Well IBC was extremely busy for me, producing daily video blogs for Sony in both 2D and 3D. I didn’t really get a lot of time to see the rest of the show, but I did get a chance to look at a few things. Almost every stand had some mention of 3D. 3D was everywhere. JVC had a nice new mid size S3D production monitor, Canon were showing off their new XF series cameras, the XF100, XF105, XF300 and XF305. It’s a pretty impressive line up! Tim Dashwood was showing a demo video he shot with an Arri Alexa on a couple of stands including Zeiss and Matrox and I have to say it was a fantastic demonstration of the cameras dynamic range as the studio doors were opened up revealing perfectly exposed exteriors. Tim also has some very cool new software in the pipelines that uses the Matrox boxes to record and analyse 3D.
On the Sony stand the most interesting things for me were the prototype 3D camera and the prototype 35mm camera. There was a lot of secrecy around the 35mm camera and no details were being given except to expect it early next year. The unit on display (in a box) looked to me to have a PL mount of some sort. There were lots of bits of black tape covering various apertures, one of which appeared to be a slot about the right size for a couple of SxS cards. The 3D camera looked like a PMW-500 with a 3D lens. It had 4 SxS slots and a large convergence control knob on the side. The I/A looked to be less than 65mm, maybe 50 to 60mm.
Nano3D: One of the reccuring issues for 3D producers is feild monitoring. While there are plenty of options in the 24? and larger arena, at the moment the Transvideo HD 3D monitors are the only viable option IMHO. Convergent Design have addressed this issue and are adding Anaglyph out to the Nano3D in a soon to be released firmware update. This means that you will be able to use any existing HDSDI equipped monitor like the lovely Sony OLED PVM-740 or other cheaper monitors to check your 3D in the field.
