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NAB 2025: LED Screen Advancements, Tariff Concerns and Hybrid Lenses
A Cine Central workshop on dollies at this year's NAB Show. Nearly 1,100 vendors spread across three halls of the massive Las Vegas Convention Center for the annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show which, over five days each April, covers a lot of ground, both physically and with the wide scope of technology encompassed under “broadcast.” In a press conference, Karen Chupka, NAB’s managing director and executive vice president, highlighted this Show’s new points of focus, including sports and content creators; ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith was a featured guest speaker at NAB earlier that same morning. Scrolling through each day’s list of scheduled panels and talks illustrates just how wide-spanning NAB Show truly is: AbelCine hosted a panel on “Cinematic Innovations in Live Church Production,” while main stage guests ran the gamut from WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque to Taylor Lorenz.
With poor box office numbers thus far this year and productions increasingly decamping for other countries, will NAB pivot more strongly to the ascendant content creator economy? Thankfully, there are promising signs that cinema is still a top priority. One is the growth of NAB’s Cine Central program, now in its third year and located in a prime real estate spot in North Hall. With over 30 hands-on workshops over four days, Cine Central producer Kristin Petrovich describes the hub as “where the production community gathers to get their hands on gear,” with invaluable instruction from “working professionals—these are camera operators, DPs, crew from Hollywood leading these workshops.” The Cine Central area was constantly abuzz with simultaneous workshops and clinics running at any given point. As I chatted with Petrovich, a group of attendees were learning how to operate a 48 ft. Scorpio crane, and a craft clinic on “How to Master the Interview Setup” overflowed with people gathered outside the area’s barrier to listen and ask questions. “Year one, people were skeptical: ‘Are you really going to do hands on, or is it going to be some pseudo version of that?’” Petrovich says. “Year two, we really started to pick up steam, and people were aware of what we’re doing.” This year, “We had many manufacturers want to be involved”; Kodak hosted two Cine Central workshops on loading motion picture film, while Fujifilm hosted a clinic on mirrorless camera builds.
The final count was 55,000 registered attendees from 160 countries. Over half attended for the first time, one in four came from outside the U.S., and tariffs were on everyone’s mind. Most exhibitors had the same response when questioned on how they might affect product costs: all anyone can really do is wait and see. Price points for new products were given out with an asterisk. Many of the companies present at the show (and profiled below) are based in China; a cursory scroll through the show directory, for example, found 17 companies listed with a company name that began with “Shenzhen” (the technological hub in southeastern China).
Blackmagic Design maintains a strong presence at NAB each year, occupying their usual spot in South Hall rather than the typical North Hall where the rest of their film and video companies are found. Blackmagic’s scope and diversity of product lines means they are usually good for multiple product announcements at every trade show, whether NAB or Cine Gear. This year they announced the PYXIS 12K, featuring twice the resolution capture quality but otherwise keeping the previous PYXIS 6K model’s full-frame box camera body. “If you held them side by side, they look exactly the same,” Blackmagic senior technical solutions specialist Sarah Jones says. The PYXIS 12K employs the same mega-sized sensor as the higher-priced URSA Cine 12K which Blackmagic announced last year. The improved sensor and overall specs—featuring “higher frame rates, higher resolutions, faster sensor readout speeds” housed within the more affordable PYXIS model—should catch consumers’ attention. While this camera model doesn’t have global shutter—which helps prevent the “jello effect” when filming in motion—the “faster sensor readouts will allow you to shoot and not need global shutter,” Jones assures filmmakers.
Elsewhere, Blackmagic is testing out a new autofocus feature for their Cinema Camera 6K, now in beta testing, which works in three distinct ways: “There’s a continuous autofocus where you tap the screen and it’s always keeping that zone in focus,” Jones explains. “Or you could do object-based where you tap an object, and then it follows the object throughout the frame.” Lastly, there is a face focus, a bit like the face recognition in one’s camera phone, which is useful for scenes with two people in them. DaVinci Resolve 20 rolled out its latest version for public beta testing in early April just ahead of the show. It further implements Blackmagic’s AI-based neural engine which was introduced back in 2018 with Resolve 16. Jones is clear that this is not generative AI. She estimates that 80 percent of an editor’s job is focused on menial tasks, with 20 percent on the creative side, but with the continued development of these tools—which include transcription services, facial recognition and more—that equation is closer to being flipped. The InteliCut feature will “remove silence, and checkerboard speakers. So it’ll cut based on what it hears: on one track you’ll have speaker one, and then speaker two comes in on track two. It’ll chop that up for you,” Jones explains.
