NAB 2017 rumors?

Posted yesterday over at EOSHD regarding the C100iii:

Yes. There was a leak. I am not saying anything and I didn't post this. I may or may not have heard something tonight at a party :)

It may or may not have been a reputable source but from what I was told it sounds like the perfect camera. We will see tomorrow
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He's referring to a post on the EOSHD forum. And EOSHD has no advertising, so I'm not sure how it would be click-driven.
 
So are we in agreement. NAB 2017 was a complete dud? Sure, a few cool new little products like the Sound Devices recorders but generally, I would have been pissed if I had made the drive to Vegas, paid for the hotel and braved the crowds. Trade shows, in general, seem to be sinking into irrelevance in 2017. I worked at a different trade show up at Moscone Center a few months ago, completely unrelated industry but even there, 98% of what was exhibited was better off seen on the web.
 
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I think it depends what one is expecting to see and get out of the show. Between all of the live feeds and coverage on various sites you can have a fine virtual experience if the gear itself is all one is interested in. For me, there's a sense of discovery at the actual show, you might stumble across something in person that you wouldn't online. Talking to vendors and developing relationships can be very useful in this industry--some of the people there I've known for decades. And the networking continues into the night along with many beverages...!

Some types of gear need to be seen in person to properly evaluate. Monitors don't reproduce well in video presentations, especially when it comes to high resolution and HDR. Ergonomics and quality of materials are a hands-on proposition.

For those who live in Los Angeles, Cinegear is fantastic.
 
Overall, I agree with PureDrifting but as Charles said, I think there is a little bit of "discovery" even for us located in the middle-of-nowhere through all the coverage. There were a couple of announcements, in lighting in particular, that I may be interested in.

All that said though, I was very close to going this year but ended up having work schedule conflicts and I probably would've felt a bit let down by what was announced. With where I am located though I probably need to view it more as an opportunity to meet people and network a bit.
 
puredrifting said:
So are we in agreement. NAB 2017 was a complete dud? Sure, a few cool new little products like the Sound Devices recorders but generally, I would have been pissed if I had made the drive to Vegas, paid for the hotel and braved the crowds. Trade shows, in general, seem to be sinking into irrelevance in 2017. I worked at a different trade show up at Moscone Center a few months ago, completely unrelated industry but even there, 98% of what was exhibited was better off scene on the web.
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It wasn't a dud at all. It was a great experience, and there's a LOT of stuff going on there, lots of new things introduced. Most of them weren't cameras, though... monitors, lighting equipment, color grading tools (Nucoda, BaseLight, and Mistika Ultima and VR all had new functionality to show)... Panasonic announced its new Media Entertainment Division, which for indie film guys is largely irrelevant, but for the broadcast industry, it's actually big news. So is Panasonic's Everest network system.

I got to meet with some industry professionals and spend some time learning from them.

IMO anyone who thought it was a bust wasn't looking.

What IS happening is that the cinema oriented stuff is shifting toward CineGears, which is to say that the conference is becoming a bit more focused.
 
digitalinnovations said:
All that said though, I was very close to going this year but ended up having work schedule conflicts and I probably would've felt a bit let down by what was announced. With where I am located though I probably need to view it more as an opportunity to meet people and network a bit.
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Where else do you get opportunities to sit in a theater next to the CEO of a major cinema camera vendor and discuss the future of virtual reality with the CTO of Technicolor?
 
Tamerlin said:
It wasn't a dud at all. It was a great experience, and there's a LOT of stuff going on there, lots of new things introduced. Most of them weren't cameras, though... monitors, lighting equipment, color grading tools (Nucoda, BaseLight, and Mistika Ultima and VR all had new functionality to show)... Panasonic announced its new Media Entertainment Division, which for indie film guys is largely irrelevant, but for the broadcast industry, it's actually big news. So is Panasonic's Everest network system.

I got to meet with some industry professionals and spend some time learning from them.

IMO anyone who thought it was a bust wasn't looking.

What IS happening is that the cinema oriented stuff is shifting toward CineGears, which is to say that the conference is becoming a bit more focused.
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I guess it all depends on what you hope to gain by going through the time, expense and hassle. I say this as someone who has attended NAB twelve times over the past 25 years. For me, CineGear is a lot easier to attend, more focused on gear I actually use, much less expensive and a ton less hassle. Guess I am jaded since I have spent so many days treading the exhibits there. Some years, NAB is pretty amazing and the whole landscape shifts. 2017 was not one of those years. For those who have never gone, you should go sometime but for those who have gone a lot, 2017 still seemed like a dud. If you go to network with manufacturers, always great but I write about a lot of products for magazines and websites so my relationships with the manufacturers are kept at arms length on purpose, I have cordial relationships with them, but I don't want to be accused of being a shill or sell out as others in our business have over the years as I drunkenly party the night away in Vegas with them. Then there is the city itself. For me visiting Las Vegas is akin to getting a root canal, painful, but sometimes necessary.
 
