Last day at BVE was a good look round the stands and some treats for myself, Holdan’s as usual had a great presence a smashing big stand and plenty of people to talk technical, Richard Payne who I interviewed was demonstrating the AF101 all day every day, there is so much interest it’s unreal.

This all in one mixer from Holdan’s has XLR audio inputs, HD SDI inputs and a talkback unit all output into a DataVideo HD SDI recorder.

The AJA stand had the Ki Pro mini a fantastic pro recorder that many DPs like myself will appreciate, real buttons and readouts plus Apple Pro Rez.

The Ki Pro mini is not available till March, records onto CF cards and will retail for about £1600 plus vat but hot on it’s heals is the Ninja priced at a mere £600 plus vat.

I had a good look at the NINJA and was more than impressed, the Ninja records onto 3.5″ laptop hard drives running at 7200RPM, it also records 4:2:2, 10bit Pro Rez and has two hot swappable batteries, once again not due till March.

I met a lovely man from Miller called Mike Lippmann who convinced me that their Compas 25 fluid head was the tripod head for me, it certainly felt very smooth both pan and tilt.

My other significant purchase was the Cineroid EVF for my AF101, although I can use the LCD with the DTL switched on sometimes it’s just not good enough and I find myself struggling to see critical focus so my only sensible option was the Cineroid which I had a play with about 3 weeks ago. CVP had a Sony viewfinder attached onto an AF101 but at £2500 it was a tad out of my budget.

Our man Nigel Cooper was doing a brisk trade with his how to light INTERVIEWS DVD in fact he gave me a copy for review so look out for that in the weeks to come.

I caught up with my old friend Mike Tapa who was selling plenty of adapters for all sorts of camera and camcorders, if Mike can’t adapt it, it can’t be adapted. Mikes lovely wife Elizangela pulled the name out of a camera bag for my competition which I filmed but not to keep you in suspense the winner of the AF101 Barry Green book was..Alessandro Villamira from Italy, congratulations to Alex.

So was it worth the hike to BVE in London…YES …if you go to no other video show in the UK, BVE is the show to attend especially if you are looking for new kit.

Day two was even busier and I got a surprising phone call from Mike Tapa to come to his stand to see an interesting setup. On arriving at his stand I was greeted with an AF101 with a Canon HJ 11x broadcast lens.

Wow…an f1.9 zoom lens, through and through with an 18x magnification so how is this possible, Mike “This is one of my specials, this combination only works with HD lenses that have a 2x converter.” “It’s a B4 2/3″ to mFT adapter the 2x converter must be engaged for the lens to cover the sensor.” Very clever indeed, this almost begs Canon or Fuji to bring out a smaller zoom lens with the AF101 in mind.

Another interesting product at the show was to be found at CVPs stand the NINJA. This is similar to the NanoFlash but has a nice big screen that you can watch your footage back with. That was always my bug bear with the FS-4 by Focus Enhancements you had no way of monitoring your footage.

The Ninja records onto Apple ProRez and uses Sony type batteries it also records onto standard laptop hard drives (7200 rpm).

This was an interesting lash up by CVP, the blending of a Panasonic AF101 with a £2500 Hi Rez Sony Viewfinder using the HDMI output. There is a ton of interesting alternative add on’s for the AF101 and the marriage of Panasonic and Sony is a belter.

Here is a picture and a half  John Preston (2nd right) myself and two of Johns customers who are avid fans of HD Warrior.

Lastly from Day Two of BVE was the interest paid to the Sony F3 seen here on the Sony stand itself. This is a cracking camera and now ships as an optional extra with three Sony prime lenses all T2 or f.2 for the non film makers.

Today was an even busier show and has been a joy to attend I have been compiling some video footage mostly with the AF101 around the show and I hope to upload the edit after this weekend…more tomorrow, Day Three, the last day and find out who won the Barry Green book.

Start of the day did not go to well, driving up the A4 towards Earls Court we managed to get a flat tyre, £169 later we were parking at BVE, £25 per day !

The show is massive and very busy, I was on duty showing off the Panasonic AF101 and the Sony F3. The F3 with prime lenses is a lot heavier than I was expecting but theres no doubt it looks the part.

Andy Guest from H Preston Media took this flattering pic of me, John Preston seemed to be doing a thriving trade and from all accounts selling AF101 and F3 camcorders.

This is indeed the year of the shallow depth of field video camcorders, Sony and Panasonic still had their fare share of shoulder mounts and hand held camcorders but you can detect the tide is now firmly turning towards the larger sensor cameras.

Tomorrow I will see if their is anything new on offer, I bought some Rycote under covers and stickies today and a Rycote universal camera kit as I am a big fan of the Miniscreen Windshield which is now standard on all my camera mics.

My own DVD is selling like hot cakes from three outlets so don’t delay or be disappointed make sure you pick up a copy today.

On the subject of the AF101 a lot of interest on day one mainly from seasoned cameramen looking for that shallow depth of field.

With so many third party accessories coming on board for the AF101 it’s getting hard to keep up but I was playing with the new shoulder stabiliser system from IDX and I was more than impressed I will get some pics and prices for tomorrow.

Today (Tuesday) is the first day of BVE at Earls Court in London. This is the video show worth attending as it’s the biggest show outside IBC, Amsterdam.

From what I gather Sony will have an updated version of their Super 35mm NXCAM film like camcorder due June-July 2011. I hope for Sony’s sake it looks far closer to a video camera than the strange conceptual camera seen at the F3 press launch.

I will be demonstrating the Panasonic AF101 and the Sony F3 throughout the day at H Preston Medias stand (K10) come and say hello and as an experiment the first person to come to the stand and tell me they read HD Warrior gets a free copy of my “Heads Up” DVD (SD DVD version).

So I hope to see a few of you over the next three days.