T2.4).
There are also offerings from Gecko-Cam like the Genesis G35 series (14.5, 16, 20, 25, 35, 50, 85, 135mm ranging from T3.0 to T1.4 focal length dependent). They also offer a G65 series for FF LPL mount as well as various versions of the Genesis Opia and their Vintage Ultra Prime based on the Zeiss Ultra Primes. Prices TBD.
Super quick link mentions if you still have the bandwidth for more:
Sony's Glasses-less Spatial Reality Display - There’s a new Larger 27 inch 4K Model, Provides a Realistic, Glasses-free 3D Visualization Experience for Professionals.
Reidel – Next generation walkies for better on-set communication: Bolero wireless intercom system, includes their 2.4 GHz solution. I really hope our industry will adopt this system and finally let go of the good ol’ walkies that we all have some sort of relationship with. I got to use this system on The Muppets, with Craig Kief, and it is all it's cracked up to be.
More?
Kudos to you if you’re still reading. A kind of random thing I learned was a few details about Fisher Dollies.
Mr. Fisher himself was showing me along with the SOC ladies the RHC – refined hydraulic system that the boom feature with works with now on the Model 10. Smoother and more controlled than before. It also has this cool way of essentially setting hard stops so you can get to the same point take after take. You still have to boom at the same speed to achieve this, but it’s definitely easier this way to nail it. He also showed me the track guides I have not noticed before. The orange little wheels inside the track. This helps the dolly not tip over if ever that was going to happen as well as make a smoother move. One last thing I took note of is the standing platform, I haven’t had to use one so I didn’t know it existed until now. Pretty nifty, creating a bit less acrobatics for the operator, considering the shots if fixed movement wise, other than the boom. Their ‘new’ thing is still in prototype – a reinforced level head for less vibrations with longer lenses.
In closing, I was pleasantly surprised by how informative and engaging NAB was for me, especially considering most people that seemed unimpressed in general. I learned about new techniques and trends in the industry, and gained insights from experienced professionals. It was a truly enriching experience, and I left the convention feeling inspired and motivated to continue learning and growing in our field. I tried my best to convey it all in writing (with links) and I hope you feel like you were there just a bit more than before.