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DV (Almost) Live From the NAB Show Blog — April 20-21 Updates
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April 21, 2009
Part 2: April 20-21 Updates
The DV team, including editor David E. Williams, technical editor Jay Holben, and contributing editors Oliver Peters, Ned Soltz and Iain Stasukevich,
will make regular blog reports from the NAB Show from April 18-24,
highlighting new tools and technology and events of interest to the DV readership. 
Check back here for daily reporting and start following DVMagazine on Twitter to get our latest updates and notifications of blog entries. Please contact Dave Williams with any questions, comments or editorial pitches. You can read our April 18-19, 2009 NAB blog entries here and April 22-23 Updates Wrap Up here.
 April 20, 1:50p.m. — Panasonic Grows P2 Line-up
By Oliver Peters Panasonic
continues to expand its P2 offerings and enters NAB ’09 with welcome
news for P2 customers. Riding the curve of solid state storage
advancements, Panasonic introduced the new “E” series cards (E for
“economy”). The new cards are faster (1.2 Gbps) and don’t have quite
the working life of the first series of cards (at least 5 years,
though), but will hit the market at a new low price. 36GB E-series
cards ship in May for $625 and 64GB cards are expected to be out in
August and will sell for under a grand.
The
product that will probably get the most buzz is the new AG-HPX300 P2
camcorder (above). It does just about everything you’d want (1080i/p,
720p, SD and 20 variable frame rates), but for only $10,700 WITH a
lens. In addition to DVCPROHD, it can also record in Panasonic’s
AVC-Intra 10-bit 4:2:2 codec. This camera is a step up from the popular
200, but addresses a big weakness – ergonomics. The 300 returns to a
bigger, shoulder-mounted format factor, for a more professional look
and better balance and stability during shooting.
It’s clear
that Panasonic is trying to position this camera against the
highly-regarded Sony PMW-EX3. The 300 offers chromatic aberration
compensation like its big brothers and this summer Panasonic will
release a downloadable firmware update for “flash band” compensation.
That’s when a flash or strobe light in the shot only exposes half of
the frame. It’s a typical characteristic of CMOS sensors and something
the EX-3 is known to suffer from. The downside of the 300 is that it
still only uses a 1/3” sensor, so time will tell if people find its
image quality adequate for most productions. In any case, folks like
Zacuto see it as a good general-purpose, low-cost camera for the indie
filmmaker, who also has to earn a living with paying gigs. They already
plan to introduce production accessories to “cinematize” the 300.
In
other P2 news, Panasonic has made improvements with its various drives
and mobile players to allow for the use of AVC-Intra, compatibility
with the E-series cards and connection to computers via the PCIe buss.
They also introduced the AJ-HRW10 P2 Rapid Writer. This is a
self-contained unit used to copy P2 media to RAIDed, removable hard
drives. Another product that fills a P2 niche comes from partner
Rimage, the makers of DVD duplication systems. They are introducing an
archiving solution, which permits unattended copying of P2 media to
Blu-ray DVD-ROMs for permanent storage.(You'll find more Panasonic release details here.) April 20, 2:05p.m. — Sony Builds On Box Office Success
By Oliver Peters 
Sony
has been a key player in digital cinema. They set the early pace with
24P cameras and peg the combined box office revenues of all films shot
to date with Sony CineAlta cameras at the $6 billion mark. This year
they will introduce 30 new camera models of various types, but the most
awaited is the PDW-F800 (below). 
This
new camera includes all the options available for the 700, including
24fps CineAlta shooting, and adds variable frame rate recording. This
makes the camera truly the XDCAM-HD successor to the venerable F900
HDCAM tape-based camcorder. Rounding out of the XDCAM-HD optical disc
family is the PDW-F1600 deck, which now features insert and assemble
editing capabilities to become a true VTR-replacement product.
Sony
has been making deeper inroads into motion picture production. 2009
will see the first films shot with the F35 camera, which debuted last
year. The more-established, but still-new F23 (above) will get
significant exposure on the 4th of July weekend, when Michael Mann’s
gangster drama Public Enemies
opens nationwide. This retelling of the John Dillinger story stars
Johny Depp and Christian Bale. It was shot with the F23, as well as a
few B-camera shots with a Sony EX3. The newest Sony digital
cinematography camera introduced at this show is the SRW-9000 (below).  It’s
a one-piece camcorder housing both F23-type camera electronics and an
on-board HDCAM-SR recorder. Sony views the 9000 as a good B-camera to
augment an F23 on large shoots.
