My Top 5:
1. Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera
Perfect this camera is not, but that this price point, you can't not help but be excited about this camera. Including Resolve and UltraScopes makes this something of a no-brainer. An odd form factor, 2x crop, and internal battery all revolve around saving costs. Apparently Super 35 sensors are not that cheap, and BMD wanted to price this camera competitively. There are already solutions coming from companies like Letus and Anton Bauer to make up for the camera's deficiencies. I am not an early adopter by any means, but 12 bit Cinema DNG, 10 bit ProRes/DNxHD make this my next camera of choice for ownership. Blackmagic, shut up and take my money.
2. Adobe Creative Suite 6
This latest release of Adobe's Creative Suite is a big leap forward for many. For After Effects, features like advanced 3D extrusions and ray tracing will attract many. Their 3D camera tracker, and how it works, could not help but make me smile. Keeping it all in the family continues with their release of SpeedGrade, meant to compete with other high end color grading solutions like Resolve. There are way to many good things about the entire suite to list, but this is a quantum leap forward for the entire suite.
3. KesslerCrane ShuttlePod Mini www.kesslercrane.com/product-p/sp_mini.htm <http://www.kesslercrane.com/product-p/sp_mini.htm>
KesslerCrane had a common theme throughout many of their products that are either brand new or have been updated: make it lighter. A complaint I've heard with their gear is weight, and the team at KesslerCrane is addressing that while still maintaining top quality that you can depend on. The ShuttlePod has been a great tool for longer motion controlled moves in a variety of applications, and now they have made a smaller, lighter version that will fit mine and others needs a bit better.
4. Zeiss CP.2 Lenses
http://www.zeiss.com/cine/cp2
Admittedly this is more of a lust factor, but I couldn't help but visit the Zeiss booth and check out their new lenses. They've got new Super Speed versions of their 35, 50, and 85 CP.2 lenses. Sebastian Wiegartner used these new Zeiss lenses to great effect in his short film TUMULUS( http://vimeo.com/39266449 ) shot on the Sony F3. They also released a 70-200 CP.2 zoom lens that looked fantastic a great lightweight telephoto zoom.
5. Fastec Imaging TS3Cine Camera http://ts3cine.com/
High speed was certainly a big trend at this year's NAB, and delivering high speed in a small form factor certainly took center stage in the trend of high speed. The interface on this camera really impressed me. It's a great combination of touch screen and manual buttons. The camera can also record uncompressed RAW in Cinema DNG or TIFF sequences. It can do up to 20,000 fps at reduced resolutions, but most will probably capture at 720p doing 720 frames per second. I talked briefly with Mike Sutton at their booth and he said this camera lends itself towards shooting with anamorphic lenses, which are coming back in a big way this year.
Tom Baurain operates The Red Owl in Kansas City. He can be reached at: tom@theredowl.com.