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puredrifting said:
I guess it all depends on what you hope to gain by going through the time, expense and hassle. I say this as someone who has attended NAB twelve times over the past 25 years. For me, CineGear is a lot easier to attend, more focused on gear I actually use, much less expensive and a ton less hassle. Guess I am jaded since I have spent so many days treading the exhibits there. Some years, NAB is pretty amazing and the whole landscape shifts. 2017 was not one of those years. For those who have never gone, you should go sometime but for those who have gone a lot, 2017 still seemed like a dud. If you go to network with manufacturers, always great but I write about a lot of products for magazines and websites so my relationships with the manufacturers are kept at arms length on purpose, I have cordial relationships with them, but I don't want to be accused of being a shill or sell out as others in our business have over the years a I drunkenly party the night away in Vegas with them. Then there is the city itself. For me visiting Las Vegas is akin to getting a root canal, painful, but sometimes necessary.
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Most of the people frequenting these fora only look at new camera releases, and if there's no new camera, they call it a dud... but that's a very narrow-minded view. Cinema is a very small part of NAB, and my first time there I realized just how small a part.

That does not, however, mean that it's not related... though some is, like Vislink's ultra-high-tech ENG systems, but some of it is quite relevant, like IP video solutions.
 
was worth it to me, but then again i hadn't been to nab in 16 years (back then OSX had just come out, Maya had just gotten bought out, 24P was the new buzz word, and the DVX100 hadn't even been released) and had free lodging at a wonderful family's house. and i don't really mind vegas, it's nice to get out of the daily grind of socal for a bit.
 
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Tamerlin said:
Most of the people frequenting these fora only look at new camera releases, and if there's no new camera, they call it a dud... but that's a very narrow-minded view
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Since I professionally write about all types of production and post gear, I don't consider myself in that category. I knew going in that there were no new ground breaking camera announcements. Look over the top ten device lists and technology articles and awards coming from the aggregators and reporters, most people who have been in the business for ten or twenty NABs would conclude there was nothing new announced that was incredibly ground breaking or earth shattering. I saw mostly incremental progression of existing technologies. Some nice new products like Teradek's iPhone/iPad monitoring hot spot technology, some new lights, the aforementioned SD recorders, a few new lenses, some new IP distribution and monitoring tech, IMHO, NAB 2017 tightly fit the exclamation, "meh". There have been a few worse but several in the past decade have been leagues better as well. Panasonic's announcement about the division realignment came ahead of NAB and was not really anything more than putting a PR/Marketing spin on the downsizing of divisions and corporate responsibility.

Glad you found attending productive. Just out of curiosity, how many other NABs have you attended?
 
puredrifting said:
I guess it all depends on what you hope to gain by going through the time, expense and hassle. I say this as someone who has attended NAB twelve times over the past 25 years. For me, CineGear is a lot easier to attend, more focused on gear I actually use, much less expensive and a ton less hassle. Guess I am jaded since I have spent so many days treading the exhibits there. Some years, NAB is pretty amazing and the whole landscape shifts. 2017 was not one of those years. For those who have never gone, you should go sometime but for those who have gone a lot, 2017 still seemed like a dud. If you go to network with manufacturers, always great but I write about a lot of products for magazines and websites so my relationships with the manufacturers are kept at arms length on purpose, I have cordial relationships with them, but I don't want to be accused of being a shill or sell out as others in our business have over the years as I drunkenly party the night away in Vegas with them. Then there is the city itself. For me visiting Las Vegas is akin to getting a root canal, painful, but sometimes necessary.
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To be fair NAB was always intended for the broadcast world. Cinema stuff just sort of bled into it in recent years. Before the cinema camera hype NAB was always mostly about neat gadgets and tools while cameras made up a small segment of that. If it seems cameras were more prominent in the past thats because we had a rapid changing world where we went from analog to DV and then the massive shift to HD. There were a lot of huge changes back then and we were using a lot of different unorthodox gear in a lot of different markets. There was a pretty wide blending of the event/corporate/broadcast/cinema worlds for awhile there.
 
puredrifting said:
I saw mostly incremental progression of existing technologies. Some nice new products like Teradek's iPhone/iPad monitoring hot spot technology, some new lights, the aforementioned SD recorders, a few new lenses, some new IP distribution and monitoring tech, IMHO, NAB 2017 tightly fit the exclamation, "meh". There have been a few worse but several in the past decade have been leagues better as well. Panasonic's announcement about the division realignment came ahead of NAB and was not really anything more than putting a PR/Marketing spin on the downsizing of divisions and corporate responsibility.
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Less excitement, admittedly... but still a lot to learn about. It's about time some of the stuff that's been in R&D started becoming useful ;)

Glad you found attending productive. Just out of curiosity, how many other NABs have you attended?
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This was my third. My first one with no major new cinema camera announcements. :)

But I write about other things besides cameras as well.
 
If there is a new photography oriented camera coming, it's more likely that Panasonic would introduce it at Photokina or PMA, rather than at a convention that's primarily about broadcast.
 
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