The fastest 135mm telephoto lens in its class…

Zeiss ZF lenses were designed for use with analog and digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras. They are focused manually, and their exceptional color control allows for extraordinary high contrast pictures without any color fringes, providing brilliant results under all lighting conditions.

Zeiss ZF lenses were designed for use with analog and digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras. They are focused manually, and their exceptional color control allows for extraordinary high contrast pictures without any color fringes, providing brilliant results under all lighting conditions.

Zeiss ZF lenses were designed for use with analog and digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras. They are focused manually, and their exceptional color control allows for extraordinary high contrast pictures without any color fringes, providing brilliant results under all lighting conditions.

The Nikon 105mm f1.8 Lens is sharp all around on all apertures — if a little heavy in and of itself!

The Nikon 50mm f/1.4 is a secret weapon for low-light photography. Far more important than a fast ISO speed is the ability to gather light, which this lens does extremely well.

This 7-element 28mm f/2.8 AI was Nikon’s most popular wide angle lens from 1974-1981. It’s sharp, fast and works great on film and FX cameras.

This Tokina 11-16mm is the world’s fastest and sharpest ultrawide lens for small format digital cameras. Considering its bargain price of under $600, its the world’s best ultrawide lens for digital SLRs.

href=”http://www.bigcitypix.com/CanonEF28to135mmZoomLens”>Standard zoom lens with an Image Stabilizer and high zoom ratio.

The Joker Bug 800 represents a natural step for K5600, an extension of its line of HMI daylight fixtures.

The PRO35 2/3“ converter is used for all 2/3” camcorders from Sony, Panasonic, Thomson, etc. with a standard B4 camera mount.

This shoulder-mount camcorder delivers a unique combination of high-end features never offered in a camcorder in this genre, including production-quality 2/3″ progressive 3-CCDs, DVCPRO HD quality, multi HD and SD formats, variable frame rates, and four independent audio channels.

Arri and Carl Zeiss have created lenses which, for the first time, completely unite all main characteristics such as focus, contrast, color saturation, color uniformity and compactness together with the high speed T 1.9 rating, low aperture-induced focus shift and uniform pupil position. The Ultra Prime lenses retain their excellent image quality even at close focus across the whole Super 35 frame. See how BCP has used them…

Chater Camera Inc is a full service film, video and digital camera rental house serving San Francisco and Northern California.

G-DRIVE high-speed interface external storage systems offer the ultimate in flexibility by providing 3Gbit eSATA, FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 via included cable) and USB 2.0 ports.

With a host of brand new features designed to enhance every facet of the photographic process, from still images to video, the new EOS 7D represents a whole new class of camera. See which projects Big City has used the Canon 7D on…

New Sony technology from announced at major broadcast show SATIS: a redesigned PMW-EX1 with all changes based only on customer feedback, as well as supplementing the original line of SxS cards with new affordable SxS-1 cards & adapter.

Sony has redesigned its hit prosumer cam the PMW-EX1 saying that all changes were based only on customer feedback So just what are the improvement to be found in the PMW-EX1R?

Sony has introduced affordable SxS-1 cards and a low-cost Memory Stick adapter for XDCAM EX cameras.

The portable MICRODOLLY Basic Kit Camera Dolly and Dolly Track System is purpose built for crews that must travel light and set up quick. It weighs only 10 pounds (4.5 kg) and fits into a Soft Case only 34 inches (86 cm) long.

Letus 35 Ultimate lens adapter has the light efficiency of the Letus 35 Extreme with a whole mess of additional features — plus a price tag 4-times greater

The popular 1×1 Spot fixtures, focused the 5600ªK beam to 30 degrees. Now the 1×1 Super-Spot further focuses the output to a 15-degree beam, which concentrates the light in a smaller area, and provides a longer throw of the light. Like all Litepanels fixtures, the 1×1 Super-Spot remains cool to the touch and uses a small fraction of the power used by traditional lighting fixtures.

The Zoom H4 Handy Digital Recorder fits in your palm and is ideal for recording live musical performances, interviews, podcasts, meetings, classes and seminars.

Steve Weiss invites Dave Schwarz, Nick Barbieri and Jeff Beaumont to discuss how to get the best sound with DSLR’s in this video.

This camera is rocking the digital film world. It’s a gamechanger in terms of acquisition.

Abel Cine Tech has some nifty examples of what happens when you hook up a Phantom HD High-Speed camera with the Unilux strobe lighting system (using a special cable from Abel to do so of course). Both these clips were done by Simpson Films who shot the Sol Beer spots Ripple and Static that Big City post-produced.

Beyond Our Reality is a television and film production company that uses its unique visceral and narrative style to produce meaningful content that not only moves people, but connects them.

Recognized as the industry standard, the Model 10 Dolly is manufactured from the
highest quality materials and components to meet the demanding needs of the
motion picture, television and video industries.

The ARRIFLEX 16 SR3 Advanced incorporates all the elements of the ARRIFLEX SR3 with the enhanced features of a brighter viewfinder with ARRIGLOW, a modified gate design that makes the format change from Standard 16 to Super 16 fast and simple, a control panel with LCD display and Time Code.

