Videomaker

10 stories

VideomakerVideoHow to eliminate playback mistakes during live productions A missed cue can sink a live show faster than a dropped camera feed. The title card lands late. The loop stutters. The wrong clip fills the screen just as the pastor reaches the punchline.

11.05

VideomakerVideoMicrosoft Surface Laptop Ultra Review: Do you need 128 GB of VRAM for local AI? Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra packs 128GB of unified memory into a $5,899.99 laptop. We put local AI to work to see whether video editors actually need it.

11.05

VideomakerVideoClassic S4 look goes full frame with new Cooke primes Cooke’s S4 FF/i primes bring the classic S4 look to full frame in six T2.0 lenses from 18mm to 100mm. Preorders are open at $15,000 each.

10.31

VideomakerVideoNew 120-300mm f/2.8 Nikon zoom has a built-in teleconverter The Nikkor Z 120-300mm f/2.8 TC VR S is the first constant f/2.8 telephoto zoom with a built-in 1.4x teleconverter.

10.31

VideomakerVideoTiny Sigma FP2 shoots 6K open gate for $2,199 The Sigma FP2 packs a 24.5 MP full frame sensor and 6K Open Gate video into a tiny L-Mount body. It ships Nov. 11 for $2,199 body only.

10.31

VideomakerVideoPennsylvania law to require labels on misleading AI ads Pennsylvania’s AI Deceptive Advertising Act requires labels on misleading AI-made ads starting Dec. 21. Video creators and advertisers should prepare.

10.31

VideomakerVideoCompact 50 mm F1.4 SIGMA prime to land in 2027 The Sigma 50mm F1.4 CL DG Contemporary packs a metal body, 14 aperture blades and fast autofocus into 13.2 oz for L-Mount and Sony E cameras.

10.31

VideomakerVideoFull frame autofocus primes cost $149 each from Sirui Sirui’s Swift 20mm F2.4 and 40mm F2.2 full frame autofocus primes cost $149 each for L-Mount and Sony E, with shipping slated for Nov. 6.

10.31

VideomakerVideoBright 5-inch SmallHD monitor hits 1,000 nits for $999 SmallHD’s Focus 504 packs a 1,000-nit 5-inch touchscreen and PageOS into a $999 camera monitor. Camera control licenses cost extra.

10.31

VideomakerVideoFinal Cut Pro gets MotionVFX in Apple Creator Studio update Apple’s November Creator Studio update brings MotionVFX into Final Cut Pro and adds AI assistants and Generate Fill for subscribers at no cost.

10.31

The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo