By site editor Dan Chung:
Zacuto have been extremely busy building a raft of new products to show at the NAB show this year. On their website they have pre-announced their latest Electronic viewfinders – the Gratical LT and Gratical HD. This is what their preview material says:
“A year in the making, Steve and Jens brought five different engineering companies together to bring their latest EVF design concept to life. The Gratical LT (full display 1024×768) and Gratical HD (full display 1280×1024) are the new generation Zacuto electronic viewfinders. The Gratical uses an extremely powerful FPGA dual core processor and the latest micro-OLED display, giving a hugely expanded contrast range. Our high-quality, built in optics with multiple diopter options and anti-fog offer an incredibly sharp image. Key features include custom precision four lens optics for razor sharp detail, HDMI and HD-SDI in/out (HDMI cross convert to SDI), waveform, vectorscope and histogram.”
In short these look like direct competition to own brand EVFs from Sony, Arri and RED. Designed for high end use they should be capable of delivering results that are far better than existing third party EVFs like the Alphatron, Cineroid or LCDVFe.
No word yet on pricing, but I expect it to cost significantly more that the existing Zacuto EVF.
Also pre-announced is the Control grip with servo zoom control which we previously talked about in this post. This from Zacuto:
“Your camera shouldn’t control you—you should control your camera! Place our comfy, convenient camera Control Grip anywhere on your rig and camera control is at your fingertips. Cables will be available compatible with Canon, Nikon and Panasonic DSLRs, Sony F5/F55/F65, ARRI Amira/Alexa, RED Epic/Scarlet, and Canon C-Series.
Combine the Control Grip with our new Z-Motor on your lens to create an updated version of the traditional rocker zoom controller. The Control Grip includes two 7-pin Lemo connectors for Zoom and Iris motors and has a software upgradeable microprocessor.”
Full disclosure: This website is an affiliate partner of Zacuto