Finally,
Sony has announced a deal with AMC theaters to install its 4K line of digital projectors. This represents a significant number of screens
that will now standardize on 4K, which could shift the tide away from
2K digital projection as the current de facto standard.
 April 20, 3:50p.m. — 3D Story in NAB Daily
By David E. Williams
As our publishing company, NewBay Media, also operates the NAB Daily paper, I've been pitching in to write some features, including this piece seen in today's issue: "Has 3D Become Mainstream?"  April 20, 4:56p.m. — Sights & Sounds at NAB
By Iain Stasukevich
This
is my first year NAB. I've wanted to go, and I registered for the show
every year since 2006, but time and money commitments and the fact that
I'm a little mortified by Las Vegas kept me from ever making it out.
But I'm here now, and much happier to be roaming the halls of the Las
Vegas Convention Center than I was last night when I was scouring the
strip, trying to find a quiet place to eat and maybe slog through
another few pages of Ulysses.
I'm
happy because NAB is crazy. There's a lot going on here, and there's a
kind of thrilling absurdity to it, like being invited into Willy
Wonka's motion picture and broadcast factory. Today, in the North Hall
alone, I saw video goggles for M-16 rifles being adapted for digital
cameras, Swiss Army tripods, hand-cranked telescoping microphone jibs
(I saw a LOT of jibs), an app that turns your iPhone into a
teleprompter, a guy on a unicycle operating a Glidecam, and an FM
transmitter that could pass as abstract sculpture.
 Now,
I love what JVC, Sony, and Panasonic are doing. I dig the lenses, the
lighting, and everything else: postproduction, distribution,
exhibition... But so far it's been the weird and the innovative (if
maybe a bit impractical) products that have made this show for me. You
don't get to see these things in your local camera house, so it's great
to see people out here, really strutting their stuff, and having fun
doing it (except for some of those booth models, who seem to be really
bored). One of the key themes at NAB is how content drives innovation,
but if the dude on the unicycle is any indication, it's innovation
that's doing the driving.  And, most likely, you saw it at NAB first.  April 20, 10:56p.m. — AJA & MatroxBy Ned Soltz
AJA Video Systems introduced the Ki Pro at their event held this morning before the NAB Show floor opened.
It's a stand-alone, portable tapeless acquisition device which records
from virtually any camera to either a hard drive module or Express34
card in Apple ProRes 422 codec. (You can read more about it here.) 
Described
in other terms, Ki Pro is essentially the Io HD with recording
capabilities. It is in my opinion the product that the Io HD should
have been: a truly portable, battery-powered, and ProRes-recording
device. Ki Pro was visible throughout the show floor on a variety of cameras from Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon. It certainly ranks as my choice product from the first day of the show.
AJA's
next surprise came in the form of the Io Express, a portable i/o
device for both PC and Mac laptops with Express34 slot. Io Express
fits in the palm of your hand with SDI, component and HDMI 1.3 Deep
Color i/o interfaces. It ships with Kona and Xena drivers for cross
platform compatibility. It even offers RS422 serial control. Io
Express lists for $995 and will ship Q3 2009. An optional PCIe card
for desktop machines is planned. 
Meanwhile, Matrox made some waves of their own today. H.264 is the codec of choice for high-quality Web video and one of the standards
for BluRay encoding. But H.264 encoding is processor intensive and
slow. Matrox solves the issue of slow H.264 encodes with the
CompressHD card (seen above), a $495 PCIe card for PC and Mac.
CompressHD works directly within Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder to
create H.264 files in greater-than-real time speeds. H.264 files may
be uploaded to Web or burned to BluRay through Adobe Encore or Roxio
Toast. On the Mac side, the hardware device can be accessed through
export from QuickTime player so users need not have installed Final Cut
Studio on the encoding machine.
CompressHD will ship this summer at a MSRP of $495.
And
there's more: the H.264 hardware encoder will be available as a $400
option for the Matrox MXO2 or the newly introduced MXO2 Mini.
 April 20, 11:25p.m. — My First Day From the FloorBy Jay Holben
Ah, Vegas... Starting to warm up, must be time again for NAB. The
show floor today was quite empty, compared to previous years. I heard
rumors of 86,000 people attending, apparently 10,000 less than last
year, but it seemed like considerably less than that to me. For
attendees, that's actually a good thing! It means you can move around
the floor easier without feeling you're at Disneyland on a weekend in
June. It also means that exhibitor reps aren't necessarily hounded by
fifteen people at a time and you can get some one-on-one time to see
the new toys. 
