What a great camera! It's sharp with shallow but manageable depth-of-field, a XLR audio, lots of exposure tools (Zebra, waveform), 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, etc. etc. 

Click here for the review. 

I should (hopefully) have that posted in about a week. 

And then, it's on to the Canon C300. 

This is a very impressive camera. Good price point (about $20K), a nice 2/3" 1080 native imager, a fantastic 10 bit codec in AVC-Intra, a shoulder-mount form factor that's born for handheld work, and all the features you'd expect from a mature ENG camera (nd filters, 4 channel audio, tons of image controls, scene files, etc. etc. ). You can get so much work done so quickly with a camera like this. 

But what's really unique about the 3100 are two add-ons you can purchase separately. One lets the camera simultaneously record very high-quality, time-coded proxy videos to an SD card, which you can hand to your client at the end of the day. From there, the client can play the footage on virtually any device, immediately. Or they can quickly email the proxies to a transcriber, other producers, etc. 

The other add-on is even better: a wireless metadata module that lets a producer wirelessly enter shot names and other metadata into clips, before they record (or after), all with an iPad or Android tablet, or a laptop. You can also insert shot markers into footage as it's recorded, just by hitting a button on the iPad (or whatever the device you're using). Suddenly, producers can do a ton of footage logging while they're in the field, so it's already organized by the time it gets to editorial.  

Check out the review right here. 

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.