KitPlus | Articles

State of the Nation - November 2018

There is an interesting seminar called Size Matters at the KitPlus Show – organised by the publishers of this fine magazine – at MediaCityUK in Salford on 6 November. It’s a talk by cinematographer Alistair Chapman on the way that camera technology is changing, and in particular the size of the electronic device which creates the image is growing....

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 09 November 2018

Those pesky scientists

by Dick Hobbs Issue 102 - June 2015 This month\'s picture is of something I was given on a visit to the Grass Valley camera factory in Breda, maybe 10 years ago. I think it is a thing of beauty, which is why it sits in pride of place on top of the wine cabinet. It is the sharp end an HD system camera: the optical block and a CCD imager. We saw in t...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 July 2015

Miniature cameras on the move

by Kieron Seth Issue 95 - November 2014 Using cameras in-car has always been problematic. Most importantly, the size of camera is crucial: sit a camera operator in the vehicle with a camcorder and the natural sense of intimacy is lost. Mount the camcorder within the cockpit and it is sure to obscure the driver\'s view of the road. The alternative i...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 December 2014

Manipulate and Edit

Issue 93 - September 2014 Company mergers can be no fun. Staff panic about ‘efficiencies’ and therefore their jobs. The press speculates about ‘what really happened?’ And there are always lawyers involved. And no one likes that. When DiGiCo revealed that it would merge with fellow audio console manufacturers Calrec and Allen & Heath, following a bu...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 October 2014

The Next Generation of Image Aqisition for Live Broadcast

by Klaus Weber Issue 86 - February 2014 Today, there are many discussions focused on next generation broadcast formats. This is mainly driven by the fact that the consumer industry has already launched 4K (UHD) TV sets. Beside the question is the market ready to accept a new broadcast format? One question still remains: what is the best solution fo...

Submitted by Klaus Weber

Published 01 March 2014

Zoom lenses and minicams

Finding a quality tracking zoom lens for the minicams made for the likes of Toshiba/Iconix/Hitachi/Sony has been an uphill battle. The cameras have been made primarily for the medical imaging market for microscopes and endoscopes but adopted by the broadcast industry as a high end minicam. However lenses were always a problem. Fujinon made the TF r...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

Watch out for dead pixels

A dead pixel in a camera imaging sensor can manifest itself in a number of ways. Implying black, 'dead' is not necessarily the correct term for a pixel failure. This is because imager defects include hot pixels, sparkles, noisy or lazy pixels. These problems usually arise during the chip manufacturing process. Defective pixels can appear as unusual...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2012

The New ITU-R BS1770-2 Loudness Standard

HistoryThe ITU-R standard BS1770-1, released in 2006, describes a fundamental loudness measurement algorithm. The basic technique was validated through listening tests on varied program material, performed in labs around the world. In late 2010 the ITU committee which maintains BS1770 accepted (after much negotiation) changes submitted by the EBU....

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2011

Television camera lenses

This is a glass-to-glass report with a difference, starting at front-end of the video production chain and staying there. Given the speed of development in almost every other branch of television, it is easy to overlook the advances taking place in optics. Until, that is, you need a wider capture angle than your existing kit can deliver or you want...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2010

TV Bay Questions

Who are you? (about yourself and Sequence)My name is Ben Foakes,29 years old and founder/ majority owner of Sequence. I work as an editor and post-supervisor as well as jointly running Sequence with my co-manager Kevin Chapman and our fantastic team of staff. The company was setup in June 2004, starting as a single home FCP suite and rapidly growin...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2010

What happened after NAB 2010.....

What happened next.......... On Wednesday the 14th April, evening time in Las Vegas, a text message came through from home reporting a Volcano in Iceland was affecting flights back to the UK, a wind up surely...did they not want us back.........?With NAB about to close for another year and 1000’s of Brit visitors and exhibitors at the show it beca...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Modern Test Techniques for Digital Audio Broadcast System...

The move to digital systems in broadcast audio means that engineers and systems integrators have had to evolve new means of testing equipment. Simon Woollard, Applications Engineer for audio test and measurement manufacturer Prism Sound, discusses some of the issues faced by today’s broadcast engineers. The AimsIn terms of audio performance, the br...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2010

Eye to Eye: Whats even newer in test and measurement 2010

A year is a long time in broadcast test & measurement, which is just as well because that is when this column previously focused on it. Given the current push to establish 3D as a permanent feature of the broadcast landscape, one might reasonably expect T&M kit designers to be heading along the same road. Hamlet and Omnitek certainly are but it see...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2010

Film Affect

As shooting on film for TV applications is increasingly being replaced with HD, there is a growing tendency for people to wish to apply film tools and methods to origination when using the electronic medium. However, unless aiming for a specific look that cannot be achieved any other way, it can prove more time consuming and costly to work this way...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

The Prism Sound Effect

The Prism Sound Effect. When Prism Sound took over the SADiE brand last year, it embarked on a fact-finding mission to discover why the brand had such a huge and extremely dedicated international user base. This process has been extremely enlightening and has enabled Prism Sound to respond with SADiE 6 - a new product for professional sound editors...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010