DLSR/HD hybrids are the talk of the town, without a question. The Canon EOS 5D MKII
(above) is a game-changer (indeed causing RED to go back to the drawing
board on their new models the day it was announced). Of course the idea
of shooting video on a DSLR isn't actually the most appealing concept
in the world; to make cameras like the 5D MKII more production-friendly
is going to require some external hardware. 
Companies like Zacuto are coming to the rescue with several options in various prices. I played with the "Sharp Shooter" (above, operator not
included), which features a shoulder pad, baseplate and lens rods and
pistol grip. The rig has many points of articulation to form-fit it to
your needs, but I found it a little uncomfortable. Perhaps this was
because I didn't have enough time to tweak it, I'm not sure. The best
part of it, in my book, was the viewing screen extender. Zacuto has an
eyepiece that magnifies the rear live-view screen on the 5D to function
like a more traditional ENG viewfinder — and I was impressed with the
clarity. The version I looked at didn't have a diopters yet, but that
is coming. The two other options in this line is the "Marksman," which
adds a rifle-stock-like shoulder brace and the "Sniper," which also
adds a traditional cine-style follow-focus knob. The whole rig isn't
necessarily light – maybe 5-8 pounds, but it definitely takes the still
camera into the motion production world. I'm anxious to see Redrock
Micro's take on the same concept.  I
was very excited about two other small items I saw at Zacuto – their
Z-Stop, which is merely a piece of serrated rubber on a flat flange
that attaches to your lens rods. It's used when you're using a lens
adapter on an existing lens to lock the f-stop in place (without using
gaff or camera tape). It's one of those
I-can't-believe-no-one-thought-of-this-before items, for sure. Next,
and this one is really great, is the Zwing Away (seen above) – small
adapter that fits on your lens rods and attaches to the smaller
matteboxes to convert any mattebox into a swing-away. It's an ingenious
piece of hardware that is small, compact and incredibly useful.
Glidecam
is showing love for the smaller camera users with their HD-1000,
HD-2000 and HD-4000 sleds that can be used with or without vest and
arm. In addition, the X22 Glidecam, which is a full vest and
counterbalanced arm system for cameras up to 22 lbs, is a newly refined
model being offered for a special introductory price of $5,900. An
AMAZING steal for a very versatile and robust rig.
For those small camera users who have to work with a teleprompter I saw a brilliant application at the ProPrompter
booth – ProPrompter for iPhone/iPod Touch! With a small, lightweight
bracket, you can mount your iPhone or iTouch off to the side of the
lens in landscape mode and with a free application from the Apple App
store, you can put the ProPrompter script on your iPhone! Impressively
effective and a really great solution for small camera shoots – or that
surprise talent who doesn't know their lines. 
Arri,
who is always top-of-the-line with their cameras, lighting and
accessories, had a potent press conference this morning announcing many
new products – but the one that peaked my interest was the AS18 (above)
– an 1,800-watt HMI that can be "plugged into the wall." A phenomenal,
and surprising, new class of lighting fixture (the first ever
1,800-watt HMI) this fixture packs a LOT of punch and can be run, in
the U.S., off standard commercial 20amp 120V single-phase power. It's
important to understand that this won't necessarily work off "house" or
residential power (typically only 15A circuits), the AS18 requires a
20A Edison outlet (with one vertical and one horizontal blade – as
opposed to the standard 15A Edison with two parallel vertical blades),
but the AS18 opens up a whole new world for single-phase Edison plug
fixtures. In addition, they offer the M18, a little sibling to the
Arrimax 18K fixture, the M18 features the same multi-faceted reflector
for a lensless fixture with a LOT of punch. We were lighting up the
show-floor ceiling over 100' away with a 1.8K lensless fixture plugged
into a standard 20A Edison outlet! A really impressive fixture.
Transvideo
wow'd me with two new products. The first is the Titanium, a digital
wireless HD transmitter which includes imbedded audio. At 5.8 GHz
frequency, it can send HD/SDI 1920x1080 4:4:4 RGB 10-bit wirelessly to
an HD monitor. It connects via V-Lock to the back of the camera (or
Anton Bauer adapter) and has 10 independent channels to have multiple
packs working simultaneously. No delay (latency free), it's an
impressive device.
