Zacuto

Elia Saikaly writes on Zacuto:  Majestic mountains, stunning vistas, limitless time-lapse possibilities, Buddhist temples, beautiful children and the highest mountains on planet Earth! This is but a glimpse of what you experience while trekking through the Himalayas to Mt. Everest base camp. With a DSLR camera in hand: the possibilities are truly infinite.

Last fall, I was contracted to shoot an expedition to Mt. Everest base camp. A team of novices were planning to push themselves beyond their limits, step outside of their comfort zones and journey to the foot of the highest mountain on Earth: Mt. Everest base camp at 17, 500ft above sea level. Having previously reached the summit in 2010 and undertaken 4 Mt. Everest expeditions as an adventure filmmaker, apparently I was the man for the job. I happily accepted.

Watch this video from News Shooter on the NAB floor in which Jens Bogehegn and Steve Weiss from Zacuto introduce their newest camera rigs including the Marauder and the DSLR Gorilla Kit.

This first look from Zacuto and AbelCine at the Sony F5 and Sony F55 looks at some of the differences between the two cameras as well as going through some handheld set-ups. Watch below.

You know I’m a big proponent of continuing education, from a lecture at a local museum or a screening at a film festival (yes, even the Internet Cat Video Film Festival at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis on Aug. 30—mark your calendars!) to webinars and hands-on training. Techniques and technologies develop and evolve pretty much every five minutes, meaning there’s always something new to watch or read or learn.

One of the most surprising results to come out of Zacuto's Revenge of the Great Camera Shootout is that the image that was most favored by professional directors and DPs (including Francis Ford Coppola) came out of the $700 Panasonic GH2.

Says Gizmodo, "It's impressive that a consumer camera could stand up to professional cinema rigs, but there is a great degree of subjectivity at play here. The skill and decisions of each cinematographer definitely played a key role, as did the personal preferences of those voting."

Zacuto posts part two of Revenge of the Great Camera Shootout where you can see professionals like Francis Ford Coppola, Vincent Laforet and more debate their favorite images from screenings of the shootout. Part 2 also focuses on the cinematographers who were tasked with making the best image with their chosen camera.

Screening attendant Christian Lee probably puts it best when he says, "What I've learned from this is that, yeah we're in an age where all the tools are there. I mean it is so subjective and it is so minute."

It's back and it's bigger than ever! New test footage shot by expert DPs and celebrity guests will change your perspective on cameras and filmmaking.

Many of the comments have people feeling shocked, inspired and moved. This is like no shootout ever with the operative word Revenge.

"Not at ALL what I expected to hear. I feel cured of my camera envy and inspired to go shoot," said cinematographer Philip Bloom on Twitter, June 15th.

Joe Marine of Nofilmschool.com gives his thoughts after attending a screening of the Zacuto Revenge of the Great Camera Shoot-Out 2012 which compared nine popular digital camcorders. He writes, "The Zacuto test was certainly subjective, and I thought it did a great job proving that you can make almost any camera look better — even the lowly iPhone — it just depends who is lighting and operating the camera.

First, RED announced a 4K camera shoot-out for any and all cameras. Two days later, they canceled it but not without sending out some fighting words into the cybersphere directed at Zacuto and their yearly Great Camera Shootout.

The Zacuto 2010 Emmy Award winning and 2011 nominated three part web documentary is back with a new twist. The Revenge of the Great Camera Shootout is set to premiere June 15th, 2012 at zacuto.com. The shoot was conducted in February 2012 at the Tribeca Flashpoint Academy in Chicago. With this documentary, Zacuto aims to prove that it doesn't really matter which camera you use. Instead, it is the DPs mastery of his camera and the overall artistic ability to light which makes for beautiful images.