The increasing breadth of ISE and its relevance to the video industry is obvious on the Canon stand at the Fira de Barcelona.
As we’ve mentioned before, ISE is becoming a show of increasing relevance to the video market. It’s not ready to muscle in on the NAB/IBC axis, nor is there really room for it to do so, but a lot of the tech that is relevant to broadcast is increasingly relevant to the corporate and education sectors that are so important to the core ISE audience as well.
PTZ is a case in point. This is an expanding market for many manufacturers at the moment and Canon has been showing how PTZ cameras can be integrated to enable a range of new use cases across higher education and corporate environments.
It’s got a range of units on show from the £2250 CR-N300 4K unit up to the £8000 N700 4K PTZ Camera which features a 1.0 Type CMOS sensor and DIGIC DV7 processor to deliver exceptional 4K UHD 60P 4:2:2 10-bit imagery, as well as a 15x optical zoom and a 30x advanced zoom when shooting in Full HD.
At ISE it’s showcasing how PTZ cameras enabled with auto tracking software mean that university lectures can be recorded and streamed without the intervention of an operator to easily capture immersive content. And it’s easy to substitute all manner of presenters instead of a university lecturer in there as PTZ cameras make increasing inroads in the broadcast and dedicated streaming space.
Corporate is a part of that inevitably, and the company is illustrating a range of production scenarios that it can tackle with a customisable multi-camera set up. Corporate in 2023 means everything from a large format cinema to remote control PTZ cameras, while the company is also majoring on how its mirrorless range can be used for corporate use with products such as the recently announced EOS R6 Mark II. And if that doesn’t indicate how much the market is changing, nothing does.
XR studios are also muscling their way into corporate and live event productions, and so the company has partnered with LED screen manufacturer INFiLED to demonstrate how its PTZ cameras use their in-built FreeD protocol (which outputs Pan / Tilt / Zoom / Iris information directly from the camera to a tracking system) to enable seamless interaction with the virtual scenes of an LED wall for a decently realistic result.
And lastly, the metaverse is still hovering in the background. While the mass push behind it has yet to materialise in pretty much any sector you care to name, there is still a case to be made for using VR to teach and train certain subjects. And so the company is also displaying a range of VR content captured with the Canon EOS R5 and EOS R5 C using its well-regarded RF 5.2mm F2.8L DUAL FISHEYE Lens.