Well I’m finally home from a near month long tour around Asia taking in India, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Taiwan. I had a lot of fun meeting many wonderful people and learning a lot about the different approaches to broadcasting and film making in the region.

I started in Mumbai, India with a shoot at Film City. Film is still king when it comes to even low budget movies in India. There are over 2000 films a year released in the Indian market. Cinematography is a craft passed from father to son in many cases, with the younger generation working as assistants learning from the older, more experienced operators. This is a great way to learn core craft skills, but with technology advancing so rapidly right now and digital production starting to have a larger and larger impact on the industry it does tend to leave a bit of a gap in the knowledge base.

Trying to explain things like S-Log and picture profiles to a die hard film cameraman is hard! Still at Broadcast India there was a constant stream of people coming to the Sony booth actively seeking out the PMW-F3, wanting to know more about it.

From India, I went to Vietnam via Thailand. Flying over the floods was an eyeopener. It was like flying over the sea, only trees and buildings were sticking out of the ocean of water. From what I’ve heard many industries are being seriously impacted by the floods. It looks like hard drives may be in short supply for the next year due to damage to the factories. Other businesses have supply problems as major warehouses have been cut off by the floods. Vietnam itself is an amazing country. Very friendly people and beautiful countryside. Great food too.

I did get to spend a day at Ha Long Bay where I shot some footage that I will edit into a little short in the next few days. After that I went to VTV, the state broadcaster in Hanoi to talk about file based workflows and the Sony F3. Hanoi is a city with a real buzz and I’ve never seen so many mopeds and scooters in my life.

After Hanoi it was on to Hong Kong for a series of workshops on low cost 3D video production (using Sony cameras and the Genus Hurricane Rig) and a workshop on the Sony F3 with a lot of work on S-Log and Picture Profiles.

In Hong Kong I got to play with EI S-log which is a very welcome upgrade to the current version of S-Log.

From Hong Kong it was a short flight to Taipei in Taiwan. Taipei is a modern cosmopolitan city that had a look similar to a Japanese city. In Taipei I held a couple of workshops at the studios of national broadcaster PTS on XDCAM HD 422 using Sony PDW-F800’s and 700’s as well as PMW-500’s. Then a workshop on Digital Cinematography with the PMW-F3 and FS100.  Again lots of time spent on S-Log and Picture Profiles, including some shooting and grading with a Convergent Design Gemini. We also took a look at lenses and I showed how to do some basic lens tests to help when looking for a decent lens to use on either camera. Over the two days the workshops were attended by around 90 people, a great turn out. PTS was very generous in their support of the workshops providing around 15 HD monitors so the attendees could see exactly what was being shot, graded and played back. Sony also provided lots of cameras and lenses to play with. I finished off the trip with a quick 3D workshop for KP Photo before flying home via Hong Kong.

Later in the Month I’ll be in Dubai for a Sony event, demoing a pair of F3’s on a hurricane rig for low budget, high quality 3D acquisition.