Have you ever found yourself wondering about the image a particular camera and lens would produce? Well, if you have your phone on you, there's now an easy way to find out. DIRE Studio has released an app called Mark II Artist's Viewfinder, which has the ability to preview and capture hundreds of camera and lens combinations.

Today, Canon announced an optional update for the C300 that will add support for the Dual Pixel Autofocus function. This update was also introduced for the C100 in November.

Last week I visited the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which features millions of electronic gadgets that would make any geek smile. I went with purpose though, touring the massive halls looking for new gear and technology that might have an impact on filmmakers.

Your dreams of a super-fast 4K workflow have just gotten a little more real. At CES, LaCie debuted their new Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2, which is one of the few Thunderbolt 2-enabled drives currently on the market.

A few years ago, one of our Phantom customers asked us to solve a problem: how could handheld sports shooters using a Phantom v640, which lacked any on-board controls, perform basic functions without being tethered to a computer, which was the only existing way to control the camera at the time? Figuring that it should be possible to use a micro-controller to communicate with the camera to accomplish this goal, I started working on a solution in my spare time. Using a development board wired to the camera with some buttons and some custom code, the result was a box that could be velcroed to the side of the camera. It could perform black balance and white balance, as well as switch to some frame rate and shutter presets. The device worked pretty well and was used to shoot a number of sporting events, prompting clients to start asking for "Jesse's Box."

DaVinci Resolve has become one of the most popular tools for color grading and creating dailies, and now Blackmagic Design has released a pretty major upgrade to the program: DaVinci Resolve 10.

The Canon C100 is very popular with run-and-gun operators in the documentary world, and Canon recently announced an upgrade for the C100 that allows for continuous tracking autofocus with Canon's entire EF lineup. The upgrade will also increase the speed of the camera's existing one-shot autofocus by around two times and provide an AF lock, which will enable the user to change the image framing while keeping the desired focus point, a feature that is especially useful for run-and-gun filmmakers.

While camera stabilization systems are not a new concept, every once in a while a system comes along that fundamentally alters the way we utilize camera movement in our work. A classic example of this would be when Garrett Brown introduced the world to the Steadicam in 1975, or with recent compact dollys innovations from Kessler Crane or MYT Works. Recently, we were introduced to a new system from Freefly Systems that opens up a new realm of possibilities for camera movement that breaks free from the established formula.

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.