Pal Television East is a full service HD digital video equipment rental house, providing personal service to broadcast professionals for the past 15 years. PAL East caters to special needs.

CNET takes a first look at the Nokia N95 smartphone.

The new Litepanels daylight balanced system is a unique professional lighting concept that employs ultra efficient LED technology to produce a soft and bright “projected” light.

Letus 35 Extreme lens adapter has good light efficiency with only 1/2 stop of light loss. The is becoming a standard item in the kits of Indie Film makers.

The Phantom HD is a production friendly, high definition, digital camera compatible with HD viewfinders and monitors.

The V-R70P-HDA features a completely Digital TFT-MegaPixel high resolution LCD screen with 1.2 million pixels, V-Mount battery adapter, 4-pin XLR power jack, and optical-grade polycarbonate screen protection. Analog signals are digitized using advanced 10-bit processing with 4x oversampling and adaptive 5-line comb filter. Video is scaled to fit onscreen in the highest resolution using a [...]

Videomaker has a good review of the Sony PMW-EX1 putting a finger on the heart of the video-making matter: the challenge of independent video producers is to balance image quality with the cost of the gear with most often quality being lost in the process. Videomaker points out where the EX1 succeeds and misses.

On the show Styleyes, primarily shot using the Panasonic DVX100, we began our journey to going “tapeless.” Upon our adoption of Panasonic Hi-Def successor camera the HVX-200, we began to implement a tapeless workflow for real using P2 Card media. P2 ingest was good since we had an older Apple laptop with a PCMCIA bus that we directly inserted the cards into for download. However, when that box bit the dust, we were left to purchase and use the wee-bit wonky Duel Adapter.

Sony announced a new solid state flash memory card SxS (pronounced “S-by-S”) aimed as direct competition to Panasonic’s innovative P2 cards used on four Panasonic camcorders such as the HVX-200. We like that the SxS card is compatible with a PCI express bus connection, while the P2 card connects via computer tech that’s on its way out, the PCMCIA bus. Our initial experience with P2 ingest was good since we had an older Apple laptop with a PCMCIA bus that we directly inserted the cards into for download. However, when that box bit the dust, we were left to purchase and use the wonky Duel Adapter

A depth-of-field adapter (often shortened to DOF adapter) is used to achieve shallow depth of field on a video camera whose sensor size is not adequate to achieve it natively.

The 4ft 4Bank portable lighting systems have changed the way professionals light everything from feature films to television productions to video and still photography. Check out some of our smooth lighting using these light-weight and versatile gems…

The Brevis is designed with a vibrating ground glass that gives video footage a film-like texture. Without the optional flip module, the footage comes into the edit station upside-down and requires digital rotation. When we were not posting the show in-house, we’ve simply had an assistant editor go through the footage and prep it for delivery to the client by rotating all the shots. When shooting without the flip module, we simply turn the studio monitors updside-down.

Grip And Electric Dot Com, owned by New York based gaffer John Frisbie, has a complete package that includes a 3-ton truck with HMI, tungsten, Kinoflo and ready-to-roll expendables.

It’s Oscar day, and we’ve just placed our Vloggie statuette for Best Green Vlog on the mantle of our over at THTV. For those out there looking to green up their video making a bit, here’s a trick: For the TreeHuggerTV eco-Halloween special produced by Big City last fall, not only did we for the first time shoot in High Definition video, we also never used or threw away a single videotape in the process.

The Neil Poulton-designed chassis features a bright orange, shock-resistant rubber casing that should add extra protection to the drive in the event of a drop or slip — which can happen easily when in the trenches of a shoot on location.

A mainstay of indie filmmakers everywhere is the skateboard dolly. Skateboard dollies use skateboard wheels — hence the name — attached to a sheet of plywood with the option of adding a push bar.

Whenever punch or bounce light is required on a set, an ARRISUN is the ultimate answer.

 
P2 (short form for “Professional Plug-In”) is a digital video storage media format introduced by Panasonic in 2004. BigCityPix first used the format for TreeHugger TV’s Vampire Power video. It features tapeless (non-linear) recording of DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO-HD, or AVC-Intra streams on a solid state flash memory card. The P2 Card is essentially a RAID of SD memory cards with an LSI controller tightly packaged in a die-cast PC card (formerly PCMCIA) [...]

Century Fish Eye Adapter HVX200. Shoot the widest possible views and achieve extreme barrel distortion…

This camera is versatile and affordable way of shooting HD video while implementing a tapeless workflow. It comes functional with raft of frame-rate choices for slo-motion as well as formats such as 720 24p and 1080i, the later of which is not true 1080 but just the 720 converted on the fly. It supports solid-state P2 media as well as mini DV tape if you haven’t ditched it altogether as yet.

Over 20 Years, Innovative Lighting Company Kino Flo Has Changed the Way Movies Are Made
Kino Flo, Inc. based in Burbank California designs portable, durable and versatile fluorescent lighting systems for use in motion picture, television and video production. The company was launched by a pair of set electricians on the tailgate of a grip truck [...]

