There is a new compact 10-40mm T3.95 zoom lens available from Fujinon specifically designed for the A-Minima. More and more films are using digital intermediate (DI), the days of film opticals are numbered, yet the little A-Minima comes at a good time when you can shoot Super16 and go to DI as an alternative to either 35mm or HD.
Sony’s Cine Alta screenings at NAB showed off the creative potential of high definition, however, the presentation was marred by low quality of the Christie DLP projector introducing jaggies and a visible grid into the image.
Zeiss introduced their DigiPrimes prime lens set specifically designed for high definition cameras and offer optimum performance wide open.
Quantel iQ’s has the ability to take any format (SD, HD, 2K) in and output any format in real time, for now, it’s the ultimate real-time finishing machine.
Panasonic, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson Multimedia are working together to establish the “Blu-ray” disk format using blue-violet laser to store over 2-hours of digital high definition video recording on a 12cm diameter disk the size of an DVD.
With advances in hard drive and semiconductor storage, and the evolution towards always-on high speed internet access to the home, will the ultimate delivery vehicle for digital media content be the internet or shiny silver disks? Fear of piracy may encourage another physical format for the delivery of HD movies to the home, but convenience and consumer demand may eventually force the industry to accept the internet as a viable media distribution medium. Look at the development of cascading media delivery schemes coming from several startups where peers on the internet help distribute media to other peers, reducing the load on central servers and making internet media delivery more efficient. The next five years will tell.
This post is a section from the article “NAB 2002 Roundup” published in the New York Independent Film Monitor, Vol. 7, No. 7 (May 2002)