Litepanels Launches New Hilio Series at 2014 NAB

Litepanels will premiere its new Hilio D12 (daylight balanced) and Hilio T12 (tungsten balanced) high light output panels at NAB 2014. The innovative panels provide the light quality, versatility and intensity of an open source fixture, while offering all of the benefits of Litepanels’ proprietary LED fixture design.
The Hilio D12/T12 fixtures were designed by Litepanels to augment the lighting requirements of broadcast studios, as well as motion picture, episodic television, and commercial location shoots. The versatile panels emit a raw, narrow beam that provides high intensity for long throws. This intensity can also be harnessed and shaped with an array of available accessories to light an exterior, wash a set with soft light, or illuminate a cyc wall or green screen.

Eliminating the need for external dimmers, the fixtures feature Litepanels’ smooth dimming, from

GoPro Array Attached to Drones Captures Unique 360-Degree Music Video

Ryan Staake directs the music video for Booka Shades "Crossing Borders," which used an array of 7 GoPro cameras attached to Octofilms' helicopter drones to capture its unique, trippy 360-degree imagery.
Says Staake in a behind-the-scenes video (found below), "I think we're looking for highly repetitive and unique locations, things with a lot of vertical shapes coming out. We're looking for textures and patterns and geometry and similarities between the built human landscape and the natural landscape."

High-Speed Macro-Cinematography Captures the Breathtakingly Complex Pollination Process

In the below TED Talk, high-speed cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg introduces some clips from his gorgeous macro-cinematography, which gives a rarely seen close-up view of how birds, insects, and bats assist in the pollination process of plants.
He says, "Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment. It's the mystical moment where life regenerates itself over and over again."
Watch below. (via Huffington Post)

Panasonic VariCam 35: 4K RAW Cinema Camera, Shoots 120fps

by Eric Reagan in Panasonic

Panasonic is on a roll lately in the 4K department. Back at CES 2014, we saw the Lumix GH4 Micro Four Thirds 4K camera and the 4K action camera. We saw a 4K VariCam concept camera teased as far back as NAB 2012. Now, we are finally seeing some details on a 4K VariCam model as the camera approaches an official launch.
The initial impressions from the 4K concept a couple years ago suggested that it

LaCie Ships Thunderbolt 2 Portable Drive For 4K Video Editing

Cupertino, Calif. — Seagate Technologies has expanded its premium LaCie line of portable storage products for use with Apple computers with Thunderbolt ports.

The new LaCie Little Big Disk, featuring two Thunderbolt 2 ports, delivers read/write speeds up to 1,375MBps and is being marketed specifically to professionals who edit 4K video in the field.
The portable drive has twin 500GB PCIe Gen 2 solid-state drives for 1TB of storage.
In addition,

Nikon D4S Completely Unveiled

by Eric Reagan 

After a tease at CES 2014 earlier this year, the Nikon D4S is now completely unmasked. Not a whole lot of surprises based on what we thought the D4S would have. As expected, it gets the Expeed 4 processor and captures 11fps still images and 1080/60p video. It also offers max sensitivity up to ISO 409,600 and features a 2.7x crop mode in video capture for extended reach while maintaining full HD resolution.

Nikon D4S New Features

AJA Io 4K Gains 50/60 fps 4K/UHD High Frame Rate Support with v10.5.1 Software

AJA Video Systems released the free v10.5.1 Mac software driver package adding 4K/UHD high frame rate support to AJA’s Io 4K, its popular device for professional video I/O, updated and customized for Thunderbolt™ 2 technology and the latest 4K workflows.

The new software upgrade adds Io 4K support for 50,59.94 and 60 fps capability at 4K (4096 x 2160) and UltraHD (3840 x 2160) resolutions. This high frame rate support is critical

Panasonic has shown the world a new amazing product. The GH4.

Panasonic has shown the world a new amazing product. The GH4. 

This camera is the first mirrorless stills hybrid that seems to be able to do it all. This one is amazing