The London Videoforum – Cameras

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From the 30th of January to the 1st of February 2008 the VideoForum event was held at Earl's Court in London so that Television and video professionals may meet and talk in a number of conferences, seminars and tutorials as well as on stands. During this time I got to see what were the major trends in the video producing environment in London and England as a whole.

Cameras

Two Red Cameras were on the Showroom floor yesterday, one owned byÂ Decodeuk and the other I am not sure about. It's a nice camera in that it can shoot 2 to 4K but the price to rent per day is very high at the moment. It's a technician's camera rather than a cameraman's camera.

Other camers that I saw and thought of interest were the Canon XH A1 which is a beautiful camera and all the controls are in the right place. Two drawbacks are that it seems to record in interlace and that it's only tape based. If it recorded to hard disk i would seriously think of getting it. The second camera was the Panasonic HVX-200 because the controls are directly accessible from the body of the camera rather than sub menues. It's interesting because it records as well to P2 cards as to tape so there's the option of both. The PMW EX-1 XDCAM is another really nice camera. I'm fond of Sony cameras and this is one of the nicer ones. With the ability to take two two XDCAM EX flash cards it has a potential of around 32 Gigabytes. The Flash cards are small therefore easier to deal with and carrying spares should be good.

What I love about these three cameras as well as others is that they're small as people move towards towards a new filming mentality. Of course you can go for the Sony F23, the F900 or others but these are small. Most of their size is due to the lens rather than the interior mechanism and they're hand held rather than shoulder mounted. The VX1-E and subsequent cameras were great for shooting and once more these cameras are being made to create cameras that are very appealing to those that shoot video the same way as I do.