Blackmagic is also in the film game, having bought Cintel in 2014 because, says senior design engineer Stuart Hunt, “we want to show people that we also care about film.” Hunt helped design the Blackmagic Cintel scanners tells me; this year, Blackmagic introduced the Cintel Scanner G3 HDR+ 8/16. Utilizing sprocketless technology, it can scan both 8mm and 16mm footage, forgoing pesky hardware swaps. It’s an update on the Cintel Scanner G3 HDR+ which was announced in 2022, which can scan 8mm, 16mm and 35mm. This new model continues Blackmagic’s recent innovation of real-time scanning, adding higher resolution Ultra HDR, with 3.5 additional stops of HDR. At $32,045—like all of Blackmagic’s products—it’s priced competitively. Blackmagic envisions this product being used for scanning archival film. “There’s an awful lot of film stored in warehouses all over the world,” Hunt says. “A large proportion of the customer base work in archival.”
Roe Visual manufactures high quality LED screens with a variety of applications, including use on volume stages. The number on each of Roe’s products indicate the distance in millimeters between each LED in the screen, numbers which have been getting lower and lower. Roe Visual’s Denali 0.78 which debuted at NAB, took home a coveted NAB 2025 Product of the Year award. But, for filmmakers working with volume stages, it’s likely not cost effective to shoot with a sub-one mm pixel pitch screen. Alternately, the Ruby 1.9 model is a “strong choice when it comes to shooting in a volume, because you can get closer to the wall, and have a better chance of not experiencing moiré with your subject,” Mike Smith, director of operations at Roe Visual, explains. And Roe’s flagship product in the volume stage arena is still the Black Pearl Two with its larger 2.8 pixel pitch: “That’s the second generation of the product that was used on a lot of high profile movie shoots, and is arguably the most used LED panel in virtual production today,” Smith says.
Smith also toted new company Deep Sky, which makes the LED drivers that “control the way the LEDs turn on and off, as well as the processing system that communicates to the wall itself. They don’t just use traditional pulse width modulation technology to control LEDs, which is the way every single LED wall is controlled on this show floor right now.” Deep Sky instead uses pulse amplitude modulation, which is “a combination of finer and more variable control of the current going to the LEDs.” That’s good for filmmakers because this new technology allows LED screens to achieve 19 bits of grayscale. “Every high quality panel here at the show has about 15 or 16 bits of optical bit depth,” Smith explains. “19 bits means less banding, more color accuracy, specifically in the very dark areas of your content, which is something that filmmakers are always looking for in these situations.”
Next door to Roe Visual, Brompton Technology is in the business of manufacturing the processors which run these LED panels. Their Emmy-winning generation 2 Brompton processor can drive 9 million pixels at 4K resolution, but the brand-new Generation 3 Tessera SQ200 processor allows a single 2D box to drive a whopping 36 million pixels at 8K resolution. Brompton director of engineering Adrian Jeakins explains that “to do that, we’ve jumped up from distributing our video data over 10 gigabit Ethernet to 100 gigabit, so we have two 100 gigabit output ports on the processor.” SMPTE st 2110 is the network protocol for sending uncompressed video over an IP network, and Brompton’s new processor contains updated capabilities for that protocol as well. Jeakins says there are still 10-year-old Generation One processors out in the field, so whenever they release a new product it must come with “lots of extra capacity so that we can add lots of interesting new features to it in the future.”
Brompton’s updates with Gen 3 offer increased capacity and efficiency. “It’s mainly workflow improvements: fewer boxes, bigger screens, tighter pixel pitches,” Jeakins explains. “We already have an industry leading set of film features in particular for tuning LED refresh to camera behavior, and that will all come along with Generation Three. But at this stage it’s very much about all those extra pixels.”
