For years we have been hearing about the next great innovation in television displays. 3D, 4K, curved, you name it, there is always a new buzzword that is used to push consumers to buy new TVs. These display trends certainly mirror the trends in camera technology, both the good and the bad. The latest buzzword that you may have heard is HDR or High Dynamic Range displays.

We have big news for cinematographers: the long awaited Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) is now available in its first production-ready release.

At AbelCine we hold a lot of events aimed at helping still photographers move into the world of cinematography or add video to their creative tool kit. These "Stills To Motion" events are focused on the art of cinema, as well as the latest camera technology. At one such event, we discussed the RAW and Log modes in the Canon EOS C500, as well as the wide cinema gamut found in the camera. Many of the photographers in the room weren't as familiar with these concepts and asked that we translate the terminology into something they could better understand.

Recently, AbelCine organized a focus group with select cinematographers and specialists from Canon to review the new Dual Pixel Auto Focus (DAF) upgrade for the C300 camera. The consensus was that for $500, this is a feature worth many times its cost, as it expands the universe of the types of shots that can be achieved.

Canon has definitely made a commitment to bringing new features to their EOS line of cameras with various firmware updates. For users of the C100 and C300, one of the most useful of these is the addition of a Wide DR Gamma.

Our scene file blogs have always been some of our most popular posts, and our specialists get many questions regarding how to create matching scene files for different cameras. Last year I actually wrote an article for HDVideoPro called "Making the Match," where I discussed step-by-step how I go about doing this. In that article, I used a Sony F3 and an FS700 as examples, but recently we received an interesting inquiry on how to match a Sony F55 with a Canon C500.

Jem Schofield, of theC47, has presented a number of popular classes in our NY Learning Point, and now he's bringing that expertise to Canon's newest tutorial series on the C100. In his latest video tutorial, Jem takes an in-depth look at a topic that we often get questions about, specifically how to properly use a waveform monitor. He also discusses gamma and custom Picture Profiles, so make sure to watch the full video above.

At AbelCine, one of the most common questions our techs get these days is about lens coverage with different cameras. It’s no wonder that we get these inquiries, as there is an endless stream of new cameras coming out, all of which have different sensor sizes and specs. We frequently get questions like this: “Does my 16mm lens cover the Blackmagic Cinema camera sensor?” or “Does my lens cover 6K on the Red Dragon camera?”

Many cameras today have a Rec.709 color mode or LUT mode included, which is great for making a pleasing image on a monitor. Since Rec.709 is a standard defined by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), we might assume that the Rec.709 mode in every camera would look about the same - but this never seems quite true.