It seems like just yesterday we announced our 2013 AbelCine Documentary Grant and put out a call for submission videos to be uploaded to Vimeo. After a round of public voting, ten finalists were chosen and now, after much deliberation, our judging committee has decided on the three winners. Congratulations to Steven Liang, Danilo Lima, and Ecar Oden for being named the 2013 AbelCine Documentary Grant winners!

Last month, we posted some first impressions of Vision Research's new Flex4K camera from our friends Greg Wilson and Steve Romano. Recently Brain Farm, the Wyoming-based production house specializing in action sports cinematography, turned to award-winning skateboard film veteran Ty Evans to test the Flex4K in skateboard country - Southern California.

Mark Benjamin has spent the last thirty years building his reputation as a director and cinematographer through his work in film and television. As one of our AbelCine Documentary Grant judges, we asked him to talk a little bit more about his career, including some of the inspiration behind projects such as the Peabody Award-winning series Brick City that he created with filmmaker Marc Levin.

Peter Schnall is a seven-time Emmy Award and Peabody Award winner who has been making distinctive films and documentaries for more than twenty-five years. We're excited to have Peter as one of our AbelCine Documentary Grant judges and he was nice enough to answer a few questions about his experiences working in the industry.

At this year's IBC show in Amsterdam, Vision Research officially unveiled the production model of the Phantom Flex4K. A couple of our clients and friends have recently gotten their hands on a prototype of the camera, so check out the footage and behind the scenes photos below.

Documentaries have always been close to our heart - in fact, many of our original clients are documentary filmmakers. We wanted to make sure that the next generation of documentarians had a chance to tell their stories too, and that's why we launched the 2013 AbelCine Documentary Grant.

In his new short film, Salience, filmmaker Paul Trillo explores the theme of visibility. Paul and his team used the Phantom Miro camera to capture body-suited figures (rendered transparent in post) becoming visible through contact with bursts of colored powder. Watch the video above for the full film.

A cinematographer and lighting designer by trade, Rick Siegel has worked on feature length and short films in the narrative and documentary genres. He photographs episodic television series as well -- in music, comedy, fashion, home style, reality and magazine formats. In this blog, he tells us all about his Sony PMW-F3 rig.

Back in July of last year, we teamed up with Vision Research to announce a special contest centering around their newest high-speed camera, the Phantom Miro M320S. We put out a call for proposals, encouraging image-makers and artists of all disciplines to submit creative ideas that took full advantage of the unique features of the Miro. The grand prize? A brand new Phantom Miro package, courtesy of Vision Research.