For their second toy of the day, Transvideo
showed me their CineMonitor HD3D View monitor. An extension of their
CineMonitorHD line, the HD3D View is capable of taking two HD/SDI feeds
from two independent cameras in a 3D rig and superimposing them into
one monitor to view using anaglyph glasses or – with the purchase of
glasses – by staggering frames electronically (impressive results) to
see live 3D as you shoot. Available in 6", 12" and 15" monitors – this is the tool 3D digital shooters have been waiting for.
Finally, it was Anton/Bauer
who really knocked my socks of, though. After looking at their new
Dionic HC (High Capacity) batteries, to better work with
high-wattage-demand cameras, Scott from Anton brought me over to show
me the Tandem 150. It looks like a traditional small gold-mount
adapter, but it’s so much more. The Tandem 150 locks into your standard
AB mount on your camera, with a battery mount on the back. You can
power your camera AND charge your battery at the same time. The adapter
is incredibly lightweight – hardly a pound. The AC adapter for it was a
prototype, but Scott told me the production model will be about the
size of a laptop power pack. Wow! I can power my camera off AC AND
charge a battery at the same time? But wait – there's more! The adapter
also has a 12V cigarette lighter adapter so you can charge an Anton
Bauer battery from your car! Very cool! But wait – there's more! In
today's day and age, it's so PC to be "green" – everybody wants to be
green.  You
can't get much greener than solar power and Scott (seen above) flopped
out a fabric-based solar panel – about 5' square – that has 60 watts of
power and can power the charger and charge an Anton/Bauer battery (in
full sunlight) in just three hours!!! Are you kidding me? The Tandem,
cigarette adapter and solar panel will be available late this year.
April 21, 5:46p.m. — Twitterific NAB By Iain Stasukevich
A big aspect of #NAB09 is the social networking. We here @DVMagazine are doing our best to provide you with quality coverage of #NABshow. In years past, that coverage included writing articles on interesting sessions or panels and blogging about interesting products and services. Now we're doing all that and live-tweeting directly from the convention floor.
If you haven't heard of Twitter yet, this is your last warning. It's a social networking tool that allows the user 140 characters of personal expression, called “tweeting”. Users can follow each other's Twitter streams, creating a kind of personal RSS feed. Companies, journalists, and celebrities have caught on to the trend, using the service as a powerful marketing, informational, and PR tool.
Twitter also uses metadata tags, like the “@”, which is used when referring to another user, and the“#”, or “hashtag”. Hashtagging a post with a specific topic allows a user to do a search for all tweets containing the tag, something a lot of #NAB09 attendees, including @DVMagazine, have been doing, So, not only are we able to provide you with information and photos as we find them, by using the hashtags feature we've been able to track the other attendees' impressions about the products and services on display. It sure beats spending an hour building an itinerary out of that meatspace show schedule.
Here's a sample:
@msproductions Live motion capture tkng place rt outside the Content Theater They R introducing the current event in it #nabshow http://yfrog.com/ek27oj
@guycochran #NAB09 #NABSHOW Panasonic unveils dramatically lower cost P2 solid-state memory card line http://bit.ly/7jlz8
@RedRentalsMX just saw the new red primes at the japanese red event! Amazing, smooth, sweet! Available next wednesday! #nabshow
@girlgamy Free apple martinis at the Panasonic HD party at planet Hollywood #nabshow #nab09 mezzanine
It's great to be able to follow the things that are catching people's attention, and the social networking side of Twitter helps the attendees to communicate and coordinate tweetups and discussions before, during, and after the show. If you're here at the show, or you couldn't make it this time around, you can stay on top of the latest developments by going to twitter.com and searching for #NABshow or #NAB09.
And if you have a Twitter account, don't forget to follow @DVMagazine. w00t!
April 21, 5:48p.m. — Blackmagic Design is on a Roll
By Oliver Peters Grant Petty’s Blackmagic Design came to the show with a ton of new products and upgrades across its wide spectrum of products.  This includes two new VideoHubs (digital routers), Mini Converters, software updates and a new cost-effective waveform/vectorscope monitoring solution. Nearly all of Blackmagic Design’s hardware products are ready for 3G — the connection standard that passes video signals at a data rate of 3Gbps — double that of HD’s 1.5Gbps. This permits 1080p/59.94 or 4:4:4 video signals to pass through a single wire instead of today’s dual-link (2-wire) hardware. In addition, many of their capture cards in the Decklink and Multibridge families offer new connections via SDI fiber optic cabling.
