By technical editor Matt Allard:

Hollywood DOP Shane Hurlbut took time at NAB to talk to me about rigs for news and docu shooting. Hurlbut recently shot the blockbuster ‘Act of Valor’ that follows a group of real Navy Seals on a fictional mission. The film was shot mainly of Canon DSLRs and featured Hurlbut’s trademark handheld style. It was interesting to hear his thoughts about how a good news or documentary rig should be set up.

By technical editor Matt Allard:

Ikan have a big range of new products here at NAB 2012 – the most interesting is the D range of mini monitors which feature Waveform monitoring options.

By technical editor Matthew Allard:

Want to shoot ENG style large sensor video? got $38K spare? Andy Shipsides of AbelCine has the new Fujinon Cabrio cine zoom with ENG style servo control rigged to a Sony F3 and AbleCine ENG viewfinder kit. I got a hands in the video below.

By technical editor Matt Allard:

Technicolor’s new CineLights software is marketed as a straightforward way to colour correct and grade footage shot with log style gamma curve material. We speak to the company about it.

By techincal Editor Matt Allard:

Jens from Zacuto demonstrates the company’s new Plasmalight at NAB 2012.

By technical editor Matt Allard:

Juicedlink’s Robert Rozak talks to me about the new Juicedlink RM333 audio adapter for Canon 5D mkIII and Nikon D800 at NAB 2012.

By technical Editor Matt Allard:

Den Lennie of the F-Stop Academy was kind enough to spend some time discussing his experiences with the new Sony NEX FS700 with the Dslrnewsshooter team.

By technical editor Matt Allard:

Eric Kessler of Kessler Crane walks us through his latest products – some of which look like they are going to be well suited to news and documentary shooters.

By technical editor Matt Allard:

We managed to get an in depth preview of the new Blackmagic Digital Cinema camera in the show hall at NAB 2012 today. The camera offers some exciting features at what will be a breakthrough price if they deliver the on the image quality. It has a Micro 4/3 sensor which utilizes a crop that is slightly smaller (16.64 x 14.04mm) than the whole sensor and marries that with either a Canon EF or Nikon lens mount. Footage is recorded at 2.5K (2432 x 1366) in 12bit RAW and the company claim a dynamic range of 13 stops.

The camera records RAW or compressed video to a built in SSD drive. File formats are CinemaDNG 12 bit RAW, Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD. It also has a thunderbolt connection built into the camera. This connection supports live waveform monitoring with the included Blackmagic UltraScope software.

Amazingly for the $2995 US price Blackmagic are also including a full copy of DaVinci Resolve 9.0 colour grading software. The camera should be available in July 2012. Full specs and press release are here.

The Blackmagic camera on show at NAB

Sample videos have already begun to show up online – show far the colour and look of the camera images look promising. Head over here for some footage from John Brawley.

Also launched by Blackmagic today was the Ultrastudio Express HDMI and 3 Gb/s SDI I/O interface for Thunderbolt. This captures most standard resolutions up to 1080/60P and can be powered from a computer directly for a remarkable $495.

By technical editor Matt Allard:

Richard Schleuning of Zeiss took the time to talk me through the company’s new line of lenses. In Cine style these include the new 70-200 T2.9, 15mm and 135mm Compact primes and 35, 50 and 85mm super speed CP.2s. He also showed the new 15mm f2.8 ZF stills lens. All very impressive indeed.