An independent filmmaker, Alden Peters’s story is not an uncommon one to encounter at NAB: a director in search of a solution discovers one and becomes a product’s biggest and most effective evangelist. While finishing a sci-fi short, Peters says it took him two years to complete the VFX himself. “Ah, this is why these things cost so much money,” he realized. But then he discovered Lightcraft, which has drastically changed his VFX workflow from pre-production through post. Lightcraft is an app that allows you to see a pre-visualization of your special effect shots in real time on set. “It’s connected to a camera and uses the iPhone’s LIDAR to tell where I am in 3D space,” Peters explains. “So, you get a real time preview of what your shot is going to be if you’re doing a green screen shot.” I tested it out in the Lightcraft booth, moving the iPad running the app around to see the 3D effects in the frame render. Before this technology, you might “get the general shot and angle, and then hope that it all works out in post,” Peters explains; Lightcraft allows filmmakers to “shoot with more intention.” Since discovering the app, he has since shot a followup web series to that original sci-fi short utilizing Lightcraft heavily. “Camera agnostic” the two Lightcraft booths across West and North Halls showcased a few different camera models running the program seamlessly. Lightcraft’s sister computer program Autoshot can then take all of your proxies and generates a 3D model for post, “with pixel tracking that’s within a centimeter,” Peters notes of its precision. Lightcraft has a free version which allows a user to input 3D models, shoot and export them, a $20/month tier that allows 4K resolution and some higher frame rate options, and a full version at $80/month which features all of the cine calibration.
SLYYD is a new lighting control app available for iOS, developed by every gaffer’s favorite lighting company Creamsource. Jesse Skogh, a Local 52 electrician out of New York, helped develop the app and explains its origins: “There was a lot of demand for a lighting app for Creamsource fixtures, but they didn’t want to be the 15th app on your phone that only controls their manufacturer’s fixtures. They wanted something more useful, so they brought us on to help make an app for them, but also for everybody.”
The SLYYD app allows a user to control two universes of lighting modules, with ease, either through traditional streaming ACN (sACN) protocol or a LumenRadio BLE connection (which sends DMX data via Bluetooth). “This app isn’t gonna replace everything that already exists,” Skogh admits. “But we do feel like we do a number of things quite a bit better, [like] friendly controls. We feel that our user interface makes sense, and is easier for people who don’t have a lot of familiarity with lighting control to jump on and understand.” Browsing the app, Skogh isn’t wrong. It’s an exceedingly user-friendly interface. One cool feature Skogh showed off was SLYYD’s ability to match the colors of a host of connected lights from different manufacturers instantly with a single touch. “Every manufacturer has different sets of LEDs, and they all think about color a little bit differently. Getting them to be the same can be a struggle,” he explains. “Are you gonna control the next Mission Impossible movie entirely with this? No. Could you use this to go out on location if you’re doing a small scene with a few lights, and you just need to set some values without having to bring a big console: Absolutely.” SLYYD is available right now and is priced $20/month or $200 for a year license.
The Sony VENICE Extension System Mini clocks in at an impressive 70% smaller than its predecessor, the VENICE 2 Extension System from 2022. This device is “a means of extending the sensor module away from the body of the camera for a smaller form factor,” Sony Electronics’ Ben Ramirez tells me. Perfect for mounting on a gimbal or a car rig, this updated Extension Mini now comes equipped with its own full frame sensor. This sensor is the “same size, same quality, same everything—there’s no compromise on the side of the camera,” Ramirez explains. The extension device remains attached to the original VENICE 2 camera body via a new lightweight cable. The cable is detachable, so you can get the Extension Mini rig in place, then run the cable through a tight environment with ease. It comes with a 4.5 meter-long cable, but a 12-meter cable is sold separately. Shipping in August, it will be available for $25,000.
North Hall had plenty of camera lenses as well, and ARRI was toting the latest lens in their new Ensō Prime lens line. “They’re less expensive, very robust and versatile,” says Art Adams, product specialist of cinema lenses at ARRI Americas. The close focus possible with the new Ensō lenses weren’t possible on their more expensive flagship Signature primes: “Lenses are always at their weakest in close focus, and with signature primes, there’s only so close we can come focus wise and stay within the high specs.” So, ARRI “loosened these specs up considerably to make a lower cost lens with a unique look, and that allowed us to get the close focus extremely close. We can get to the width of a postcard on 12 of the 14 lenses.” The core six prime lenses (18mm, 24mm, 32mm, 47mm, 75mm, and 105mm) are available as a set for $86,400, which includes “six rear filters or rear optics that change the look of the lens and give them vintage characteristics,” Adams adds. ARRI just released the 21mm and 105mm models and will continue rolling out new lenses in the series every few months until they’re all released by this December.
