Sony launches PXW-FS7 4K camera

Sony held its press conference this morning at IBC, and announced two new cameras: the PXW-X200 and the PXW-FS7. While the X200 looks interesting, the big buzz was around the FS7, a 4K XDCAM camera with a Super35 CMOS sensor.

Atomos Power Station

The new Atomos Power Station is designed to solve the problem of running out of power in the middle of a shoot and having to change batteries on cameras, lights and other equipment. It can also be used for anything that can be powered using a USB port (it has two), such as iPhones or even iPads.

It can deliver up to 48W of power, which limits the size of lights or complex camera rigs that it can be used with, but for 80-90% users this should be more than enough.

Canon upgrades firmware for 4K

Canon is introducing several firmware upgrades for its EOS C500 and EOS C300  cameras, DP-V3010 4K reference display and its Cinema Raw Development software, mainly aimed at improved 4K performance, particularly support for the new BT.2020 colour space, although the C300 (and C500) will also get simpler colour temperature setting. 

All will be on show at IBC in Amsterdam (12-16 September), where Canon will also have lots of presentations by filmmakers - read the full story on our Canon XF Notebook site.

Panasonic HC-X1000 4K camcorder

Panasonic’s new HC-X1000 Ultra HD 4K camcorder is its first prosumer model that can record 4K 60p/50p video on an SD card.

It can record both UHD (3840x2160) at 50/60p and Cinema 4K (4096x2160) at 24p in MP4 at up to 150Mbps (50/60p) or 100Mbps (24p), plus .mov or MP4 in HD, which can use all-Intra compression for a maximum bit rate of 200Mbps, as well as AVCHD (1080p) at up to 28Mbps. Even if you are shooting for HD, recording in Ultra HD can be useful during editing, as you can then zoom in to a one-quarter crop without losing any HD resolution, or pan across the picture to follow movement.

Arri shoots for Ultra HD + 4K

Users of Arri’s Alexa and Amira cameras will be able to deliver Ultra HD and 4K despite the cameras not having UHD sensors, thanks to up-sampling.

The documentary-style Amira will be upgraded to recording Ultra HD at up to 60 frames per second, in real time, via a paid firmware update due later this year, while ProRes 3.2K, a new recording format that allows easy up sampling in post to Ultra HD, will be available for the Alexa in a software update early next year. The Arriraw Open Gate format already allows this up sampling for 4K cinema.