Time was we’d go out with our Sony PD-150 or Canon XL1 or Sony Hi8 camera the VX3 hoping that this time it would be different and that we wouldn’t come back footage that had that “video look.” The 60i or interlaced field non-aesthetically-pleasing feel. Again and again we’d come back disappointed because our projects did have the gravitas of the film image. And on the days when we shot on expensive cameras like Beta and DigiBeta, it just felt worse and as if money had been flushed down the drain. Enter the revolutionary Panasonic DVX 100 camcorder…

The Sitv living-latino lifestyle show Styleyes is being shot primarily using the Panasonic DVX100 dropping the video to mini DV tapes in the field. We’re beginning the journey to the “tapeless” future of video production by choosing to physically dump the tapes after Final Cut Pro ingest.

Sapphire Plug-ins from GenArts, Inc. is a collection of over 175 image processing and synthesis effects — ranging from every day tools to exotic effects.

We were looking an easy and effective way to catalogue our digital files so that we could search for them as needs arose in the future. As we run the whole Big City shebang using Apple Macintosh computers, we decided to go with a little shareware app called DiskTracker.

Final Cut Pro is a professional non-linear editing software application developed by Apple Inc. and introduced to market in 1999. The software logs and captures video onto a hard drive (internal or external), where it can be edited and processed. From the early 2000s, Final Cut Pro developed a large and expanding user base including many independent filmmakers. It has made inroads with film and television editors who traditionally use Avid Technology’s Media Composer. According to a 2007 SCRI study, Final Cut made up 49% of the US professional editing market, with Avid at 22%.

Adobe After Effects is primarily used for creating motion graphics and visual effects. After Effects allows users to animate, alter, and composite media in 2D and 3D space with various built-in tools and third party plug-ins, as well as individual attention to variables like parallax and user-adjustable angle of observation.

Moviecam is a motion picture equipment company specializing in movie camera systems for 35 mm film.

At the 66th Annual Academy Awards (1993), a Technical Achievement Award (A Scientific & Technical Award) was bestowed upon Gary Nuzzi, David Johnsrud and William Blethen for the design and development of the Unilux H3000 Strobe Lighting System.

What is the Unilux Strobe Lighting System?
Unilux is a company that has been around for over 40 years providing its strobe lighting solution for the film, and now HD, commercial business. Unilux lighting systems make it possible to shoot subjects in motion with incredible clarity. Each frame is a clear, sharp photograph. Unilux lights are effective for shooting objects that pour, spritz, pop or splash. The lights flash for fractions of seconds, providing a cool atmosphere for shooting icy or perishable objects. Unilux lights can synchronize with cameras like Arri, Panavision, Aaton, Photosonics 4ER and Mitchell and the Phantom HD digital camera. The Unilux Strobe Lighting System won an Academy Award for technical achievement in 1993.

Media Composer, frequently referred to as “The Avid”, is a non-linear editing system.

Lightweight Fresnel spotlights combining daylight characteristics with compact size and high efficiency are required, ARRI Compact Daylight Fresnels are the preferred choice. ARRI’s elegant modular construction, using corrosion-resistant aluminium extrusions and lightweight die castings, offers great structural strength and weather resistance. Together with ARRI flicker-free Electronic Ballasts, the rugged Compact range is ideal for all locations.

Lightweight Fresnel spotlights combining daylight characteristics with compact size and high efficiency are required, ARRI Compact Daylight Fresnels are the preferred choice. ARRI’s elegant modular construction, using corrosion-resistant aluminium extrusions and lightweight die castings, offers great structural strength and weather resistance. Together with ARRI flicker-free Electronic Ballasts, the rugged Compact range is ideal for all locations.

Lightweight Fresnel spotlights combining daylight characteristics with compact size and high efficiency are required, ARRI Compact Daylight Fresnels are the preferred choice. ARRI’s elegant modular construction, using corrosion-resistant aluminium extrusions and lightweight die castings, offers great structural strength and weather resistance. Together with ARRI flicker-free Electronic Ballasts, the rugged Compact range is ideal for all locations.

The Key Grip is the head of the grip department and chief rigging technician on the set. On smaller productions, there may just be a single grip or team of grips. For small digital productions, the crew position of “Swing” is somewhere in between a Grip and a Gaffer and takes on the responsibilities of both positions. And super-small ENG or EFP shoots may have only a Utility which acts as an all-around skilled set of hands to handle lighting, grip, sound and camera assist tasks.

The meaning of C-stand in the film production environment is used by the Grip department to accomplish various rigging and light modification task.

A gaffer in the motion media industry is the head of the electrical department, responsible for the execution (and sometimes the design) of the lighting plan for a production.

The director of photography (DP or DoP in European and some international parlance) is the chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film or digital production, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image.

The Assistant Camera (or Camera Assistant) position on a crew is a critical position and often requires immense skill. The AC reports to and works very closely with the Director of Photography and may work alongside a camera operator, or oversee a 2nd assistant camera (also known as the “clapper loader”) and any other members of the camera department.