One of the amazing new software updates will allow owners of the Mini Converters to alter factory level settings through USB, rather than having to open up the box and make adjustments by taking a screwdriver to the internal dip switches. The truly remarkable part, though, is that Converter Utility 1.0 software turns Blackmagic’s SD to Analog model into an HD to SD downconverter.
The hit for many engineers, however, will be the new UltraScope.  Blackmagic Design combines a simple version of their Decklink card with waveform monitoring software to produce a cost-effective technical monitoring station. Simply install UltraScope into any cheap PC and the software displays technical signals full screen on a computer display. The cost is $695 for UltraScope, plus a PC and monitor. The card is 3Gbps SDI and fiber optic ready, so this system can live anywhere in a facility and can be attached to routers and patch bays. April 21, 5:48p.m. — Matrox Accelerates H264 Encoding
By Oliver Peters The H264 codec is rapidly becoming the standard for video on the web and many other places, including Blu-ray DVDs. The trouble is that H264 is very CPU-intensive to encode, often taking many times real-time even on the fastest computers. Matrox helps to alleviate this bottleneck with the CompressHD accelerator card. It’s a small PCIe slot card that installs into a Mac and integrates with Apple’s Compressor and QuickTime Player Pro software.
In demos Matrox was able to compare software-only versus CompressHD hardware encoding on a 30-second clip, using one of Apple’s standard iPod presets. The software encode on an 8-core Mac took about a minute, whereas the CompressHD card blazed through the same clip in eight seconds! The visual quality was equivalent and, in fact, the CompressHD encode properly deals with the gamma bug that plaques H264 software encoding in Apple apps.
The card will sell for $495, but even better is that the MXO2 family of i/o units is already designed to include Matrox’s encoding chip. Once CompressHD ships, new MXO2 customers have the option of purchasing MXO2 products with CompressHD hardware encoding built right into their system. Existing MXO2 owners will have to use the additional card, since older MXO2’s won’t be retrofit. In either case, the cost will be about the same. As Blu-ray becomes a workflow reality for many post shops, accelerated H264 encoding will be a welcome addition to the toolset.
April 21, 11:25p.m. — My Second Day From the FloorBy Jay Holben
It's always easy to spot the hot trends when you're walking the floor at NAB. The latest and greatest is on display in booth after booth – like the masses crying out at a rally. A few years ago the rally-cry was HDV! HDV! Companies were clamoring to show their support for this burgeoning format. HDV shook up the field of image acquisition and companies that wanted to stay fresh had to find a way to support the new format. This year there are four big rally-cries: RED! 3D! 4K! and LEDs!! Booth after booth, exhibitor after exhibitor – people are clamoring to show their support for these three burgeoning formats. 
When I stumbled on Astro Systems' (astro-systems.com) 4K monitor, I was amused to see a small, aging Asian man standing mesmerized a few inches from the screen and had to snap a photo. Then, only moments away, I stood a few inches from the screen mesmerized! The mammoth 52" screen was showing 4K material in 4K and the detail was beyond startling. Utilizing 4 processing boxes, each with a 1K chunk of the signal, attached via HDSDI in four separate connections – the image was outstanding. I saw a few more 4K monitors on the floor and was impressed each time. Geeze, and I thought my 720p Panasonic TV at home looked good!
3D, despite my teasing that it's 1950 all over again, is taking a stronger foothold in the industry and companies (like Transvideo, which I mentioned yesterday) are joining the fold and supporting 3D systems. Although I didn't see any new 3D camera rigs, I did see accessory support, post software and monitors to work in 3D. I also got sucked into a rather silly NHK 3D demonstration of Lunar footage, which was shot with a single camera and they created 3D by utilizing two images from the same moving camera a few frames away from each other. This created enough spatial differential to mimic an ocular distance and create a 3D image. Although the presentation was pretty – the engineer himself admitted that it has no real other application in any kind of production other than just being cool. Ugh. There's five minutes of my life I'm not getting back!
And, finally, the world has Red fever. There are lenses for Red, post workflows for Red, accessories for Red – everyone wants to say "RED" on their booth. This firmly plants the RED One into the legit production world. Now that there are many companies supporting the camera and format, there's no doubt that it is a viable production tool and has been put to the test, practically, many times over. The RED One is a game-changer, and the other players in the game have followed in-step bysupporting the camera and format.
