Shortly after getting the 910 for review, I decided to put my LH-80 up for sale on eBay, and bought the 910. It's not cheap ($3500 list, but $3000 on the street), but it felt like a monitor that could suit me for a good 5 years. 

Here's the CreativeCOW review. 

P.S. The screen shots below show the 910 with the older BT-LH80.

I decided to use Premiere to cut a real-world documentary video I was working on, and then wrote up my impressions on CreativeCOW. If you're frustrated with the direction that Final Cut is going, then you might find my first impressions with Premiere helpful....

See the story here. 

Physically, the thing takes unbelievable abuse. I had a test unit to work with, and dropped it from 9 feet multiple times, submerged it in water for hours, and parked a Toyota SUV on top of it. Despite all that, the drive continued to work perfectly. 

PLUS, the drive comes with an unbelievable 1-year data recovery service, for free. 

Check out my CreativeCOW review right here. 

You can read its specs here on Panasonic's site. 

It's pictured next to my trusty BT-LH80 (7.9" monitor), using some test footage I shot last fall of a Civil War re-enactment in California (a rare thing in these parts, unfortunately!). 

Here's the review on Creative Cow. 

I'll be posting with more regularity very soon, but wanted to start off by catching up with some older material, like my Creative Cow review of Panasonic's AF100 camera. It's an interesting camera -- a very large sensor, interchangeable lenses, a small body, true audio support, filter wheels and lack of aliasing issues found on DSLRs. On the other hand, its sensor still isn't as big as a DSLR, it records at a max bit rate of only 24mbps, didn't handle highlights as smoothly as expected in my tests, the image quality looked a little "video-like" (even with tweaked settings) and, to my eye, suffered from micro-jitters when used hand-held. Plus, the $5000 price tag is twice that of a Canon 5DII, and around three times as much as a 7D. 

I liked the camera, but didn't love it. In the end, the image just didn't feel like a big leap forward, as the DVX100 and HVX200 did. But not every camera can make such leaps. 

For my full review, click here. 

1) E Series P2 cards are now 30% cheaper. For instance, you can get the excellent 64GB card for $695. 

2) The PCD30 is a new 3-slot P2 reader which works with USB 3 connections and can read cards faster than any other reader available. To date, the PCD-35 was Panasonic's fastest reader, connecting via a PCIe card into a Mac Pro or PC desktop. It could transfer a 64GB card to in less than 10 minutes, but now the PCD30 can match or exceed that (depending on the kind of drives you're copying to). And since it connects via USB 3, you can use it with laptops and other non-tower machines. Price will be $2255. 

3) Wireless metadata for the HPX3100, via the AJ-WW30 wireless module. I think this is one of the coolest products on the horizon, and hope Panasonic executes the concept well. The concept is that you can attach this little card/dongle to your HPX3100, and use your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, or laptop to wirelessly enter metadata to clips as they record, or after. Few people use metadata now, but that will change if Panasonic has actually made the process convenient. Imagine using your iPhone to enter an interviewee's name into a clip before an interview starts, or right after. Or a reality producer inserting markers into a cameraman's footage as he records it, so the producer can find the noteworthy moments quickly once in the edit bay. Or a script supervisor making notes about various shots on set. It can all be possible if this feature is robust, and bug-free. Price is about $1650. It kills me, though, that Panasonic couldn't figure out a way to make the add-on work with existing cameras besides the HPX3100. A year ago, Panasonic was demoing this tech as an add-on that supported all sorts of cameras.  

4) A new, lightweight 9" field monitor (BT-LH910) with 720p resolution, vectorscope and 3D capabilities. $3500. 

5) A new portable field recorder, and some interesting archival database software for backing up P2 clips to LTO drives and other sources, while retaining easy access to proxy videos and thumbnails. 

More later!

First up is Panasonic's new AF100 camera ($4995), which is a video camera's answer to DSLRs. It's got a larger sensor inside (based on the Four Thirds system that Panasonic has been embraced for still cameras) so it can give you a shallow depth-of-field when you want it. Plus, all the things that shooters wish DSLRs had are in the AF100, from zebra stripes to built-in ND filters to full res HD-SDI output. I'll be looking at the AF100 from a documentary/non-fiction filmmaker's perspective, and should have the review finished in about a week. 

After the AF100 is AJA's Ki Pro Mini portable field recorder ($1995), which takes an HDMI or HD-SDI input, and records video in various flavors of Apple's ProRes codec. The beauty of the Ki Pro is that you can attach it to an older camera, like a tape-based Varicam, or a newer camera like the AF100, and record what the camera's imager sees, but in a much better codec that the camera is capable of recording natively. For instance, the AF100 records video at 24mbps, with 4:2:0 color subsampling, but if you attach it to the Ki Pro Mini, you can record 200+mpbs with 4:2:2 sampling. Of course, AJA's older Ki Pro could do this already, but the Mini is 1) much smaller, 2) can run off certain camera batteries, and 3) records to fast CF cards, instead of a hard drive or SSD.

PLUS, you can take the charger head alone (no power supply brick needed), and use a $195 cable to attach it to a car's cigarette lighter to charge a battery at full speed, or power your camera. And if you're out in the Great Outdoors, you can attach the charger head to Anton/Bauer's 60 watt solar panel ($1695), and charge a battery in 3.5 to 4 hours or so (weather dependent). 

I needed a light-weight charger and was going to get the Tandem 70, which can only power a camera OR charge a battery, and doesn't have the car and solar options. But reviewing the 150 changed my mind, so I got the 150 instead. It makes battery charging too convenient to pass up. 

You can read the full review here. 

My take was that the Sola will be useful to a lot of shooters, but most will run into a situation where they wish the light wasn't quite so loud. 

Also, while fact checking with Litepanels, I learned that they actually plan on selling a modified version of the Sola fairly soon, which will make it easier to run the light off other batteries, versus the current D-tap source. 

You can see the review here.