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.