The Canon L-series RF Hybrid lens collection seeks to bridge the gap between still photography and cinema, so while the lenses utilize photography-standard F stops instead of cinema T stops, other features are clearly rooted in video shooting. “Canon put a priority on reducing focus breathing when you rack focus, so you can have cinematic rack focuses without the whole field of view changing on you,” Canon sr. specialist Matthew Irving says. The lenses have independent iris rings that are smoothly adjustable, instead of the click rings which are common in photography, meaning “if you’re doing a Ronin following shot from outside to inside, you could rack the iris very smoothly from outside to inside,” Irving adds. After releasing a 24-105mm in the series last year, a RF 70-200mm followed last fall. There’s also four prime lenses in this series: a 20mm, 24mm, 35mm and 50mm. The two zooms cost around $3,000 and the primes vary between $1,399 and $1,599 each.
Chinese lens company Dulens comes with a unique origin story. Over a decade ago, founder Du Ju found himself buying and selling lenses, which eventually led to him fulfilling requests to rehouse old photography glass for cinema cameras. Working with vintage lenses for so long, he realized he had accrued enough knowledge to try his hand at making his own lenses with vintage characteristics. 11 years later and Dulens is betting big on medium-format lenses being the next trend, debuting a new lens line in this format. Du has a proven track record with foreseeing trends: “10 years ago I made full frame lenses. At that time, all the lenses were Super 35. Now you see full frame everywhere. So I decided to make lenses in the medium format. 10 years from now, this could be the format,” he says. Lenses in this line will cost about $1,500 each.
Nikon unveiled their Nikkor Z 28-135mm, f/4 PZ—their “first video-dedicated lens for the Z mount,” Nikon strategic communications manager Geoffrey Coalter tells me. “This is going to be your one stop-shop that you use for any small footprint production, documentary, corporate videography—this will be your one lens that does it all.”The Nikkor PZ (power zoom) comes with many customizable options including 11 different zoom speed options. It will also sync with the “high res zoom that is the future of Nikon cameras,” Coalter says. That new feature is a little complicated but Coalter further breaks it down: “If you’re shooting with a Nikon Z8, recording in 4K, the camera will take an 8K file and let you zoom in with a prime lens up to two times.” With this new zoom lens, there’s a “hi-res zoom sync feature which will allow you to use the optical zoom of the lens, then seamlessly transition to the hi-res zoom if you have it selected,” he continues. The Nikon Z mount works with all Nikon cameras as well as with RED’s KOMODO-X and V RAPTOR [X]. The 28-135mm power zoom lens became available during NAB Show and retails for $2,599.
Nanlite/Nanlux came to NAB with a few new products in tow, including the nifty Pavotube II 6XR tube light kit, the bigger brother to the previous Pavotube II 6C. The internal magnets in each light are stronger than the previous model, which makes placement on a metal wall a cinch, and there are metal clip accessories which, along with some gaff tape, make placement on a non-metal surface simple as well. The lights feature CCT (correlated color temperature), a range from white light all the way to blue moonlight, along with HSI (hue saturation intensity), which encompasses a range of 360 color options. The box kit includes a light gauge showing which lights are charged, as well as “AC power in, DC power in with a D-tap, DC power in with mini USB-C and two five volts coming out for charging your phone or whatever you might need,” Garcia says. A single tube is $149 and comes with a few accessories; the entire kit with eight lights and the box with the charging features is $1,490.
Nanlux also had the Evoke 5000B, which Nanlux director of marketing & content creation Jeremy Gay describes as “an alternative to a 6-9k HMI or 20k tungsten and above.” Pulling between 43-47 amps, it’s “well within the capacity of a Honda 7000 generator.” This is the fifth product in their Evoke series, which has redesigned the four-channel light in key ways. The previous Evoke lights “featured a head with a DC cable and a ballast, then a power cable into the wall,” whereas the 5000B has “a self contained ballast built into the back of the light,” Gay explains, which makes it much easier to set up as well as repair. With an IP66 rating, it’s practically waterproof. Another feature is Near Field Communication (NFC), a first for Nanlux, which means by utilizing the same technology that Apple Pay uses, you can program the light when it’s not on so that it’s ready to go before you arrive on a shoot.
NAB Show ran April 5-9 in Las Vegas.
