snip....
Thanks for taking this back into a productive light.
Josh
Josh, good answer.
I don’t mind your writing, or trying to give a behind the scene interpretation of why, what, goes through an artist’s brain to produce imagery. It’s also refreshing to see someone feature image makers that shoot still “film” cameras and I’m guessing, but I feel that your still finding your way and trying to differentiate LL from the other image based sites, while playing to your current members while gaining new audience.
Though I don’t consider myself a gear head (maybe sort of) but I would like to see a few more articles of some equipment manufacturers, without becoming a any “one" brand show. Especially some of the motion/cinema equipment, like the new wave of LED lighting.
Last Saturday, I went t the bsc expo
https://www.bscexpo.com which featured cinema/broadcast equipment from the new small Nikon, to $100,000 cinema cameras. I mostly went to hear Roger Deakins speak, but was fascinated by the advances in Lenses, lighting, stabilizers, a lot that has use in still production.
I haven’t been to a equipment expo in years as I’ve felt still equipment has sort of leveled off. The BSC expo was different, with a different and diverse crowd, from small one man band filmmakers (that also shoot stills) to DOP’s grips, gaffers, all sorts of crew and they all had that look of crew. I actually made 4 tours of the show, so I wouldn’t miss anything. What was refreshing was every booth I stopped at, I got real information without a rep dissing a competitor, or trying to oversell me and every rep I spoke to had a direct to the point answers.
There was huge demonstrations, to single person booths that were tiny companies. One got my attention is called photon beard. The owner had a zz top type of beard (no pun intended) and photo beard is the oldest lighting manufacturer in the UK, starting in 1882. They had a limited line but sold LEDs, Tungsten Kits and a blonde HMI that sold for around 3 grand including ballast, producing 1200 watts and only pulling 7 amps from the mains.
Sigma has a great line of small cine lenses that are lightweight and beautiful in look and sharpness with smooth roll off.
The most beautiful camera was the new Panavision that is a rent only camera and this photo I linked to does not do the camera justice. It’s not as large as the photo looks, but it’s 8k, Full Frame (still camera size) sensor and it was very impressive.
https://dxl.panavision.com There also was a small company that works with PS technique and builds stabilizers for small mirrorless to large cinema cameras and it was amazingly easy to use with virtually zero learning curve. It wasn’t cheap but for a small camera like a 1dxII or the new Nikon mirrorless it was amazing, especially if the camera autofocuses reliably.
The most prevalent equipment was LED lighting. There had to be 25 booths featuring lighting, mostly LEDs. One company had a bank of LED lights that was one of the brightest lights I’ve seen. I asked how bright it goes, so the rep pointed it at the floor (and this is a very big light) and kicked it up for about 5 seconds. It was so bright it lit up at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the expo, floor.
My point is a lot of innovation is going to motion equipment that has a lot of crossover from motion to still photography applications and many of the visitors I talked to, regardless of reputation or size of projects they work on, even though most are filmmakers many I spoke to have been asked to shoot stills during production, especially commercial shoots.
How does this post have relevance to LL? Well, the thing I noticed was the diversity of visitors at the bsc, from 20’s to late 60’s. Everyone I spoke to worked in image making with passion and there was no real separation due to age, national origin or gender. I would imagine if someone shot an overhead of the crowd, it probably is the market LL could thrive on with these active participants.
IMO
BC
