The University of Central Lancashire has created a major new UHD-capable studio for improved teaching using Panasonic professional camera systems. The £550,000 studio upgrade has enabled the university to move from SD to UHD with the option of HDR, with a 12G workflow environment allowing the reduction of cable requirements. The project took six weeks and was carried out before the start of the new academic year.
The studio refit, completed by systems integrator Altered Images, incorporates four Panasonic AK-UC4000 system cameras, including the AK-UCU600 Camera Control Unit (CCU), AK-HRP1000 Remote Operation Panel (ROP) and AK-HVF100 LCD colour viewfinder.
Benefits of the new UHD-capable studio include:
- Saving settings made on the ROP onto a SD card to save time and improve production value. It allows the production team to create optimum settings for a programme and use them for the next show without having to manually reconfigure.
- The LCD viewfinder on the camera body can be used for Focus-Assist functionality, making it easier to teach students rather than using peaking video monitoring tools.
- The bracket connecting the LCD colour viewfinder to the camera body provides a great range of mobility, allowing the camera operator to see over the camera when teaching students.
The university was also impressed with the great working relationship it quickly established with Panasonic, who provided advice, a demo unit for evaluation, and training. The university looked at options from all of the major camera system manufacturers with three-chip sensor options.
“But when we considered them against the single-chip Panasonic AK-UC4000 camera system in our tests, we couldn’t actually see any disadvantages,” said Toby Gregory, media production technician at University of Central Lancashire.
“The colour science in the UC4000 camera is great, the dynamic range is wide, and the sensitivity is fantastic. The UC4000 camera is going to give us everything that we’d want to do in a studio environment, and gives us the right platform to teach the next generation of camera operators by working with an industry-standard camera system.”