Probably one of the most impressive companies to support RED is DVS (www.dvs.de) with their Clipster. I've been a fan of the Clipster since it was originally called the Director's Friend – and it's evolved considerably since then. Clipster can ingest RED Raw directly from the flashcard, decode and debayer in real time and work instantly, natively with the 4K footage without any transcoding or rendering. You can access any of Clipster's wide array of tools and export out footage in a wide variety of formats in real time (or, in some cases, slightly faster than real time). The price point of the Clipster (about $80,000 starting price) puts it fairly firmly out of reach for most RED users, but not so for post facilities. Putting the Clipster in your workflow turns the RED into a more film-like camera where you'd send your media out to the facility to generate dailies and deliverables through the Clipster. Very impressive. 
My visit to the JVC (jvc.com/pro) booth turned up a couple surprises. The first is the GY-HM700, a new camera that records directly onto inexpensive SDHC memory cards in QuickTime (.MOV) for FCP or onto SxS media compatible with Sony's XDCAM EX (JVC has licensed the format from Sony). Recording to SxS requires an additional module (GY-HM700UXT), but then you can record to SxS and SDHC simultaneously. The GY-GM700 is a 3-CDD 1/3" camera that utilizes pixel-shift (a first for JVC) to get a1920x1080 image. The camera can also record 25 Mbps or 19.2 Mbps HDV, if you prefer. It features a LCOS (Liquid Crystical on Silicon) viewfinder – which is color and 1.22 megapixel image! Very cool! Packaged with a Fujinon 17:1 lens the camera is $8,000 (or $9k with SxS recorder).
JVC also showed off a teeny-tiny little uber-camera, the GY-HM100 (below, left). Although they call it part of their ProHD series, it's really more of a consumer camera on steroids. Like its big sibling, the HM100 can record in native FCP Quicktime. A 3-CCD (I believe 1/4") imager that records in 1080p, 720p or 1080i onto SDHC memory cards. DV Info's Tim Underwood was there demonstrating the cameras and showed me a neat (and mystifying) function of the HM100 – "Low Lux." Now the name itself isn't really new, many cameras have featured low lux settings before – but this was really outstanding. He pushed the camera right up to a man's black shirt – with the lens shade making contact with the shirt – you could barely see that there was a button in center screen. When Tim hit the 'Low Lux' mode – BOOM! There was incredible detail! And not noisy detail. The gain was still at 0db, but the image easily gained three stops. If I hand't have known better, I would have thought he kicked on a little LED light in the lens shade. Very impressive and the tiny little bugger weighs 3.1 lbs and is under $4k! 
Sort of quietly on display is JVC's first 4K camera (there's that Rally-Cry again). I completely missed this camera (above, right), but luckily ran into Dave Stump, ASC who pointed me back in the right direction.
Fitted with a Nikon mount, KY-F4000 is a real-time 4K camera. Live 60p images from the KY-F4000 were displayed on JVC’s new 56" LCD panel with 4K resolution (REALLY!). The camera is a single Bayer-pattern CMOS (1.25") imager with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. JVC doesn't really see the F4000 for cinema applications, although I'm sure it'll find its way in there soon. The KY-F4000 will be available in April of 2010, priced under $200,000.
In the LED category (RALLY!) I was blown away by Gekko Technology's (gekkotechnology.com) focusable single-source multi-color light engine the kedo. We've been seeing LED fixtures pop up for a few years now and the technology is getting better and better – but unless you're slapping a whole bunch of units together – you just can't get the output and throw of conventional sources. Well – you couldn't get that output and throw before... the kedo has a single LED with multiple chips to create red, green, blue and amber light. The mix together is some of the cleanest 5600°K and 3200°K color temperatures I've seen yet out of an LED (measured purely by eye, no color meter on me). The fixture has a Fresnel lens inside of it that really focuses the light turning the single LED into the range of a 500W to 1K Fresnel. The throw was amazing. Spot, flood and dial in any color you want – this LED knocked my socks off. In the same booth, I saw a Nila (nila.tv) prototype spacelight using an LED panel that was side-by-side with a 4K tungsten spacelight and holding it's own very well. Although the 4K looked a little dim to my eye – the amount of light that they were putting out was quite impressive. The Nila lighting system is impressive in it's own right. With interchangeable lenses (the spot has an intense throw) and really high output – Nila and Gekko are showing us that LEDs really can stand up against their old-world counterparts!
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